The Story Behind The Bench
The story behind The Bench, a format shaped by simplicity, memory, and connection across cultures.
There is a park bench sitting in the middle of a stage at Pitt Street Theatre. On April 18, fifteen performers will gather around it, and for about an hour, stories will unfold. Stories about strangers, about time, about the small moments that quietly shape a life.
And when the night ends, none of those stories will ever exist again.
That is The Bench. And it has been part of my life for a long time.
Where it started
I first directed The Bench at the Auckland Improv Marathon in 2019. The concept is deceptively simple: a single park bench at the centre of the stage, and a series of scenes that begin and end around it. Different characters, different times, different emotional registers. Some funny. Some quiet. Some unexpectedly moving.
What drew me to it was the constraint. A bench is an ordinary thing. Universally recognisable. Everyone has sat on one. And because of that, it carries an enormous amount of emotional weight without having to explain itself. You already know what it means to wait for someone on a bench. You know what it feels like to sit there alone.
The format asks performers to slow down. To listen. To trust that small moments are enough.
The bench travels
In 2022 we brought it back for the Auckland Improv Festival, and something clicked even more. The audience sat close. The scenes breathed. There was a quietness to it that I hadn’t experienced in many other improv shows.
Then in 2023 something remarkable happened: The Bench travelled to Italy.
I was invited to the Tolfama Festival Internazionale delle Arti Improvvisate in Tolfa, a small town about an hour from Rome. But this time, I didn’t bring a cast. We built one from scratch, in the context of the festival itself. Some of the performers knew each other. Some had never met. Most were Italian, and Italian was their first language, with just a couple of exceptions. Even deciding which language to use for workshops, and how to navigate that between us, became a delightful challenge in itself.
Together we built our own version of the show. We called it La Panchina.
It was performed site-specifically, at the bottom of a set of magical old stairs in Tolfa. And we reimagined the format entirely: instead of scenes unfolding one after another, multiple stories were told simultaneously, and the audience chose which ones to follow, moving through the space, catching fragments, finding their own path through the night.
The bench speaks to something universal. I had suspected it. That night in Tolfa confirmed it. You don’t need to share a language to recognise a heartbreak, a hesitation, a moment of unexpected joy. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences I have had in this work, and I carry it with me still.
This edition is different
The April 18 show is one of the most ambitious version of The Bench I have ever directed.
Fifteen performers. Music by Paco Gálvez. Lighting design by Laura Gómez. A cast that is genuinely multidisciplinary, multicultural, and multilingual, each person bringing their own lived experience to the stories that unfold.
When I think about what makes this ensemble special, it is not the size of it. It is the range. These fifteen people carry different accents, different histories, different ways of being in the world. And The Bench, as a format, makes space for all of it.
The scenes will be interconnected. Characters will appear and reappear. Time will move in unexpected ways. And somewhere in the middle of it, if we do our job well, you will recognise something of yourself in a stranger sitting on a bench.
One night only
This is not a run of shows. There is no second chance to see it.
When the night ends on April 18, those stories are gone. That is part of what makes The Bench what it is: the impermanence is the point. Live theatre has always worked this way, but improv makes it even more so. Nothing is scripted. Nothing is rehearsed in the traditional sense. What you witness on the night is the only version that will ever exist.
Take a seat. The bench is ready to speak.
The Bench: Unscripted Theatre Saturday 18 April, 7:30pm Pitt Street Theatre (78 Pitt Street, Auckland CBD) Tickets: $19 + fees (Choose What You Pay)
