Sugar High Productions
Fantail Creative’s division of projects that are conceptualised and created by Emma, often in collaboration with other, outstanding creatives. These are in-house productions such as tour-able cabarets, immersive shows, roving characters etc. These differ from artistes with their own acts that we would recommend for your event, or commissioned productions for a client .
Cabarets & Physical Theatre
Synonymous with unique Cabarets and physical theatre, Sugar High’s rollercoaster of wild acts has gained a significant following, with high-calibre shows that both challenge and entertain its audience.
Devour
A ‘revolution of circus, sex and rebellion’ Devour overthrows convention and intends to provoke emotions. An intoxicating blend of sub-culture skills including lap-dance, street tricking, strip-club pole, stunt fights, circus and sideshow. Devour seeks to subvert, to challenge, to thrill and to entertain. Loosely based on the myth and lore of werewolves and fables but with a contemporary spice, it’s absolutely authentic with a cast of diverse backgrounds and identities. With national and international seasons under its belt, Devour is always hungry for more!
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Splore Festival Cabarets
A highlight of the festival, Saturday night’s at Splore has been synonymous with its legendary Cabaret since 2006. An extravaganza of outrageous talent that explodes onto the ‘Naked Eye’ (aka Living Lounge) stage to a packed-out and costumed crowd. Different each year, the show can adapt to other venues / demographics / durations / budgets, or a new Cabaret can be designed to suit. Nudity, marshmallow canons and giant birthday cakes are recommended.
“The Cabaret was late on the Saturday night and was epic. A mixture of sexy and sensual performances, comical delights, and simply unbelievably talented people. The show made for 2 hours of fabulous performances that left everyone in the audience holding their breath at times, feeling hot under the collar or simply in awe.” Thatfestivalblogger.com
"Beyond all that, Splore welcomed an amazing Cabaret show, featuring sensual lap dancing, daring rope dancing, and even more radical glass-walking and chainsaw action.” RedRaven.news
“A particular performance that blew my mind and many others was the Blood and Milk Cabaret at the Living Lounge on the Saturday…This show-stopping cabaret was proof that Splore was serious about entertaining.” 13thfloor.co.nz 02/04/2021
Absolutely! Cabaret
2023’s ‘Absolutely Cabaret’ for Splore Festival was adapted and brought to New Plymouth’s Right Royal Cabaret Festival at the TSB Showplace, Theatre Royal in June 2023. It sold out, and was a critically acclaimed success.
“Excess. Pure, unadulterated, wonderful excess. That’s the overall feeling Absolutely! Cabaret leaves the audience with, after a wild, fun ride of a show featuring the very best of cabaret acts…Absolutely! Cabaret is cabaret at its best, and sets a high bar for the rest of the Right Royal Cabaret Festival.” NZ Herald 23/06/2023
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/stratford-press/news/review-taranaki-arts-festival-trusts-right-royal-cabaret-absolutely-cabaret-is-absolutely-fab/VUKAV24D2VAY5HPQQHB2QDLWGA/
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Heavenly Bodies
The Auckland Arts Festival brought an adapted version of ‘Heavenly Bodies’, Splore 2021’s cabaret, to play a season at Auckland’s prestigious Civic Theatre, to critical acclaim. This iconic, ornate theatre was a dream stage, where our visual feast of acts proved that Cabaret has a place in one of the most important venues in the country.
“Despite The Civic's size, it felt profoundly more intimate than the Spiegeltent ever has, the unhindered view and the vast stage allowing the whole audience to be drawn into this world. Heavenly Bodies was ..able to soar – and reached heights previous Arts Festival cabaret fixtures were never able to meet.
This cabaret-in-residence slot would normally be taken by an international act – but the many parts of Heavenly Bodies made a strong argument that future festivals should look locally in future.” NZ Herald’s Auckland Arts Festival Review 21/03/2021
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Truth & Lies
The Auckland Arts Festival’s Artistic Director, Shona McCullagh, commissioned and collaborated with Sugar High Productions to write and produce a new Cabaret for Auckland Arts Festival 2022. Due to Covid restrictions a month before its premiere night, the show was forced to cancel.
Immersive & Shows
We love immersive theatre! Sugar High adds quirky experiential elements to events, encouraging an audience to be within a performance rather than simply an observer. Inspired by the genre that has grown and evolved across Europe and the US, from the tiny ‘Miniscule of Sound’ to the enormous and complex productions by Punchdrunk, and Barcelona’s La Fura Dels Baus.
Sugar High is playing with productions of its own of varying scale, from the packed-out ‘Cirque du Solittle’ shows in our ‘Not-Very-Big-Top’, the comedic and ridiculous ‘Minema’ and ‘gypsy’ carnival-inspired ‘Ballyhoo’ in a Victorian bandstand for LUMA Festival, to a concept and script-in-development for a vast immersive experience show that may need a blockbuster movie sized budget to realise; enquires and investors welcomed!
The Minema
The World’s tiniest cinema! The Minema’s ‘Usherettes’ are diverse characters brought together in the belief that one day, David Lynch will grace their rickety cinema seats in their (unintentional) ‘shabby chic’ movie theatre. Deluded and over-excited, be drawn into their technicolour dreamworld where high ambition is tempered by lo-fi reality. The red carpet and a short film awaits within.
A 20 minute session that can run up to three times an hour, The Minema can set up and run either in its own ‘emperor’ bell tent or in various conventional or unconventional venues.
Cirque du Solittle
Born out of the frustrating advice by funding bodies to ‘downscale’ to stand a chance of touring support, the proud and uncompromising Cirque du Solittle has the solution! Squeeze a full-size circus into a tent (the Not-Very-Big-Top), that fits in the boot of a car! Unable to shrink the performers and their props, the show becomes a hilarious parody of a struggling but passionate show and what they must do to survive under the current government. This circus is serious about touring! An all-ages show of approx 30 mins, has it’s own venue (!) and a cast/crew of 3 plus guest acts. And a small lion called Brian.
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The Ruby Princess - an infectious tale
(In Development)
In March 2020, Crew and guests aboard the cruise ship drank, danced and made merry while Covid spread like a tsunami. The Captain, and authorities onshore, were in denial as the sickness spread; but the show must go on. Become a guest in a sort of ‘murder-in-the dark’ evening of intrigue, comedy and drama on the high seas. The performance will transform buildings such as multi-storey carparks or empty warehouses.
In Development
Performance: Site-specific
Sugar High is frequently inspired by compelling and often under-utilised locations. By writing a narrative relative to the location, and adding physical skills to bring this to life, Sugar High engages both cast and audience in performance that is surprising, thought-provoking and refreshing.
Live:Stream, Cross the Line,
Surface Tension
A bi-annual festival of the arts, Wānaka’s Festival of Colour provides opportunity for Sugar High Productions to create a site-specific performance that is free for the public. Working with Briony Martin of Centralpoint Dance Studios, Live:Stream, Cross the Line, and Surface Tension had casts of teenage dancers (and skateboarders in Cross the Line). Each choreography was inspired by the environment they were performed in; a river, the skate park and the marina pontoon. Engaging audiences with social commentary and impressive skills, both visitors and local community were brought together in these unusual locations.
festivalofcolour.co.nz
