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The NZ Festival has begun and I have collected my big bundle of tickets. Because I’m also a Fringe Festival fan, they’ve left me without a single night free until mid-March. Don’t think I mind!

Being a freelance writer and arts enthusiast, I’ve never seen my calendar like this before. Participating in the creative sector often precludes too much ticket purchasing, and last time I barely cast my eye over Festival programme for fear of getting too acquainted with what I could not go and see. The opportunity to witness so many spectacular events in one month is a huge treat for a young arts enthusiast.

Despite this, I have some pretty solid expectations. The Fringe Festival began on February 7 and though its events are made with the smell of oily rags, some amateur inventiveness and koha, it is partly responsible the high expectations I have for my month of theatre. Though there will of course be some marked differences. I do not expect Lemi Ponifasio to end Stones in Her Mouth as the writer/lead actor of All a Man Wants is His Wage earnestly concluded his show. With a bright-eyed appeal to the People’s Cinema audience: “So, what did you think, guys? Any feedback is really helpful.”

Nor do I anticipate what followed, an impassioned though muddled debate about sexism in theatre. Although I do hope that the NZ Festival will be equally geared toward critically reflecting the world around it, particularly the changes that have taken place since the last Festival in 2012. I am expecting most social commentary will come from the Pacific directors and Writers’ Week, with that from visual artists’ playfully encased in those inevitable discursive layers.

I am also expecting sincere and inventive stagecraft combined with exquisite writing full of subtle comedy and mesmerizing insight, seamless directing with generous regard for the audience, production that experiments with light and sound as well as space and scale, and natural characters performing through fluid physicality and voice. If I sound high maintenance, blame thespians Rosie Tapsell and Andrew Gunn. They delivered all this at St Michael’s church in Kelburn shops during their show God-Belly, with a $650 Kakano grant, two actors, some lamps, squabs and a plateful of crumpets.

The 2.5 hour long show told two distinct and wonderfully interwoven stories exploring the body and collective psychology. The church hall venue was a tight fourteenth century confessional, an Abbey bedroom in which a nun lay curled under her nightlight and a pumping crossfit gymnasium run round by a hyperactive instructor. It was a living room in which two shy teenagers listened to music squat on the floor, and it was a dark street lit with a solitary cellphone after it had just been a risque nightclub.

Though the prospect of 2.5 hours on a stackable wooden school chair had caused me some preemptive discomfort, time disappeared as God-Belly contracted and expanded from Saint Catherine whispering frightened prayers facing the wall next to my ear, to a bright lit aerobics class and a half-naked rave. I found myself thinking afterward about all the money and formally trained veteran talent the NZ Festival is packed with. Will it still approach subject, script, acting, production and audience with the sincerity of a committed and budgetless beginner? Will it live up to the standard of wholehearted, reflective, brave and generous theatre the Fringe Fest has set for me? I can’t wait to find out!