This year's Dunedin arts diary is filling up with a kaleidoscope of concerts, plays, exhibitions and other events. Charmian Smith reveals some of the delights in store for arts lovers.
The arts year starts on February 7 with the Fortune Theatre's production of Outside Mullingar, a romantic comedy set in Ireland by John Patrick Shanley.
It has all the good things, such as humour, love and poetry, according to artistic director Lara Macgregor who will appear in it instead of in her usual role of director.
To commemorate the centenary of Gallipoli, the theatre has commissioned The War Play by Philip Braithwaite, which searches for answers about his great-uncle Jack Braithwaite, of Dunedin.
Bookings have already been received even though the play is still being workshopped, Macgregor says.
The season also includes Mark Hadlow's comic one-man show Mamil (Middle-aged man in lycra), the hilarious farce The Hound of the Baskervilles, which will also tour Otago and Southland, Flagons & Foxtrots, a nostalgic comedy set in the local hall on a Saturday night in 1960s Dunedin, and the thought-provoking Time Stands Still by American Donald Margulies.
A play Macgregor has been wanting to schedule for some time, Time Stands Still is about a journalist and photojournalist returning home from working in the Middle East, coming to terms with conventional life after such challenging circumstances, and facing the question of how you can stand in front of a dying person and take their photograph and not do anything, she says.
Another production she is looking forward to is Punk Rock by Simon Stephens.
In the theatre's challenging ''true grit'' series, it is a contemporary, edgy piece, she says.
''The language is quite coarse but it's more to do with the contemporary nature of the violent undertones that are in the play. It's going to push the viewer a little harder as 'true grit' should.''
The production is a collaboration with the theatre studies department at the University of Otago.
Alongside four professional actors, five student actors and other theatre students will intern in the theatre's departments, Macgregor said.
fortunetheatre.co.nz
Early music
The New Zealand International Early Music Festival now in its second year, runs from February 27 to March 8.
From madrigals and a brass band to early organ music and recitals with various combinations of early instruments and singers, there are 15 concerts and events scheduled, with performers coming from Sydney, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
One of the highlights will be the Rare Byrds early music consort's concert of French and Italian early music followed by an original masque based on the life of Catherine de Medici, the Florentine princess who became Queen Regent of France, and one of the most formidable political figures in late Renaissance Europe.
The Rare Byrds will be joined by European dance group Les Belles Vilaines in colourful costumes.
Another highlight will be Sydney group Marais Project, directed by Jennifer Eriksson.
It includes two violas da gamba played by Eriksson and Catherine Upex, Tommie Andersson on renaissance lute, theorbo, and original 1820s guitar, and soprano Belinda Montgomery.
In conjunction with the early music festival, there will be an exhibition of manuscripts and scores from the Renaissance period in the Dunedin Public Library, and the Globe Theatre will be rediscovering the beautiful and the bawdy in Shakespeare in the Athenaeum.
nziemf.weebly.com
Treading the boards
The historic Globe Theatre buildings are being restored so the company will be staging its plays in other venues for the first part of the year.
The 2015 season opens on February 28 with Verdict by Agatha Christie in the Playhouse.
This murder mystery is one of the few works Christie wrote for the stage, rather than being a novel adapted by other playwrights.
Verdict will be a joint Globe/Playhouse production.
It is proposed to follow this with two New Zealand works, Roger Hall's Taking Off, a four-hander, which follows the fortunes of four Kiwi women who are given a new lease on life as they head off to the other side of the world, and An Unseasonal Fall of Snow, an intriguing and powerful drama by Gary Henderson. Both these productions will be staged at the Athenaeum Theatre in the Octagon.
It is hoped that August will see the return home to the theatre in ''a muse of fire'' to celebrate.
Plans are already afoot to present William Shakespeare's great history play Henry V to welcome theatregoers back to London St's ''wooden O''.
globetheatre.org.nz
'The Magic Flute'
In the middle of the year, Opera Otago presents Mozart's The Magic Flute with a new twist.
The story of the corrupt Queen of the Night, her beautiful daughter Pamino, the valiant Tamino, the comic Papageno and the honourable Sarastro has been renovated by Mozart expert John Drummond and set in today's world, although the music remains more or less untouched.
