The Maori New Year festival Matariki gets bigger every year. This year Taonga Whakaari: The Inaugural Maori Playwrights Festival has been added to the calendar of events in Auckland and Papakura.

Contemporary dance is enjoying an explosion in popularity, from belly dancing to street and ballet styles.

Seizing the dark heart of the show Ross Girven captures the haunted nature of Sweeney Todd's psychosis.

Solo performer Gareth Williams takes us on a delightfully whimsical journey inside his head.

NBR New Zealand Opera's The Marriage of Figaro is as engrossing a night of theatre as one could wish for.

Dame Pat Evison, a much-loved stalwart of New Zealand radio, television and theatre who died at the weekend, will long be remembered for her colourful contribution, colleagues say.

One of New Zealand's best known actresses, Dame Pat Evison, has died at the age of 85 after a long illness.

The razor gang behind a new stage production of Sweeney Todd talk to Dionne Christian about bringing the mythical murderer to musical life.

This debut work by local drama teacher Andy Saker shows an easy familiarity with the North Shore's casual backyard culture.

Opening with the eternal question - 'what do you do with a BA in English?' - Avenue Q dispenses a bright and breezy antidote to the pressures of life in the big city.

There are Baxter self-quotations and talk of cut-throats and fowlhouses for literary experts to spot, but you don't have to know a line of the great men's work to enjoy the play.

Dark takes his cue from mysterious electronic producers like Burial, whose identity was a closely guarded secret until he was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize.

The devised work is clearly actor-driven and the huge cast of 17 all get a chance to get their teeth into well-rounded characters.

John Leigh talks about acting as though it still isn't really his idea, as if he has no idea how he ended up being an actor and that it has, just this minute, occurred to him that he is one.