Kiwis be warned: something strange is happening after dark. Citizens are vanishing. Nerves are fraying. And your designated safehouse will be… a theatre.
Werewolf, the immersive horror-comedy by Wellington performance renegades Binge Culture, went off at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and is returning to Aotearoa for a nationwide outbreak in 2026. PANNZ is proud to support this national tour, which includes the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts (25 Feb – 1 Mar, Wellington), Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival (5 – 8 Mar), ONEONESIX (11 – 12 Mar, Whangārei) and Turner Centre (13 Mar, Kerikeri).
Based on the popular party game Werewolf (AKA Mafia), the show drops audiences into a safehouse in lockdown, where suspicion, alliances and disappearances unfold in a high stakes experiment of fear and fun. Audience members are given secret roles, allowing everyone to participate as much or as little as they like, creating a space where play, panic and strategy collide.
Joel Baxendale, co-creator and performer, says “Werewolf is a deceptively tricky show to put on and we’ve spent years fine tuning it, finding the horror-comedy balance, creating a sense of full immersion within a theatre setting. We’re so happy to be presenting Werewolf in its ultimate form. The audience can be assured that whatever goes down, they are in very safe hands.”
By daylight, Werewolf is hilariously chaotic: three underqualified wardens try (and spectacularly fail) to keep the community calm. By night, the tension escalates, producing a cocktail of screams, laughs and edge-of-your-seat moments. Regional News described it as “a clever commentary on mob mentality and fearmongering; how quickly humans can turn into monsters.”
Developed in 2020 in the eerie quiet after Covid lockdowns, Werewolf was conceived as a theatrical response to collective anxiety, giving audiences a way to safely explore fear, trust, and human behaviour under pressure. It has since appeared in town halls, museums, basements, pubs, historic buildings and abandoned office spaces, before breaking out internationally at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe as a sellout sensation. The Binge Culture creative team have continued developing the show, adapting it for larger venues, while still maintaining the sense of full immersion – and the 2026 tour is in for even more scares!
Performed by Joel Baxendale, Stella Reid and Hannah Kelly, Werewolf was devised by the company, with sound design by Oliver Devlin, set and lighting by Lucas Neal, dramaturgy by Ralph Upton and production by Baxendale and Eleanor Strathern. Binge Culture is celebrated for genre-bending, site-responsive works that give audiences real stakes in every moment, described by the NZ Herald as “one of the country’s most exciting, direct and original theatre companies.”
Full moons keep coming in 2026. This Werewolf season, head to your theatre safehouse… if you want to live another day.
Werewolf plays
Wellington
Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts
Circa Theatre
25 Feb – 1 Mar
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Auckland
Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival
Q Theatre
5 – 8 Mar
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Whangārei
ONEONESIX
11–12 Mar
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Kerikeri
Turner Centre
13 Mar
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