Red Phone in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Are you going to pick up? It’s for you!

The acclaimed, internationally touring Red Phone project visits Aotearoa. 

Conceived by Sherry Yoon and designed by Jay Dodge, with technology by Carey Dodge, Red Phone is a conversation that you will not soon forget. Part theatre and part social intervention, Red Phone is an audience-to-audience performance that takes place between two hand-crafted, fully enclosed phone booths outfitted with a vintage red phone and an integrated teleprompter.

Red Phone is in Wellington February 25 – March 1, and Auckland from March 4 – 7.

A massive thank you to the Performing Arts Network New Zealand, Auckland Live, Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of Arts, and The Performance Arcade for having us!

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, we will be featuring scripts by Sherry J Yoon and Jay Dodge, Keith Barker, Hiro Kanagawa, and New Zealand-Samoan writer Victor Rodger.

The Heisenberg Principle cowritten by Sherry J Yoon

Sherry J Yoon, is currently the Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo in Vancouver BC.  As theatre director her passion for creating new performance through collaborative pursuits has enable her to create work in theatres, intimate performance installations and large spectacle site specific work.  Through co creation, collaboration, partnerships and commissions she has premiered and toured festivals and venues across Canada, Europe and Latin America.  During Sherry’s tenure the company has received numerous awards including the Alcan Performing Arts Award, Jessie Richardson awards, and the Critics Choice Award for Innovation.  She is currently working on an interactive installation about climate change and our relationship to the guilt and isolation that people carry, involving the audience charging a battery on a stationary bicycle.  Sherry also participates in multiple local and national arts advisories, and has launched the 3.7% – and advocacy group to support emerging and established BIPOC women and non binary artists in leadership, and most recently Stop Asian Hate an initiative that has galvanized Asian Canadian Leadership in the performing arts across Canada. She is also a freelance director and has recently been honored as a finalist for the prestigious Siminovitch Award for directing.

The Heisenberg Principle cowritten by Jay Dodge

An inventor, creator and entrepreneur, Jay’s imagination for the what, how and why of theatre defies conventional boundaries . During his tenure, the company has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards including seven nominations for the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation and the Patrick O’Neill Award for best anthology with Plays2Perform@Home. Jay is a passionate set and video designer with Jessie Richardson Awards in both of those categories as well as a published playwright including a contribution to Boca del Lupo’s Red Phone project. His artistry is one of innovation and daring and his one man show, PHOTOG. featured interactive video, stunt rigging and verbatim text, touring to World Stage, Prismatic, Festival Trans Amerique and PuSh. Having served as President on the national board of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Jay also has special interest in creative space making including as co-founder of celebrated colocation space PL1422, co-founder of the Granville Island Theatre District. Happiest when he is tinkering in his studio with collaborators from a diverse range of disciplines and backgrounds, the impact of Jay’s influence is quiet yet profound.

Siblings by Victor Rodger

Victor Rodger is an award-winning New Zealand-Samoan writer and producer whose work explores themes of race, racism, sexuality and identity. His most successful play to date, Black Faggot, has been performed throughout New Zealand as well as Australia, Edinburgh and Hawai’i. Other plays include Sons, My Name is Gary Cooper and Uma Lava.

Through his theatre entity, FCC (FLOW, CREATE, CONNECT), he has produced critically acclaimed productions of Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (including a season Off Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse) and The Savage Coloniser Show.

Victor is also an experienced writer for television, and his short fiction has been published in multiple anthologies.

In 2021 Victor was made an Officer of the Order of New Zealand for services to theatre and Pacific Arts and in 2024 he became an Arts Laureate.

Goodbye, My Love by Keith Barker

Keith Barker is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. He is a playwright, actor, and director from Northwestern Ontario. Keith is the Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program at the Stratford Festival, and the former Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. He is the winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Playwrights Guild’s Carol Bolt Award for best new play. Keith was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English Drama in 2018 for his play, This Is How We Got Here. He received a Saskatchewan and Area Theatre Award for Excellence in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change.

Out of the Blue by Hiro Kanagawa

Hiro Kanagawa is a Vancouver-based actor and writer perhaps best-known for his 200-plus film and television roles ranging from Best in Show and art house shorts to hit shows like Smallville, Altered Carbon and Star Trek: Discovery. Behind the camera he was story editor on several critically-acclaimed Canadian television series: Da Vinci’s Inquest, Da Vinci’s City Hall, Intelligence and Blackstone. As a playwright, he received the 2017 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama for his play, Indian Arm. His latest play, an adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s best-selling memoir, Forgiveness, premiered in January, 2023 in an Arts Club Theatre / Theatre Calgary co-production directed by renowned director Stafford Arima. A long-time collaborator with Boca del Lupo, Hiro’s other works with the company include plays2perform@home, the Micro Performance piece Azano and co-writing the full-length play Hold Your Head Tight.

Past Red Phone Performances

• Auckland, AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND – 2026 at Auckland Live / PANNZ
• Wellington, AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND – 2026 at the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of Arts
• Harstad, NORWAY – 2025 at the Arctic Arts Festival
• Nanaimo, BC – CANADA – 2024 at The Port Theatre / Nanaimo Fringe Festival
• Ottawa, ON – CANADA – 2023 at National Arts Centre, Indigenous Theatre / CAPACOA
• Guanajuato, MEXICO – 2023 at Cervantino Festival
• Antofagasta, CHILE – 2023 at Identidades Festival
• Toronto, ON – CANADA – 2023 at Harbourfront Centre
• Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA – 2023 at Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires
• Vancouver, BC – CANADA – 2023 PuSh International Festival of the Arts
• Halifax, NS – CANADA – 2022 at Prismatic Festival
• Fredericton, NB – CANADA – 2020 at Theatre New Brunswick
• St. John’s, NL – CANADA – 2020 at RCA Theatre
• Montréal, QC – CANADA – 2020 at Centaur Theatre
• Vancouver, BC – CANADA – 2020 at Boca del Lupo
• Victoria, BC- CANADA – 2018 at Intrepid Theatre’s UNO Festival
• Toronto, ON – CANADA – 2018 at Theatre Passe Muraille’s RUTAS Festival
• Kelowna, BC – CANADA – 2018 at Living Things Festival
• Calgary, AB- CANADA – 2018 at the High Performance Rodeo
• Vancouver, BC – CANADA – 2017 at Simon Fraser University
• Vancouver, BC- CANADA – 2017 at Vancouver Writers Festival