The Bacchanals

Multi-award-winning guerrilla theatre company based in Wellington NZ. No angsty middle-class domestic drama for us; angry world-changing stuff instead, hooray!

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

To people who say THE SIMPSONS has long since lost its magic, I say their version of WEST SIDE STORY distills the musical to its essence:

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Folks outside NZ, if you enter the code APRIL2024 at checkout you get a 23% discount on the book to soften the blow of ridiculous postage prices. Only at https://t.co/80ZZs4OG9B and only while stocks last! (they'll last, I've got loads of 'em!)

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Friends, it's ONE WHOLE YEAR since the release of my book SHAKESPEARE'S TROPES so Bovine University Press are doing FREE SHIPPING on all orders within Aotearoa until midnight on April 26th (by all evidence Shakespeare's ACTUAL birthday)!

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Humans of Twitter, a reminder that you should buy my book! Here's a thingo from the weekend where I talk too fast to Kim Hill about it. https://t.co/5uEKEBOL5T

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Humans & bots of Twitter, a reminder that my new book SHAKESPEARE’S TROPES comes out on 23 April! Free shipping within NZ if you pre-order it on https://t.co/80ZZs4OG9B before 11.59pm Saturday! it's the ONLY text book that discusses Shakespeare in relation to the Mountain Goats.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Part textbook, part episode guide, it's a ridiculous & gorgeous 540-page paper-based readamijig and if you pre-order before midnight on Saturday 22 April you get free shipping within NZ!

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Friends, I make this rare visit to Twitter to tell you my new book SHAKESPEARE’S TROPES comes out on 23 April! You can pre-order it on https://t.co/80ZZs4OG9B! You could come to the launch next Sunday at the Open Book on Ponsonby Road if you’re in Tāmaki Makaurau!

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

On the one hand it’s a serious book about the dead coming back to life in almost every Shakespeare play. On the other, it’s a very silly book in which I explain the whole canon by way of The Beatles, Star Wars, The Sopranos, The Simpsons & the Mountain Goats.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

He was also incredibly graceful amidst all the leftist rabble-rousers he was inevitably surrounded with. In all the anti-National Party theatre I've made over the years, he only once took me to task: "Norma Holyoake was elegant, not vapid!"

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Bill Sheat was a tremendous human being. Everything he did was about making other people’s lives better rather than for personal benefit. If he’d done a fraction as much for Sport as he did for the Arts in NZ, he’d have been given a knighthood 30 years ago.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Bill always had the most excellent gossip – although it never seemed like gossip coming from him – and knew every NZ arts organisation’s darkest secrets. He was incredible at cutting through complexity & bullshit and being able to get to the heart of a problem & solve it.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Just posted a photo https://t.co/OuZo0FAPtS

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Three years on & still relevant, bitches!

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Finally, a Prime Minister who listens to the Mountain Goats.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

It was like he drew his inspiration & energy from other people instead of from his own crazed ego like the rest of us. An amazing lesson in how to be a decent human being. And he was an amazing human being. x

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Haven’t seen beautiful Aaron Tokona in 20 years but my buddy @verbalhighs' excellent talk with him last week brought back intense memories of the early-90s & what an incredible guy he was from the first time any of us ever saw him. https://t.co/obeJysRHE2

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Backstage at the St James he let me play his all-black Fender Stratocaster which had the thinnest neck I’d ever seen & we talked guitar nerdery. Everyone else was trying to psych each other out, but he spent all night side of stage watching & supporting other bands & guitarists.

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

@michaeltrigg

[The Bacchanals @thebacchanals]

Don't want to alarm y'all, but yesterday The Bacchanals had their first production meeting since September 2015. There were just three of us, all on Zoom (KB and I went into separate rooms), and it was top secret.