WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand International Arts Festival: Peter Brook makes his New Zealand debut with Eleven and Twelve. Wellington is the fourth city after Paris, London and Wroclaw to get a look at the piece, which builds on Brook's 2004 Tierno Bokar, about a Sufi mystic by that name. Also from Poland is T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T., Grzegorz Jarzyna of TR Warszawa's music-driven adaptation of the Pasolini film Theorem. New Zealand standouts include Miria George and Jamie McCaskill's He Reo Aroha, which weaves Maori music into a tale of childhood sweethearts; and 360, which inverts theatre-in-the-round, putting the audience on swivel seats surrounded by the play's action, so that they must choose which direction to look.

For extra immersion, look to a returning production from 2008, APOLLO 13: Mission Control. Tricked out in 1970s details, the set includes 1,200 flashing lights and 100 powder-coated steel computer consoles, equipped with rotary phones. Seated at these stations, the audience must guide to Earth the famously stranded astronauts. This is the third play by Wellington-based HACKMAN, and the audience-interaction component has been such a hit that the group is reportedly developing another production along these lines for next year. It all began when co-creators Kip Chapman and Brad Knewstubb toured the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "It felt like being on a movie set—but we weren't allowed to touch anything," Chapman remembers. "Our idea for the play was to give people the feeling that they had waked up in a blockbuster film with the actors talking to them." Just how much can the audience affect the outcome of the show? "At one point," says Chapman, "all the actors storm off stage, leaving the audience completely alone in Mission Control. It's right at this moment when the astronauts start to be poisoned by the CO2 buildup and have to figure out what to do." He adds, "So far each group has brought the astronauts home safely, though one day we may not be so lucky." They're about to find out if New Zealanders are the only ones cool-headed enough to pull it off, as the show prepares to travel. "Our three-year goal is to tour the U.S.," Chapman says. "We can't wait to bring the story back to the land where it all began." (Feb. 26—Mar. 21; (64) 4-473-0149; www.nzfestival.nzpost.co.nz)

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Short + Sweet: Imagine you could see all this in one festival: a man recapping his three years of incarceration at Guantanamo; a treatise on female hormones; a love triangle starring Nietzsche; a scene played between two toothbrushes; a parable about war with fruit standing in for missiles; plus plays by Caryl Churchill and Edward Albee. Now, imagine you could see all that in one hour. If you're saying, "That's impossible!"—well, you're right. It would actually take an hour and 10 minutes.

There's only one rule at Short + Sweet, which is presenting its 1,000th Australian theatre piece this month in Sydney: "We are the only festival in the world, that I know of, that is strict—and I mean very strict—on having a 10-minute limit," says artistic director Alex Broun. "It's a contract with our audiences. If there's something on stage that you are not enjoying, it will be gone in 10 minutes." Broun suggests the time limit is Short + Sweet's secret to quality as well as variety: "Writers must value every word, directors every moment, and actors every breath."

Churchill and Albee (whose Seven Jewish Children and The Sandbox, respectively, fit the time requirement) aren't the only non-Aussies to get stage time—typically more than a third of Short + Sweet pieces are from writers in other countries. Plus, there are smaller offshoots of the festival in Auckland, New Zealand (also this month); Singapore (this month and next); and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (June). Come late summer and fall, there are Australian editions in Canberra, the Central Coast of New South Wales and Melbourne. And that doesn't even count the spin-offs focusing on musicals, dance, youth theatre and cabaret, or Broun's plans to plant the Short + Sweet flag in London, Paris and New York.

Sydney is where it all started, and still the biggest manifestation, drawing more than 10,000 spectators and some 700 artists. In a city with no fringe festival of its own, Broun proudly describes his event as "an entire fringe festival happening in one venue in one night"—over and over again, for seven weeks. "When the lights go down," he promises, "you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen next." (Jan. 6—Feb. 21; (61) 2-9519-5081; www.shortandsweet.org)

PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Perth International Arts Festival: Heads up! When Perth kicks off its arts fest, 60 of its citizens will participate in welcoming ceremonies 230 feet above the ground. The opening performance was devised by Spain's ambitious La Fura dels Baus, which in addition to its body of text-based work has become known for grand-scale celebratory spectacles at such events as the 1992 Olympics and the millennium celebrations in Barcelona. The program boasts several top-tier touring productions, including a 2008 West End standout: an updated, video-spiked version of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author by Rupert Goold and Ben Power of Headlong Theatre. Australian festival premieres include Deckchair Theatre with an adaptation of the Robert Drewe novel Grace, and Tom Holloway's Love Me Tender—co-produced by Thinice, Company B Belvoir and Griffin Theatre Company in association with the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art—which combines the framework of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis with the events of Black Saturday (Feb. 7, 2009), on which the worst brushfires in Australian history devastated the southeastern state of Victoria and killed nearly 200 people. (Feb. 5—March 1; (61) 8-6488-2000; www.perthfestival.com.au)

MADRID, SPAIN

Escena Contemporanea: "A Look at the Other" and "Optimism" are the themes in the 10th year of this festival of contemporary stagecraft, for which nearly two dozen companies were selected for their unconventional or multidisciplinary approach to performance. Cirque Ici (the one-man circus of Johann Le Guillerm) and a dance program by Shantala Shivalingappa (an Indian dancer based in Paris who gained notice for her work with the late Pina Bausch) are among those who will bring their talents to bear. As part of an ongoing "Author Cycle," the work of British playwright David Hare gets special attention this year. And the festival will continue to provide a platform for young Spanish artists and companies such as Madrid's own La Tristura, founded a few years ago by four twentysomethings who met at the city's Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático. (Jan. 18—Feb. 14; (34) 91-532-72-44; www.escenacontemporanea.com)