New Pages: Te Kaukoti / The Interceptors by Poata Alvie McKree

Part of Breaking Ground 2026

New Pages intentionally carves out space for the earliest phase of the creative process, inviting you into the room when characters and concepts are still fluid and shifting. It captures the essence of trusting the story before completely understanding it.

Te Haukoti / The Interceptors is the new work-in-development by award-winning writer Poata Alvie McKree (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Yurumein, Barbados), an interdisciplinary artist and arts therapist. 

Alvie writes for live performance, facilitates group art therapy, and leads women-only therapeutic art and movement workshops. Alvie penned Hine's monologue, He poroporoaki, for ONO, a selection of six monologues by Māori and Pasifika playwrights performed at Tahi Festival 2023, and Koanga Festival 2023. Her first full-length play, The Handlers, debuted at Te Pou Theatre in 2024, and a subsequent production at Kia Mau Festival in 2025 earned multiple awards, including New Playwright of the Year and New Aotearoa Play of the Year at the Wellington Theatre Awards 2025. 

Breaking Ground returns for another year of intensive Indigenous new writing. Our festival has created space for bold and brilliant new works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara since its inception in 2010. 

Artists are a vital part of our communities and the current landscape presents fewer and fewer opportunities for us to gather, to wānanga, and to create. The 2026 programme responds to the growing need to hold on to spaces where writers can thrive and where the iconic stories of tomorrow can be unearthed. 

Breaking Ground is produced by Te Whanganui-a-Tara based creative company, Tawata Productions, and made possible by our partners Wellington City Council and Creative New Zealand.

6pm Friday 20 November 2026

See Ticketing T&Cs.