DON’t lose your heads

As Production Manager for Northland Youth Theatre’s 2025 Summer Show Don’t Lose Your Heads, I had the privilege of helping bring an ambitious, site-specific performance to life, one that reimagined Alice in Wonderland through the lens of rangatahi creativity and collaboration. With a cast of 36 young performers aged 10 to 18 and a devising process that spanned the summer holidays, this promenade-style outdoor production was a vibrant celebration of Whangārei’s youth, held across multiple public locations in the Reyburn House Gardens and Town Basin. Managing production for an outdoor, multi-location show came with a unique set of logistical, technical, and safety challenges. One of my key responsibilities was ensuring health and safety for both cast and audience in an unpredictable outdoor setting. This included conducting site risk assessments, planning safe audience pathways and cast movement zones, managing equipment transport and power sources, and ensuring weather contingencies were in place. With performers frequently engaging in circus-based physical theatre and performing around public playground equipment, I worked closely with our stage management and creative teams to implement clear protocols and rehearsed safety plans. It was an incredibly rewarding project that transformed public space into an immersive, youth-led theatrical experience, offered free to the Whangārei community thanks to generous support from the SkyCity Auckland Community Trust. Helping deliver Don’t Lose Your Heads as production manager reinforced my passion for complex, site-based performance and deepened my commitment to empowering young artists to take bold creative risks in unconventional spaces.

This show was directed by Renowned NZ Director Julie Edwards.