As is Opera Otago's policy, many of the roles will be taken by emerging young singers, although international opera singer James Adam will sing Tamino.
-The Magic Flute opens at the Mayfair Theatre on June 13.
operaotago.co.nz
Sinfonia in full blast
The Southern Sinfonia's programme will be released early in February but there are several treats in store, including Benjamin Britten's Sea Symphony complemented by more than 100 voices from City Choir Dunedin and the Auckland Choral Society (the two choirs recently sang this work in Auckland).
Another highlight will be the return of the internationally-acclaimed pianist Nikolai Demidenko, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, described as one of Beethoven's most lyrical works.
Conductors next year include two from the UK, Simon Over from London and Jessica Cottis from Glasgow, as well as Adelaide-based Nicholas Braithwaite, who is well known to Dunedin audiences.
Jessica Cottis will conduct the orchestra when it tours to Wanaka in late April to take part in the Festival of Colour for the first time.
Appropriately for a Festival of Colour, it will be performing a composition by Anthony Ritchie about the life and works of the painter Frances Hodgkins which débuted in Dunedin 2009.
Interspersed between the musical sections are sections of a dramatic monologue which was written by a former Robert Burns Fellow Catherine Chidgey and which will be delivered by Rima te Wiata.
The year starts in mid-February with a recording in conjunction with Dudley Benson.
This Dunedin-based composer, producer and performer was recently awarded an Arts Foundation New Generation Award, which will be put towards the recording with the orchestra, this being the third in his three-album collection.
On February 28, the orchestra and opera singer Anna Leese will join Dunedin Sound musicians Graeme Downes, Martin Phillipps, Shayne Carter and David Kilgour, who will sing more than 20 songs that helped to put the Dunedin Sound genre on the world's musical stage.
The songs have been arranged for the orchestra by Graeme Downes.
Joining them will be local and up-and-coming vocalists from the University of Otago's Department of Music, Kylie Price, Mollie Devine, and Metitilani Alo.
southernsinfonia.org
Choral concerts
As well as performing Sea Symphony with the Southern Sinfonia, City Choir Dunedin will sing Mozart's sublime Requiem and Schubert's tragic but optimistic Stabat Mater in Knox Church on March 28.
In December, the choir returns with that old Christmas favourite, Handel's Messiah, with a cast of international soloists and the Southern Sinfonia, conducted by David Burchell.
citychoirdunedin.org.nz
Art on the walls
Besides a variety of solo exhibitions of work by local artists including Jeffrey Harris, Nicola Jackson and Mary McFarlane, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery will feature an exhibition in April curated by former gallery director Priscilla Pitts exploring textiles and dress in the work of Frances Hodgkins.
However, the biggest exhibition, ''Private Utopia: Contemporary Art from the British Council Collection'', opens in March.
Works have been selected by curators of Japanese exhibitions from works by 30 artists who have come to prominence in the past two decades, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Peter Doig, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas and Cornelia Parker, Haroon Mirza, Martin Boyce and Roger Hiorns.
The array of themes, ideas and materials is striking, with crossovers into music, literature, social history and anthropology being common threads running through the exhibition, reflecting the multifarious nature of contemporary art in the UK today and the broadening definition of what art can be.
dunedin.art.museum
Dunedin Fringe Festival
The 14th Dunedin Fringe Festival runs from March 12 to 22 with more than 40 performances and exhibitions held across the city in theatres, parks, alleyways and galleries.
The programme will be launched on February 13.
It starts with the Polson Higgs Opening Night Showcase at the Regent Theatre on March 11.
This extravaganza offers sneak previews from the festival programme as well as plenty of surprises.
Legendary experimental music festival Lines of Flight has four events spread over three days.
Footnote Dance will premiere its new work Bbeals co-produced with French company Danses en L'Rue.
Award-winning Wellington theatre company Trick of the Light returns with Beards! Beards! Beards!, the story of a girl who aims to grow the world's most magnificent beard.
