Reimagining the rave with Untitled Warehouse Project
When Untitled Warehouse Project (UWP) take over The Hannah with their new work OMNIA, it won’t look or sound like your average night at the theatre. The Wellington-based collective are flipping expectations — drawing rave culture into the architecture of our brutalist theatre, and in the process challenging how we value creativity in a world that prizes business models over artistic risk. As we understand it, this will be the first rave ever to happen at The Hannah!
UWP — created and made official by Matt Asunder, Rebekah de Roo, Anne-Lisa Noordover and Jacob Banks — began from a shared worldview about new thinking and possibilities in theatre-making.
“We really just wanted to work on a project that was designers first and design-led, and something that gave us the ability to kind of explore the ideas that we had kept in our back pocket and never really got to explore,” Jacob says.
That decision turned the process on its head. Instead of starting with a script, the group began with visual and spatial worlds. “The project came about out of wanting to create more work that was more design-led, so like having a devising process where the design comes first and then the performance elements and all of that. And the stories sort of come from the design,” Rebekah explains.
Their debut Entry: Encounter leaned heavily into movement and theatre. OMNIA inverts the formula.
“With the last show being… like 80% dance and 20% rave, we wanted to turn it on its head and make this show 80% rave and 20% dance. And a way for us to capture that 20% is by staging it in the theatre,” Jacob says.
For UWP, it’s not about novelty, but about blending two worlds they inhabit: underground electronic music and contemporary theatre. “It’s not your typical rave and it’s not what people would expect it to be,” adds Matt.
Ten DJs will feature across two nights, a lineup curated from UWP’s connections in the Wellington electronic music community.
“Having DJs or getting artists from other places, it’s kind of like quite a big budget ask. There’s already plenty of promoters bringing international acts,” Matt explains. “If we slap some international act on the top of that bill, automatically the focus is on that act, as opposed to what we’re doing differently. So I think it makes sense to draw from local talent.”
The result is a lineup that is both ambitious and fiercely local, keeping the spotlight on the design-led process while investing in Wellington’s creative ecosystem.
And what better place to enhance the notion of ‘things done differently’, than by utilising every inch of The Hannah, and pushing it even further.
“I love Brutalism, and it’s one of the most Brutalist-looking buildings in Wellington. Just the general aesthetic of the architecture is very fascinating. Love a good concrete structure,” says Matt. “The goal is to make it feel like a different space the moment you walk through the door.”
Audiences can expect light, sound, projections, and hidden spaces reshaping the venue into an immersive, shifting landscape.
OMNIA is fueled by determination, passion and creative energy, which is not an uncommon story in this industry.
“We made… maybe $60 up for the last show. And that was only able with the support of Creative New Zealand,” Jacob admits.
With OMNIA, the company is operating without funding support — hoping that if the season sells out, it will provide a buffer for future projects. The question of sustainability hangs in the air: can design-led, cross-collaborative work survive in a sector where one-off raves don’t fit traditional funding models?
For now, the artists point to other rewards. “It is an opportunity to access either equipment or software or an excuse to put that time into learning something and upskilling yourself,” says Matt. “It will grow our reputation as well… being able to pull these kinds of things off looks good on the CV, so to speak.”
More than anything, OMNIA is about breaking down walls between communities.
“I hope it brings more music people into being more accepting of a theatre space as well,” Rebekah says. “I feel like getting theatre people to go to a rave is an easier task than the other way around. But it feels nice to be able to broaden ourselves out a little bit more and make new connections.”
UWP is proving that theatre can be a rave, that raves can belong in theatres, and that new, imaginative, innovative art emerges when disciplines collide.
This is an experiment in reimagining what performance can be — and in testing whether passion, risk, and collaboration are enough to sustain it.
OMNIA runs for two nights only at The Hannah. Get tickets here.