Presented by Everybody Cool Lives Here
In association with Active
Directed by Isobel MacKinnon

Welcome aboard Active Airlines!

Join the eccentric passengers during this compelling, surreal and funny flight.

Made under the guidance of Wellington theatre makers in collaboration with Active, a service for youth with an intellectual impairment, Wake Up Tomorrow was created from the minds of these incredible young people.

Audiences will be transported from the mundane moments on a long haul flight to bizarre and hilarious scenarios.

Please fasten your seat belts, make sure you are in the upright position and enjoy the journey. We may or may not arrive at the expected destination.

“In a work of this kind there is always a delicate balance to be held between presenting a polished product at the same time as allowing for a playful improvised quality to emerge that allows the actors to perform to their strengths. This was very evident in the final few scenes …” – Madeline McNamara

In Wake Up Tomorrow, the youth of today are taking over Circa Theatre’s main stage.

Premiering on Saturday 21 February, this inventive show from Everybody Cool Lives Here pairs the talents of artists from ACTIVE – a vocational support base for 17-25 year olds with intellectual disabilities – with a team of Wellington’s top emerging theatre-makers.

“Integrated theatre” is rarely seen in New Zealand and even more rarely in a professional production. Fortunately the show’s director Isobel MacKinnon, 26, is no stranger to breaking new ground. She won both the Most Original Concept at the New Zealand Fringe Awards and the Absolutely Positively Most Original Production of the Year award at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in 2014.

Taking audiences on a surreal long-haul flight with a planeload of eccentric passengers, Wake Up Tomorrow will break down boundaries, MacKinnon says.

“I would like audiences to have a joyful and enjoyable time and meet our show with the same openness as the guys creating it have,” she said, adding that the collaboration had been “beautiful and fascinating”.

30 ACTIVE participants have been involved in crafting all aspects of the performance, working with the guidance of the professional mentors to develop skills and help realise their creative ideas.

Following a sell-out development season in Te Whaea’s Basement Theatre  in 2014, the production was selected for a main stage run by Wellington’s Circa Theatre, where it will feature as part of the 2015 New Zealand Fringe festival, which begins this month.

“Wake Up Tomorrow captures the half-dream state the brain can slip into when we are trapped in a plane on a long-haul flight. Moments of mundane reality morph into surreal extrapolations: a clever convention that almost justifies anything and everything that occurs in whatever way it happens. An absolutely ‘fit for purpose’ production.”  John Smythe, Theatreview.org.nz

“There’s a sense of mischief and of joy throughout this production; the cast throw themselves into their roles with a level of commitment that any actor would do well to aspire to.” Jarrod Baker, Word On The Street