The political satire, written by award-winning Wellington-based playwright Dave Armstrong, pokes fun at the different cultures and tensions that exist between the North and South Islands.
The brand new play is set in an alternate reality which assumes that the French colonised the South Island in 1839 and are at odds with their "North Zealand" island neighbours.
South Zealand, or "Le Sud" became an independent French-speaking nation and grew into a prosperous socialist country, where people work 30 hours a week, enjoy long wine-fuelled lunches, and are blessed with abundant natural resources.
The English-speaking citizens of North Zealand are far less happy.
The North Island inhabitants work long hours for little reward, their free-market experiment ended in a disaster, and race relations are at rock bottom.
The country is starved of electricity and is mired in a permanent recession.
The North Zealanders send a delegation, led by their prime minister, Jim Petersen, to the South Zealand capital of Wanaka au Lac, to try to persuade their neighbours to provide them with cheap electricity.
Le Sud director Conrad Newport said the world premiere of the play was full of local jokes and "sticks the boot into everyone you can think of".
Le Sud is the third Armstrong-written play to appear at the Festival of Colour.
Niu Sila, a Chapman Tripp outstanding play of the year for 2004, was a highlight of the inaugural event in 2005.
He followed up with the The Tutor, a play specially-commissioned for the second Festival of Colour in 2007.
Armstrong said the extent to which his previous works had been embraced by festival audiences has enabled him to develop a "cool" relationship.
"They know my work and I know them. I'm not a mystery to them and hopefully [Le Sud] delivers more of the same.
"They probably didn't expect anything set in Wanaka, though," he added.
While the satire played to South Islanders' parochial nature, the overarching message was one of a plea for tolerance.
"It's about geographical, racial, political, and cultural tolerance.
We all need to respect where people come from and who they are," he said.
His satire questions whether the French would have been any better, or worse, as colonisers, and also contains messages about Maori sovereignty and how different cultures need to communicate with each other to establish the way forward.
Le Sud plays in Wanaka tonight, twice, and an extra show has been scheduled for Monday in Wanaka to satisfy ticket demand, which festival directors said far exceeded expectation.
