Big Time

Following a sold out, extended debut season of Champions, playwright Isabella McDermott and director Harriett Maire reunite to present Big Time: a gutsy, empathetic story, exploring hope, envy, and the nuances of female friendship through the brutal lens of the entertainment industry.

This play is the creative collaborators' first work under the newly-launched extracurricular company banner, and is due to hit the stage 16–18 October at Q Loft in Tāmaki Makaurau. Your support provides an invaluable contribution to the production's hard costs, design world, marketing campaign, and acknowledgement of the expertise of our wider creative team, cast, and crew.

Big Time is presented by extracurricular with support from Q Theatre.

Creative Team: 

Isabella McDermott (Playwright):

Isabella McDermott is a playwright based in Tāmaki Makaurau.

In 2023, her play Champions premiered in a sold-out, extended season on the Main Stage at Basement Theatre. The script had its international debut the following year at Sydney's Old Fitz Theatre.

Isabella's work is both cutting and compassionate, mixing razor-sharp dialogue with moments of deeply felt humanity.

Harriett Maire (Director):

Harriett Maire is a director based in Tāmaki Makaurau. 

Her last four theatre shows have performed sold-out seasons, including the 2023 season of Isabella McDermott's debut play, Champions, which also had a season extension. She previously directed sell-out seasons of debut pieces ANIMAL (2018), Reunion (2020) and Twinless (2021). 

Harriett directs commercials locally and internationally, and runs her own boutique casting company. Irrespective of medium, Harriett is a performance director. She enjoys focussing on subtle nuances and detailed characterisation. Her breadth of experience gives her a holistic understanding of storytelling, and enables her to be a comprehensive and empathetic director.

Isabelle Hoskyn (Producer):

Isabelle 'Izzi' Hoskyn (she/her) is a film and theatre practitioner based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her screen work explores dissociation, queerness, and feminine rage through the lens of magical realism, blurring the line between live-action and animation. She is currently developing GHOSTLY, a short film examining life after trauma that blends 2D animation with live action footage. In 2024, she produced THE CREATURE, a queer horror web series. In theatre, she’s worked predominantly as a Lighting Designer and Technician, with her most notable work being Q Theatre's 2023 season of BOOM SHANKAR. In 2025, she is stepping into the role of Producer for the development season of BIG TIME, also at Q Theatre.

Tate Fountain (Creative Producer):

Tate Fountain is a writer, producer, theatremaker, and literary editor. She is the author of SHORT FILMS (Tender Press, 2022), an editor of Starling, and has been published in journals and magazines across Aotearoa and overseas. She has held producing, programming, and marketing roles at various festivals, including Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival, Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival, and samesame but different, as well as presenting at New Zealand Young Writers Festival in 2024. She produced the debut season of Champions, and is thrilled to be continuing her mahi with extracurricular on this season of Big Time.

Cast:

Kirana Gaeta (Performer, 'Sabrina'):

Kirana Gaeta from Te Whanganui-a-Tara is a graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. She has appeared in TV series such as Brokenwood, Far North, and After the Party, and the lead on web series Literally Dead. Her screen career began as a teenager in the short film The Pissy Tits Street Gang. 

Molly Curnow (Performer, 'Max'):

Molly Curnow is an actor and musician from Mangawhai, north of Auckland. She trained at The Actor's Program in 2021, and has since been working across stage and screen. Molly appeared in Massive Company's Heart Go… BOOM! in 2023, and recently performed in MOTHER IS A DAUGHTER IS A MOTHER at Basement Theatre. Her screen credits include local drama Testify, American slasher Heart Eyes, and Taika Waititi's Klara & the Sun (upcoming).

Your contribution will directly support:

• The hard costs of developing and delivering the production (e.g. rehearsal/venue hire)
• Elevation of the production's design (e.g. prop build/procurement costs, costuming)
• Marketing of the production (e.g. asset production, social media, printing costs)
• Acknowledgement of the expertise and investment of our talented collaborators

This first staged season of Big Time – from a script seven years in the making – is just the beginning of the life of this work. Your support will help us lay a foundation for its ongoing growth and success, as well as the sustained creative mahi of text-based theatre artists under the extracurricular banner.

There's nothing better than watching your best friend live their dream—unless it happens to be your dream, too.

A tight friendship between drama school graduates Max and Sabrina is put to the test when one of them lands a life-changing role.

Playwright Isabella McDermott and director Harriett Maire reunite to present Big Time: a gutsy, empathetic story, exploring hope, envy, and the nuances of female friendship through the brutal lens of the entertainment industry.

In the ever-changing world of the arts, how do you know when to hold fast to your dreams, and when to let them go?

As the characters at the heart of Big Time will attest, making art – whether on a project level or as a sustained career – is not easy. It's a labour of love, an investment of time and effort driven by passion, belief, and the joy of collaborating. This season of Big Time at Q is the product of a script first drafted seven years ago, of workshops that began in 2023, of countless revisions and diversions and a lot of banding together, a lot of resilience.

This play allows audiences – not only artists, not only actors, but anyone who has aspired to something that puts them in direct competition with the people they love, with those who understand them best – to see themselves reflected. To acknowledge the hard feelings our chosen field incites, the kind of emotions and impulses we shy away from; to delight in a youthful lack of self-awareness, and to feel the heartache of the strain it can put on our closest relationships. To savour, also, the beauty and silliness of those relationships. This work will deliver to audiences a well-executed, acerbic, heartfelt, and charged experience of recognition, and of release.

On a company level, your support of Big Time is also support of the creatives involved. It is support of the further development of text-based theatre in Aotearoa, of sustained artistic collaboration, and of mahi that allows us to expand: to work on new plays, to foster bonds with new and emerging practitioners, and to further hone the essential tenets of our practice: gutsy, empathy-driven work, at every step from page to stage.