Barney McDonald meets a rock star of the world of illusion.

Good fortune, rather than good management, has seen Shavaughn Ruakere snare top TV roles. Now, on the eve of her theatre debut, she talks to Alan Perrott about image, her new health kick, and rubbing shoulderswith Dame Judi Dench.

The ebullient Lavina Williams - one-third of the singing trio Ma-V-Elle, former Australian Idol contestant and musical theatre star - embarks on another entertaining tale.

Many will remember Russell Dixon as TV3’s affable, clean-cut weather presenter from the mid-2000s who dabbled in theatre.

After her parents acrimoniously divorced, scriptwriter Jess Sayer thought there were two ways of coping.

With a cast of 25, a live band, dancers and video projections, The Tautai of Digital Winds presents a truly epic piece of community-based theatre.

MAMIL , which stands for Middle-Aged Man In Lycra, may appeal to the older SUCC - Stand-Up Comedy Crowd.

Walking into the enormous yellow and blue striped support tents that surround the grand Cirque du Soleil big top, is like entering a little parallel universe where everyone can fly, leap, spin, and somersault like the world's most impressive animals.

Much-loved New Zealand actress Robyn Malcolm (Agent Anna, Outrageous Fortune) will take on dual male and female roles in Auckland Theatre Company's production of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Soul of Szechuan. Playing at Auckland's Q Theatre from July 24 to August 17, Malcolm will demonstrate why she is one of the best in the business as she channels both good and evil, man and woman, in the carnival-esque masterpiece by one of theatre's most respected and influential playwrights.

Titus Andronicus, the “grotesquely violent” Shakespearean tale of revenge, has 14 deaths, many violently bloody, as well as rape and mutilation.

Whatever it is they're doing behind the closed doors of the Auckland Theatre Company's rehearsal room, it sounds like fun.

Chris Molloy's atmospheric new drama, produced by Taki Rua, is ostensibly a period piece via reminiscence.

The talented cast of 14 throw themselves into the enterprise with plenty of verve and emotional honesty and there is a wildly anarchic quality to the storyline.

Real faults provide the drama in ‘Sin’.

Okareka Dance Company has hit the jackpot with this exploration of the strength, the spirit, the wiles and the primal beauty of women, specifically Maori women.

In a little mountain town otherwise famous for carrots, time has run out for a piece of Kiwi cinema history.

Hop across the ditch and catch some world-class theatre.

What an interesting face actor Mark Hadlow has. It is as though somebody had made a cartoon character by animating one of those giant balls made from rubber bands.

Playwright Elizabeth Easther won the 2014 Adam Play Award with this sophisticated, witty and very contemporary meditation on the timeless processes of procreation.

In this superb Auckland Theatre Company production of the Gallipoli play, twelve angry men fill the stage with presence and charisma, increasing the under-fire excitement of a battlefield tragedy.