Our secret wants and desires _{by Madelaine Empson}

Following a successful premiere season at this year’s New Zealand Fringe Festival, Tessa Redman returns to BATS this month with the redeveloped I’m Not Going to Lie to You. On from the 27^th to the 30^th of October, this is a solo exploration into female performativity, lust, and uncontrollable desire.

While Redman is a New Zealand School of Dance graduate, I’m Not Going to Lie to You isn’t necessarily a dance show.

“I wanted to create a performance that felt just as much like theatre as it did dance”, she says.

The integration of movement and text – largely her own words – struck a chord with audiences. Redman says she wanted to bring the feeling of her personal diary to the stage.

“I wanted to celebrate our secret wants, uncomfortable desires, and unrealistic thoughts that we often only feel comfortable to share with ourselves, to create a sense of validation for all audience members.”

This time around, Redman has dug deeper into the theatricality within the work to create something that “cannot be defined by genre, and simply uses whatever means appropriate to share ideas and open up conversations through live art”.

With a creative team of Trantham Gordon, LANCE (Jesse Stratford), Elekis Poblete Teirney, and Christopher Alan Moore, Redman says the redevelopment of I’m Not Going to Lie to You has felt beautifully collaborative. Performing it in the expansive Dome Theatre at BATS will be “such a privilege”.

“I am excited to free myself through movement across the entire theatre, whilst maintaining an intimate, personal relationship with each person I am lucky enough to share the space with.”