Children's Theatre

We have staged children’s theatre productions in the school holidays for over 50 years. We are proud of our strong following and love seeing families return time after time to enjoy live theatre. In fact, many of our former little patrons are now bringing their own children to see our shows!

Coming to see a children’s theatre production

When you bring children to a Playhouse school holiday production, you’re giving kids the wonderful experience of live theatre – and supporting Dunedin’s budding performers, writers, directors, designers and tech crew at the same time.

We stage a production in the first week of each of the term holidays (April, July and October). The season runs from the first Saturday to the middle Sunday of the holidays, with performances at 11am and 2pm daily – except for the opening weekend and final Sunday, which are 2pm only.

Shows run for about an hour and a half, including an interval. We have a great selection of affordable refreshments available at interval in our upstairs coffee bar.  Please note many of our productions use strobe lighting and/or dry ice.

Tickets and booking

All seats are $8. The box office opens in the week before the show opens. Bookings can be made by calling 03 477 6544 or by messaging our Facebook page. Please leave a message with your name, phone number, the date and time of the performance you wish to attend, and the number of tickets you wish to book. Your booking is confirmed unless you hear back from us. Please collect your tickets from the box office at least 15 minutes before the performance starts. We accept cash and have EFTPOS available (but no credit card facilities or cash out). We love hosting kindergarten, childcare and school holiday programme groups. Please contact us by phone or email to arrange your seats.

Annual Passes

Annual Passes are available about November/December for the following year and cost $24. We personalise them with a name and photo so the owner knows they are a VIP! Each Annual Pass entitles the named owner to one ticket to each of our three children's theatre productions. Remember, you still need to book your seat! We stay in touch with you throughout the year to let you know about the shows and when bookings open. These make great Christmas presents.

Accessibility

The auditorium has a wheelchair accessible entrance, but this is narrow and we recommend checking it out in advance! This entrance can also be useful for patrons with limited mobility and we can seat in the front row where requested. We have space to accommodate one wheelchair at each performance. Unfortunately our foyer and box office (including toilets) do not have wheelchair access, and access to the coffee bar / social space is by stairs only. We are looking to improve accessibility in our refurbishment project. Prams and buggies can be parked in the front of house area but can't be taken into the auditorium.

Getting involved

Playhouse shows offer a wonderful introduction to acting and performing for children and young adults. Cast and crew members learn new skills, make friends, gain confidence and experience performing for a real audience.

We are unfortunately completely full for children's theatre cast for 2023! We do our best to give everyone at the Playhouse but we have had more interest lately than we can safely accommodate on our stage. Please email playhousedunedin@gmail.com if you would like to be placed on our waiting list.

We do always need more grown-ups though! Tertiary students and adults are very welcome onstage or as part of our backstage team.

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