Free Theatre has launched a new annual event called Te Puna Toi, which fosters contemporary interdisciplinary performance, combining performance with symposia, workshops and publications. Te Puna Toi works between the local and the international, and between the avant-garde and the traditional in theatre, performance and film. Te Puna Toi provides an ongoing legacy event that explores identity in a city examining itself like never before.

Te Puna Toi 2015 follows up the interest generated by Te Matatini and the opportunity for Christchurch to explore its indigenous identity. Central to this years event is the unique bi-cultural opera Footrpints/Tapuwae, which juxtaposes motifs from Wagner’s Ring Cycle with waita and haka and opens on June 2nd for a two-week season in The Gym in The Arts Centre. Free Theatre Christchurch are collaborating on the opera with performers from Te Pao a Tahu and Te Ahik?mau a Hamo Te Rangi, the Ng?i Tahu kapa haka groups who recently represented the Waitaha (greater Canterbury) region at Te Matatini. Footprints/Tapuwae is a reimagining and restaging of the opera that was first presented in 2001 in collaboration with Taiporouta Huata. The Press described this 2001 performance as “immensely satisfying… the sheer nerve of the idea really impressed” and The Christchurch Star declared it “powerful and edgy, this creation gets you where you feel it”. 

Te Puna Toi has programmed a series of public workshops and a symposium during the performance season of Footprints/Tapuwae, which explore the discoveries made bringing together Maori and Western forms of performance. Te Puna Toi is supported by Christchurch City Council Events funding and sponsorship from Hamptons ITM.

For more information on the Te Puna Toi event and to book a place in a workshop and tickets to 'Footprints/Tapuwae' go to the Free Theatre website: http://www.freetheatre.org.nz/te-puna-toi.html