Presenting partners

The Downstage Presenting Partners are individual artists, creative collaborators, companies and professional theatre-makers who are imaginatively engaged in expressing themselves through live performance.

New Zealand is home to a vibrant arts community and our aim is to present within our limited resources the most bold and theatrically innovative work we can find.  

Through our submission process, we showcase new productions, present touring productions that are already financially sustainable, and occasionally invite artists and companies to revisit or their work, providing a context and support for development or a restaging in keeping with our commitment to professional contemporary arts practice in New Zealand.

To ensure the highest standard of professional practice, our partners must have secured funding or received previous investment for their projects. We actively invite submissions from established or senior artists returning to the profession after a long absence or those individuals seeking to think outside the square in terms of their current practice, or looking at ways to develop their particular art form in new directions.  We do not support arrangements where artists work for nothing or for a box office split only.

Benefits include:

  • being a part of a high profile curated program of quality works
  • employment and access to professional development opportunities and mentoring
  • the work develops during the process of being at Downstage - existing work gets a chance to be redeveloped
  • new work has opportunity to develop over the rehearsal and performance season
  • association with the Downstage brand as a long-established, well-regarded and high profile arts institution
  • access to Downstage business networks, connections, and contra arrangements
  • access to the core Downstage audience and to building their audience following
  • increasing new audiences who are inspired by the Downstage vision
  • developing an enduring appreciation of theatre in Wellingtononers who work and live here.

    See also:
  • Downstage Submission Process
  • Resident Companies