If my calculations are correct, the New Zealand International Comedy Festival should be going on as you read these very words. The comedy festival is, like so many events on the Wellington cultural calendar, so routinely wonderful and electric that it is easy to take it for granted. Every year for more than two weeks this […]
Ever since I took over this column in early 2012, I feel like everything I have written has come with the subtext of coming change. Much as we love it, Wellington’s theatre scene has been on shaky ground, mired in shifting sands for quite a while now. There always seemed to be a shadow just […]
There is a question that has been rattling round my head: why is it that cinephiles can so happily and publicly admit to the adoration of children’s films — half of Pixar and Ghibli’s market seems to be grown-ups splattering the world with acclaim that they’re more than just kiddie fodder — and yet theatregoers […]
Circa Theatre has had an odd handful of years. The whole environment around the arts has shifted, and audiences with it. Circa’s greatest skill has always been knowing its audience and what they want, so these shifting soils did not disturb it, but simply threw it into an invigorating era of experimentation. The theatre allowed […]
Some define art by saying that it is everything done without material purpose. Even ignoring the fact that this codifies the darkest corners of the Internet as art, this view is provably false. Art is not done without purpose; art is done for validation. There is nothing more material, more tangible, than the desperate, […]
There is a long history of solo shows in this country. From the early iconic works of Bruce Mason — shows he would perform himself up and down the country, like End of the Golden Weather — through to Indian Ink, a company at times not defined by how universally people love their solo shows […]
One of the least productive things going on in the current cultural conversation is the idea that the arts and the sciences need to be separate. A lot of this seems to be rooted in the belief that arts solely exist to entertain (or at the very least distract), and the sciences solely exist to […]
I shouldn’t have to tell you that this year marks the centennial of the start of the First World War. The well-recorded and tragic involvement of many men from New Zealand means that we are sure to see, over the next four years, many retellings and reinterpretations of this ‘Great War’ across all media in […]
There are many advantages to writing for the stage. The feedback of a live audience is direct and often undeniable. It is easier, at least if you’re not looking to be paid, to get a play performed than a book published or a film produced. As theatre, in most cases, is a communal creative process, […]
In Wellington we are very good at venerating the comedians we’ve raised and gifted to the world. We are quick to remind people that without Wellington the world wouldn’t have Dai Henwood, Taika Waititi or Flight of the Conchords. They are inscribed on our cultural memory. It’s interesting then, since we dwell so much on […]
