Auckland's been bereft of arts and culture for the last 15 weeks of lockdown, and with most theatre companies not opening for the rest of the year, artists are hanging by a thread in our biggest city.
One group is turning the bleak situation around and bring you theatre but not as you would know it.
"Break Bread" is a livestreamed show where audience members can book their tickets online, grab a bevvy, some popcorn and enjoy the show from the comfort of their own home.
Zoom plays and livestreamed shows have had raging success overseas but this is one of the first of its kind here in New Zealand.
"Break bread, its an online theatrical experience, its a show that looks at the way people have dealt with disasters for centuries decades, millennia, the whole of human history dealing with all of the disasters we're faced and what happens when people face adversity," says one of the actors, Tom Clarke.
Cue a global pandemic, to a production that had been in the works for two years.
"It's added quite a rich layer to the work in terms of us looking back at history and looking to other times where humans have had to overcome really difficult situations," actor and co-writer Freya Finch said.
"So we've used that as a bit of a lense to speak through what we're going through now and we also kind of had the experience of the show writing itself because suddenly we were plunged into a lockdown and everyone was baking bread and there was this wealth of content that we didn't even have to come up with so that was one little pro to a lot of cons."
The comedy show looks at our exhilarating time in lockdown and all the newfound knowledge we've acquired while at home, and all done in a silly, fun way to bring a smile to your face.
But putting the show together wasn't easy. The actors spent 8 hours a day on zoom for nearly 6 weeks to put together the online extravaganza.
Finch saying "it's been a lot of our lives, blood, sweat and tears".
To book your tickets: https://silotheatre.co.nz/show/break-bread
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