The Festival of New Theatre has put one of Christchurch's most practical arts questions into public view: how do creators keep making work when funding, audiences and attention are all under pressure?

The Sunday panel at the Isaac Theatre Royal brought together University of Canterbury academic and Flat City Field Notes editor Dr Erin Harrington, multidisciplinary storyteller Juanita Hepi, and Hagley Theatre School artistic director Dr Pedro Ilgenfritz.

The discussion was framed around making new theatre in 2026, a moment when artists are dealing with funding pressure, shifting audience habits, digital distraction and wider uncertainty. The point was not only to describe the difficulty, but to ask what new theatre can still become inside those constraints.

That matters in Christchurch because the city's independent performance scene often depends on people who work across several roles at once. They write, direct, teach, produce, fundraise, tour, mentor and advocate, often without the clean boundaries larger institutions can provide.

The panel also carried a community-builder thread. Hepi is a co-founder of Te Whare Tapere at the Arts Centre, while moderator Lizzie Tollemache is the creative director of Rollicking Entertainment and a long-running supporter of new performance work in the city.

For audiences, these conversations can make the arts economy less invisible. A finished show might last an hour on stage, but the system behind it depends on training, rehearsal space, risk-taking, public trust and people willing to keep building the next work before the last one has paid its way.