Shows about poetry, beards, cave people and aerobics ensure there's no shortage of diverse entertainment possibilities at Dunedin Fringe 2015, and can be found on its new website dunedinfringe.org.nz
A multidisciplinary, site-specific dance/circus event on the theme of constant change, Metamorphosis, will be performed in Athenaeum Underground from March 19-21.
It is a collaborative production featuring the Firebugs, local musicians Hot Dog Hot Rod, the OUSA Fire and Circus Club, Brophy's Aerialists and the Lizzie Hewitt Dance Company.
Based on episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, it also draws on a wide range of symbolic content, and will immerse the audience in a stream-of-consciousness performance using dance, original live music, fire performance and masks.
The full Fringe programme will be released and ticket sales will open on Friday February 13. www.dunedinfringe.org.nz
NZSO in town
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has four concerts in Dunedin this year, with works by Beethoven and Finnish composer Sibelius each featuring in two concerts.
On March 11, virtuoso pianist Freddy Kempf conducts and plays Beethoven's piano concertos Nos3 and 5 and his Egmont overture.
Beethoven features again on June 16, this time his violin concerto with violinist Hilary Hahn, along with Sibelius' Lemminkainen Suite conducted by Pietari Inkinen, a Finn and music director of the NZSO.
This year marks Sibelius' 150 birthday and his work also features in a concert on September 2 with Latvian soloist Baiba Skride.
It includes the original version of Bruckner's Symphony No8, conducted by Bruckner specialist Australian Simone Young.
NZSO's final Dunedin concert for the year on November 24 features early 20th century works conducted by Jaimie Marti, Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending; Walton's cello concerto; and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
Soloists are Swedish cellist Jakob Koranyi and the NZSO's concertmaster, Finnish violinist Vesa-Matti Leppanen.
nzso.co.nz
Royal New Zealand Ballet
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is bringing two of its three shows to Dunedin this year.
On March 21, at the Regent Theatre, it presents Don Quixote, the story of the deluded Don who dreams of knightly adventures and of lovers Kitri and Basilio.
Salute, a special programme of works marking the centenary of World War 1 and a tribute to the soldiers who fought in it, will be performed with the New Zealand Army Band on June 3.
Alongside classic pieces, the New Zealand premiere of Salute by Danish choreographer and dancer Johan Kobborg and Czech composer and choreographer Jiri Kylian's Soldiers' Mass, there are two newly commissioned works by New Zealanders.
Neil Ieremia, founder of Black Grace, was inspired by Warrant Officer Dwayne Bloomfield's tone poem Passchendaele, premiered by the New Zealand Army Band in 2009.
Andrew Simmons is working with composer Gareth Farr on another work for the programme, his fourth commission for the RNZB.
However, Dunedin will not see the company's third programme, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
''It all came down to venue availability throughout the tour, which meant we would have had to have toured back to the South Island to make Dunedin work with the schedule and we just can't afford to travel twice to the South Island. Touring and venue costs simply make this impossible and unfortunately that meant Dunedin missed out,'' said Andrea Tandy, media and communications manager.
In October and November, the company returns to Europe on an international tour.
rnzb.org.nz
Chamber music
Chamber Music New Zealand's 2015 season of six concerts is bookended by two international ensembles, the Brodsky Quartet, from the United Kingdom on March 30, and the Vienna Piano Trio on October 11.
During New Zealand music month in May, several New Zealand ensembles will be touring different parts of the country with programmes curated by different composers.
On May 21, Dunedin gets the New Zealand String Quartet with works by Bach, Mozart, Shostakovich and Ross Harris, who has selected the programme.
This year is the 50th jubilee of the New Zealand Community Trust Chamber Music Contest, the longest-running youth music competition in New Zealand, and in June an ensemble of previous winners, many of them now well-established musicians, will tour with a programme that includes works by Douglas Lilburn, whose centenary is being celebrated this year.
Another ensemble of contest winners with burgeoning careers performs solos, duos and Schubert's Piano Trio No 1. CLiK, consisting of John Chen, piano, Edward King, cello, and Natalie Lin, violin, will be in Dunedin on August 29.
On September 16, acclaimed pianist Michael Houstoun performs works by Bach, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Liszt, Ross Harris and Lilburn.
chambermusic.co.nz
