Duffy Theatre has been touring New Zealand schools for more than 25 years. Two troupes crisscross the country each year, performing to Duffy schools nationwide. It’s one of the longest-running, and popular, aspects of the Duffy programme.

A story built by Duffy kids

Before a script is ever written, the Duffy Theatre team visits schools and workshops ideas directly with Duffy kids, what they’re into, what they’re dealing with, what’s actually on their minds that year. The show gets built around that.

That’s why it lands, it’s a story shaped by kids, for kids. And it turns reading from an abstract idea into something that feels real and the lives and experiences characters have feel achievable.

Caleb Teaupa remembers exactly what that felt like from the audience, long before he ever joined the cast. He was a Duffy kid in Wellsford, sitting in a hall just like this one. “I remember loving the Duffy shows. The best part,” he says. Read his full journey, from Duffy kid to Duffy Theatre, to see where that feeling took him.

The link back to the books

Duffy Theatre is built to connect straight back to what the programme is actually about: gifting kids’ books to own and encouraging them to want to read for pleasure.

A show that makes a story feel exciting does the same job a good book does, it makes a child want to know what happens next. That’s the whole loop Duffy is built around. A book a child chooses, owns, and wants to come back to. Again and again.

Caleb put it simply: reading, for him, is tied to comprehension, to critical thinking, to understanding why a story is told the way it is. Those are the same skills Duffy Theatre is quietly building in every Duffy kid watching from the floor of the hall, well before they’re old enough to notice it’s happening.