Friends of Te Papa are warmly invited to an intimate and thought‑provoking conversation with Dame Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie, two of Aotearoa’s most pioneering voices in verbatim theatre. Internationally renowned for their boundary‑pushing creative practice, Harcourt and McKenzie have spent decades transforming real conversations into powerful works for stage and screen. Their latest collaboration, After God, now premiering at Circa Theatre, continues this bold tradition, and we are delighted to offer members a rare opportunity to hear directly from the creators as they discuss the ideas, journeys and encounters that shaped this remarkable new production.
Harcourt and McKenzie will take us behind the scenes of After God: how interviews become performance, how lived experience becomes theatrical structure, and how verbatim practice can illuminate the deepest questions we ask of ourselves and the world. For lovers of theatre, storytelling and creative inquiry, this is a rare chance to step inside the engine room of a major new work and hear directly from two artists who continue to reshape the landscape of New Zealand theatre.
Following the talk, attendees are warmly encouraged to head straight to Circa Theatre should they wish to experience the full production. As a special treat, simply show your Friends of Te Papa booking confirmation at Circa to enjoy a complimentary drink of your choice* before the performance, a perfect way to continue the conversation.
*Standard house wine, beer or soft drink only, 1x per person, must be of 18 years or older.
Friends of Circa are welcome to purchase a Friends member ticket below.
Please note: tickets to the After God performance must be booked separately through Circa Theatre.
After God showing at Circa:
Sat 17 Oct – Sat 14 Nov
Tues–Sat 7pm, Sunday 4pm
Duration: 110 minutes, including a 15-minute interval
Please visit the Circa website for more information: After God – Circa Theatre
Dame Miranda Harcourt is an internationally renowned acting coach, and a pioneering practitioner of verbatim and biographical theatre. Harcourt was at the forefront of touring theatre in Aotearoa during the 1980s and 90s with productions including ORACLES AND MIRACLES and KAZ: A WORKING GIRL. She also became a national figure playing Gemma in the wildly popular television series GLOSS. Her landmark solo work VERBATIM, written with William Brandt, created from interviews with violent offenders and performed in prisons, schools and theatres throughout New Zealand and internationally, helped establish a radical new form of documentary performance in Aotearoa. With her husband and longtime collaborator Stuart McKenzie, she went on to create PORTRAITS, FLOWERS FROM MY MOTHER’S GARDEN, BIOGRAPHY OF MY SKIN, TRANSMISSION and TRANSMISSION: BETA.
A graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, Harcourt later returned as Head of Acting, a position she held for seven years. Her tenure was celebrated for forging strong pathways between the school and the wider industry, helping launch a new generation of actors. As one of the world’s most sought-after screen acting coaches, she has helped shape Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA-nominated and winning performances across an extraordinary range of international productions, including LION, BIG LITTLE LIES and BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA.
Harcourt co-directed the internationally released feature film THE CHANGEOVER with McKenzie. She was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to theatre and the community. Her work is distinguished by a deep curiosity about human behaviour and an instinct for finding the intimate truth within large and difficult subjects. She co-directs AFTER GOD, bringing her fierce theatrical intelligence, and her perspective as a self-described born-and-bred atheist, to its funny, searching exploration of belief, doubt and our need to make meaning.
Stuart McKenzie is a playwright, filmmaker and pioneering practitioner of verbatim and biographical theatre. His career began with the experimental Ōtautahi Christchurch theatre group The Free Theatre, where he wrote and performed in a series of ground-breaking works, including THE RAPIST OVER SUZANNAH, THE JOFFONGRACT and THE MORTAL PLEASURE OF WANDA LUST. In Pōneke Wellington, his early plays TRUE and DOUBLE BEAT were received with excitement and acclaim. For more than three decades, he and his wife and collaborator, Miranda Harcourt, have transformed real lives and voices into exhilarating theatrical works. Their landmark productions PORTRAITS, FLOWERS FROM MY MOTHER’S GARDEN and BIOGRAPHY OF MY SKIN helped establish verbatim and autobiographical performance as major strands of theatre practice in Aotearoa. More recently, TRANSMISSION and TRANSMISSION:BETA turned the upheavals of the Covid era into urgent, acclaimed contemporary history.
McKenzie’s screen work includes the feature films FOR GOOD, which premiered in competition at the Montreal World Film Festival, and THE CHANGEOVER, co-directed with Harcourt and released internationally by Lionsgate and Vertical Entertainment. His award-winning short films include THE MOUTH AND THE TRUTH, made with Neil Pardington, and VOICEOVER, made with Miranda Harcourt; both won Best Short Film at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards. He was the 2000 Bruce Mason Sunday Star-Times Playwriting Fellow.
The son of an Anglican minister, McKenzie studied Comparative Religion with theologian Lloyd Geering at Victoria University of Wellington, and later with Don Cupitt at the University of Cambridge. That lifelong fascination with belief, doubt and the human hunger for meaning lies at the heart of his new verbatim play AFTER GOD, a funny, searching journey through conversations with theologians, philosophers, cosmologists, Tibetan rinpoches, taxi drivers, a famous singing nun and his own mother.
Images supplied and reproduced with permission from Circa Theatre.