Arrive curious.

We loved having the opportunity to chat with two of the playwrights connected to Proudly Asian Theatre’s Fresh Off the Page: Nadia Freeman and Matt Loveranes.

Nadia is an Indo-Fijian and Pākehā poet, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who has recently ventured into dialogue-driven comedy for the first time. 

Matt is a Filipino-New Zealand playwright, pop culture enthusiast and self-described aspiring “cartographer of human relationships”, drawn to stories that are off-kilter, murky and sometimes taboo.

Both are part of the wider story of Proudly Asian Theatre – a company creating space for Asian artists in Aotearoa to make ambitious, contemporary work on their own terms.

This winter, the worlds of gods and mortals will collide at The Hannah as Wellington Community Ballet Theatre turns Norse mythology into an epic work of contemporary dance and physical theatre.

Across a five-night season, Winter’s Saga will follow the legendary paths of Loki, Odin and Thor beneath the branches of Yggdrasil. Battles will rage, heroes will rise and fall, and stories passed down over centuries will be retold through movement, costume and theatrical design.

For Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant, making has rarely been a tentative process. An idea arrives and she follows it intensely: writing, composing, performing and gathering collaborators until the work exists.

“I’m not a procrastinator,” she says. “When I have an idea, I’m doing it already.”

Her residency at The Hannah, however, has found her in unfamiliar territory. Nikita is developing her first film into an immersive cinema-theatre experience — bringing together live music, dance, film and installation. Yet before she can expand the work across a theatre, she must confront something more intimate: her fear of allowing people to see it at all.

“This is like facing your fears, exponential,” she says.

As one of The Hannah’s 2026 resident artists, Nikita has been given time in the building throughout the year, followed by two weeks of intensive theatre development. There is no fixed outcome attached to the residency. For an artist accustomed to moving quickly and carrying much of the creative load herself, that freedom has required a new kind of courage: the willingness to slow down.