We're Gonna Kill Billy

We’re Gonna Kill Billy is a breakneck, black-comedy thriller about friendship, fear, and the moment you decide to cross the line. Written by Alex Medland, the play swept the 2025 Playmarket Awards, taking out the Adam NZ Award for Best Play, as well as delivering Best Woman Playwright and Best Māori Playwright. Produced by Northland Youth Theatre, it now premieres for the first time ever this January at our very own ONEONESIX in Whangārei!

The creative team is led by Lutz Hamm, Summer Millet and Penny Fitt, with production support from Hayley Douglas at Northland Youth Theatre, and Kaitlin Scott at ONEONESIX.

This work is a culmination of several strands of creative practice;

The Cast - Northland Youth Theatre has been running a development programme for young and emerging leaders in the performing arts across the last year, and has produced an ensemble of extremely empowered young artists who are keen to shape tell their own stories. They have been held in producing anthology works, and are hungry to delve into full-scale production. 

Lutz has been one of the key leaders in this programme, and the working relationships developed here have determined the nature of this upcoming work; the entire youth cast has been connected to this programme in one way or another.

The four leads are young women, and the work has been double cast to expose eight actors to the roles, supported by two other youth actors and two professionals.

The Script - ONEONESIX in collaboration with Kelly Gilbride has run a programme on in-house playreadings-for-artists, delving into old and new texts largely from New Zealand. 

The group is age-diverse, and includes several recent school leavers, and when we came across We're Gonna Kill Billy, there was a sense of unanimous agreement – this text needs to go up – the young people involved in this work have been part of the decision making processes from the beginning.

• Lutz is a founding member of Company of Giants, resident and founding theatre of company of ONEONESIX, in Whangārei. Fifteen years ago, he was directed in Eli Kent's Thinning as part of a Northland Youth Theatre production. A long-time supporter and facilitator of Northland Youth Theatre programmes, he now takes on the responsibility of leading a full-length production to its conclusion. Company of Giants works from a people-first ethos of making theatre, and the work represents an evolution of that practice into the development of young/emerging artists, something for which is completely passionate.

   

• Summer will be supporting Lutz, bringing a huge amount of performance nouse from seasons at the Pop-Up Globe, as well as shared language and ethos from working together in Company of Giants projects, and across various other works (the two took part in Northland Youth Theatre productions together, and went on to be the two representatives from Whangārei in their Toi Whakaari cohort!). 

   

• Penny is quickly becoming the resident designer at ONEONESIX, and brings a huge amount of practical experience and curiosity to the emergent work that is bubbling out of Whangārei. She has worked alongside Lutz in Company of Giants and ONEONESIX led projects, finding striking and efficient ways for space and objects to enable us to more effectively tell story in our grassroots setting, as well as providing a huge bank of professional knowledge and expertise.
  
  The creative team collects several years of deliberate investigation into collaborative process and high quality performance storytelling, and wields it on a whip-sharp new play performed by hungry and extremely talented young people.
  
  ONEONESIX is a theatre and community arts organisation, providing space, support, opportunity and mentorhsip for grass roots work by the community to exist for the community.

This funding is part of several funding streams required to help pay the professionals who are facilitating this production.

Northland Youth Theatre is thrilled to present the national premiere of We’re Gonna Kill Billy by Alex Medland (Kāi Tahu), winner of the 2025 Adam NZ Play Award, Best Play by a Māori Playwright, and Best Play by a Woman Playwright. 

Centred on four friends driven to take drastic action against a local billionaire's next big development, the play dives into the messy collision of activism, morality, and consequence in an age where crisis is constant and everyone is extremely online. Accusations mount, panic rises, and the vibes are… not great. 

Northland Youth Theatre is uniquely placed to tell this story – by staging this bold, funny, and deeply contemporary work, we are giving our young actors the chance to stretch into professional-calibre material, explore politically relevant themes, and bring their own voices and perspectives to the forefront. 

For our community, this production offers rare access to a multi-award-winning New Zealand play in its first-ever staging, performed by the talented young people of Te Tai Tokerau, and directed by a returned NYT alumnus. We’re Gonna Kill Billy is a powerful reminder that youth voices matter, and that theatre can challenge, provoke, and inspire real conversation about the world we are inheriting.

All that said - this play is really good, and we have a cast who wants to do it, people who know they can make it happen - and an audience hungry for original New Zealand work.

This project is about community and capacity building, and providing quality performance experiences for both artists and audiences.

This cast is a group of recent school leavers about to leave Whangārei, and emergent twenty-somethings who have made the decision to stay. Full-scale production of top-tier New Zealand work exposes young people and audiences to the potential and possibility of regional New Zealand being at the forward edge of performing arts innovation, and the idea that professionals an involved in world-class work here is extremely powerful; when artists return home bring experience and new ideas, the entire community is enriched. This work is about putting Whangārei on the map in the minds of young people who could be future leaders here.

Finally; and I'll say it again - this play is really good. Whangārei artists and audiences seldom experience headline acts outside of Auckland and this award-winning play is one of New Zealand's best pieces of recent work. Debuting the work in Whangārei is an exciting opportunity to build even more buzz in a region with a highly developed performing arts audience and community of artists. Whangārei is one of the most exciting places to be working in the performing arts at the moment; why not debut one of New Zealand's best plays here?