“Hey. Why are there so many scenes about love? I thought this was a mental health play?”
“There is more to mental illness than diets and cat memes.”
A hilarious, heartfelt, subversive contemporary interactive theatre work that collides wellness culture, memes, the three-act structure, and a race against the clock.
Manatees is a new play by Dan Goodwin, performed by Auckland Theatre Company’s inaugural Youth Company, asking how to look after other people in a world of bite-sized connections & hashtag wellness advice? An amalgamation of short scenes; Manatees offers intimate, hilarious snapshots of relationships & conversations that add up to an epic, beautiful collage of modern life.
Manatees captures the feeling of living in 2022, of scrolling through social media feeds & finding comfort in memes, while hunting out vital moments of human connection. In the play, scenes flow into each other, only lasting long enough to glimpse an essence of a world or a relationship.
A play that asks us to come together to share when we feel alone
This year Auckland Theatre Company established its inaugural Youth Company, an in-house ensemble of young theatre artists keen to learn about theatre in a way that is exciting and challenging. It is a part-time, year-long course offered free to participants, and builds on the wonderful history of youth arts at ATC. Our aim is to let young people learn in a working theatre, feel comfortable in this space, and to train in an environment that acknowledges that being an artist takes enormous strength and resilience.
Auditions for the 2023 Youth Associates and Youth Company are in January 2023. Find out more at atc.co.nz
Entry by koha, with all profits going to Changing Minds. Changing Minds are a national not-for-profit organisation, proudly led and operated entirely by people who have navigated their own lived experience journey through mental health and addiction. Dan Goodwin, writer of Manatees, has been a facilitator of Changing Minds’ Rākau Roroa programme.
