Auckland's Favourite Strange Festival Just Made Its First Program Announcement

The annual festival which prides itself in gleefully presenting shows and exhibitions that are just a touch (or way) too strange (or 'avant garde', depending on who you ask) for general theatrical consumption has just made its first lineup announcement.

Auckland Fringe Festival's 2018 program highlights include the Masterchef-esque improvised cooking competition show called Chef Masters; Boat Date, which sees audiences piled into a boat created by artist Melissa Laing and hopefully some structural engineers; an actual gladiatorial experience in Caesar's Rome: Hands-ON Living History (calling all Assassin's Creed fanboys); and the return of Catacular, a dance at a cat cafe.

Other interesting tidbits include the Basement Theatre's A Womb with a View, which should appeal to fans of Otto Rank's grim theory of being "born into trauma" (i.e. life is traumatic simply by virtue of being born and because of the 'inevitable, violent, physical and psychic separation we suffer at birth from our mother'); The Dead Writers Retreat, where you can finally have some peace and quiet to write or begin writing the Next Great New Zealand Novel; and For Your Eyes Only, which is described as a fly-on-the-wall confessional and should satisfy any regular Facebook voyeur.

The annual Auckland Fringe Festival will be running in 2018 from 20 February to 4 March. Another program announcement is due in December, but tickets for selected shows are available now.