Whales 8 credit Victoria Cotterell
Press Release – Fringe NZ
The 23rd New Zealand Fringe Festival celebrated and honoured the hard work, innovation, talent and vibrant energy of 100 events over three amazing weeks with an award ceremony held tonight at The Front Room.

The evening also honoured the recurrent theme of Fringe 2013 – audience participation, with brilliant ad-libbed musical accompaniment from Vance Fontain and his Peculiar Sensations, an impromptu ping pong ball explosion and inspiring dance by swing band Shake Em on Downers.

Best in Fringe Award recognised the powerful Binge Culture Collective event The Whales, which saw a pod of human whales swim through the city, beach on the harbour waterfront and require care and rescuing by the public. Hundreds of families and concerned citizens took the time to help the pod back into the water. A magic event for all involved.

And awards for services to the Fringe went to Conrad Coom for literally building the Fringe and MCing Fringe events with spirit and hilarity. Writer Uther Dean was also recognised for involvement in seven Fringe shows and reviewing all the others. We salute these hard working individuals.

The Fringe judges were impressed with with the level of audience interaction, social awareness, clever lo-tech production design and the massive use of cardboard in Fringe 2013!

The Fringe would like to sincerely thank our sponsors; Creative New Zealand, Wellington City Council, Pub Charity, Wellington Community Trust, The Lion Foundation, Creature, I-Site, Verb, resene, Radio Active, Tiki Wines, Tuatara, and Mojo Coffee.

(Nominees are alphabetical.)

Best Outdoor Award
Nominated: Campground Chaos
Winner: The Whales
Best Comedy Award
Nominated: Gobsmacked: Showbiz and Dating, Signfeld and Friendz
Winner: Corner Diary
Best Dance Award
Nominated: Feet of Clay, Gizza Hoon
Winner: How to Make Friends and Still Appear Normal
Best Visual / Digital Art Award
Nominated: BYOB Wellington, Resonant Beings
Winner: The Cuba Street Project
Best Theatre Award
Nominated: A Cry Too Far From Heaven, The Road That Wasn’t There
Joint Winners: Madam X and Mister Q, Affinity
Best Production Design Award
Nominated: Feet of Clay, Light Sleepers Wake, Madam X and Mister Q
Winner: A Play About Space
Stand Out Performer Award
Nominated: Emily Taylor (Cannonball), Fern Wallingford (Madam X and Mister Q), Jade Gilles (A Cry Too Far From Heaven), Melissa Phillips (Gizza Hoon), Neenah Dekkers-Reihana (Affinity)
Winner: Anna Renzenbrink (Spider Dance)
Best Newcomer Award
Nominated: Jade Gilles (A Cry Too Far From Heaven), Making Friends Collective (Rageface)
Winner: Natalie Clark (How to Make Friends and Still Appear Normal)
Best Solo Award
Nominated: Adam Page (Adam Page), Debs Rea (Take Back the Hood)
Winner: Emily Taylor (Cannonball)
Best Ensemble Award
Nominated: A Play About Space, Madam X and Mister Q
Winner: Little Town Liars: A Musical
Best Promotion Award
Nominated: Gizza Hoon, Take Back the Hood, The Lady Garden
Winner: Corner Diary
CNZ Innovation Award
Nominated: Beep Test, For Your Future Guidance, The Lady Garden
Winner: The Whales (Binge Culture Collective)
Servicing the Fringe Award
Winners: Conrad Coom, Uther Dean
Best of the NZ Fringe 2013
Winner: The Whales (Binge Culture Collective)

The year is off to a good start for Wellington Theatre Collective, Binge Culture who won three awards, including “Best of Fringe” at the New Zealand Fringe Festival Awards.

Binge Culture created three new performance works for NZ Fringe, including outdoor spectacle, The Whales, which won “Best in Fringe,” “The Creative New Zealand Award for Innovation,” and the “Fringe Outdoor Award.” Their two indoor performance works For Your Future Guidance and Beep Test* were also both nominated for the Creative New Zealand Award for Innovation. For Your Future Guidance, was the runner up for the “Fringe of the Fringe” award at Auckland Fringe Festival and will also be performed in the Dunedin Fringe Festival 21-23 March.

The three Binge Culture shows stood out for their inclusion of and trust in the public. In The Whales, Binge Culture performers, dressed as conservation workers, approached passers-by, some who had come expecting a performance and some who were simply out enjoying the waterfront, handed them buckets and put them to work to save a pod of beached whales. The whales were thirty-three performers who had swum through the city, from Cuba Street, through Civic Square and found themselves beached outside Te Papa. “We aimed to make something accessible, in which the public could play an integral part,” says The Whales co-producer, Fiona McNamara. Company member Ralph Upton commented that “the highlight for us was the way the children responded to the whales – from driving a tiny tractor to singing songs to keep their whale calm, they really showed the adults how to do the job”.

Those who missed out on The Whales can look forward to their return in Binge Culture’s next work. The group originally came up with the idea of a participatory whale stranding as part of their 2011 Fringe show This Rugged Beauty, which they describe as a “huge, doomed ad for New Zealand” and which was nominated as “Most Original Production” in the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. Their next project is to rework and expand that show in partnership with Downstage and Victoria University.

Binge Culture Collective formed in 2008 and in 2009 was awarded “Best Newcomers” at the NZ Fringe Festival and “Most Original Production” at the Dunedin Fringe Festival. Street theatre specialists, they won “Best Outdoors” at the 2010 NZ Fringe Festival and performed in a paddock atop Takaka Hill at Canaan Downs New Year Festival in 2009. Their show Wake Less, originally commissioned for BATS Theatre’s 2011 STAB season, was performed in Auckland in early 2012 as part of the New Performance Festival at The Edge and was singled out by theatre reviewers as a highlight of the festival. Binge Culture Collective a Resident Company at Downstage Theatre and is generously supported by Victoria University of Wellington. The Whales received Creative New Zealand Kakano funding.

The team behind Binge Culture’s Whales is Joel Baxendale, Rachel Baker, Simon Haren, Isobel MacKinnon, Fiona McNamara, Claire O’Loughlin and Ralph Upton.