John Armstrong reviews Eat Sleep Dance Repeat, written and performed by Rachel Brebner, at Little Andromeda, Thursday 6 November 2025.
I have vague memories of Stage Challenge, having taken part during my first year of high school. I recall dancing to Single Ladies in a shade of red that did no favours to a face that turns tomato-bright within seconds. Since then, the whole event has lived somewhere deep in my memory vault, alongside Lynx Africa gift packs and compulsory athletics days. Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat hauls all these memories back. The awkwardness, the theatre-kid chaos, and the strange joy of giving everything to a performance you’ve made with no adult supervision. There was always something both cringe and beautiful about Stage Challenge. It was over-rehearsed, underfunded, and unashamedly earnest. A mass of teenagers trying to communicate something meaningful through dance and sheer willpower.
Brebner taps straight into that energy. Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat feels like a loving resurrection of that collective teenage dream, equal parts parody and homage. From the moment she strolls onstage, she’s got the crowd in her grip. The laughter starts early and doesn’t let up. The room is cracking up from the get-go. Not the nervous titters of polite theatre laughter, but the kind that rolls and builds until it becomes its own rhythm. Brebner rides that energy with the assurance of someone who’s spent considerable effort learning how to read a crowd. There’s a touch of busker instinct in her timing: the ability to hold tension, let the audience think they’re one step ahead, then pull the rug out just in time. It’s a rare skill, and it’s clear the humour isn’t simply decoration. Brebner’s laughter-making is dramaturgical. Every gag is a gear in a larger machine that keeps the audience alert. There’s something quietly generous in the way she works the room, finding moments to fold everyone into the performance.
As New Zealand’s arts funding continues to shrink, the solo show remains one of the few semi-viable formats left. It’s portable, adaptable, and self-reliant. But that certainly doesn’t make it easy. A solo performer carries everything: the timing, the pacing and the world-building. Yet Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat isn’t entirely a one-person operation. Technically, a second performer works an overhead projector and occasionally joins the action. There’s even a brief moment when this co-performer steps into the spotlight, which partially risks derailing the spell, but the closing payoff when Brebner returns makes the detour worthwhile.
My favourite character, Ms Price, is a smart choice to open the show. A familiar archetype that lets us settle in before the chaos begins. What follows is a parade of personalities, each as recognisable as the last. Brebner slips between them with precision that’s part clowning, part shape-shifting. She threads a flurry of teenage dance moves through the physical vocabulary of each transformation, giving us a compact but vivid sense of each characters world.
What really lands though, is Brebner’s ability to capture the strange sincerity of adolescence. The show resurrects a sweaty, glittery optimism of giving everything to something small, silly, and deeply meaningful. Whether or not you ever took part in Stage Challenge, the performance celebrates that youthful willingness to throw caution to the wind and perform like it matters. Beneath the humour sits a quiet recognition that making art in Aotearoa still demands the same earnestness and stubborn determination that once fuelled those teenage dance teams.
The pacing is tight, the musical cues sharply chosen, and the energy never dips. Brebner’s command of comedic and physical timing keeps the piece alive even in its quieter moments. The tone of the work avoids sentimentality. It’s nostalgic, yes, but never indulgent. The humour keeps it grounded in the grit of the dance floor rather than drifting off into mushy irrelevances.
The show’s visual language reinforces its theme of resourcefulness. The overhead projector hums away in the corner, layering cut-outs, scribbles, and camera feeds into a kind of analogue collage. It’s an enjoyable reminder that DIY doesn’t have to mean a diminished visual when the limitations become the aesthetic. There’s no attempt to disguise the mechanics. We see the shadows of hands, the flicker of acetate sheets, the faint hum of the lamp. It’s a form of stagecraft that feels refreshingly transparent in an age of LED lighting and pre-recorded spectacle.
What makes Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat so engaging is its precision. Every choice feels deliberate. The jokes land because the structure is tight. The work never overstates its nostalgia or its commentary on creative scarcity, but both are there, simmering beneath the surface. Ultimately, Brebner captures something rare: that fleeting, combustible mix of embarrassment and pride that defines youth performance. Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat reminds us that the impulse to perform. To make something out of nothing, to share it and to risk looking foolish in the process.
Eat, Sleep, Dance, Repeat runs until Saturday 8 November, 2025.
Flat City Field Notes 