Author: Robyn

Review: Mark Twain and Me in Maoriland

In 1895, an elder­ly, ill Mark Twain embarked on a world lec­ture tour, in order to earn enough mon­ey to pay back the $100,000 debt he held. The tour took him down under, includ­ing a vis­it to Whanganui. And it’s this event that Mark Twain and Me in Mao­ri­land takes its inspi­ra­tion from.

After its pre­miere at the New Zealand Fes­ti­val of the Arts ear­li­er this year, the play returns for a short run at Down­stage.

The play sup­pos­es that Mr Twain took a rather more active role in local pol­i­tics, inflam­ming the Pake­ha, and both pro-Euro­pean and anti-Euro­pean Maori alike.

But this is no staid his­toric dra­ma. The play has lash­ings of te reo Maori — some­times trans­lat­ed, oth­er times not, but you’re clever so you can fig­ure it out from the con­text. And there’s a pleas­ing amount of song and music, with Mr Twain strap­ping on an elec­tric gui­tar at one point, to join in on a blues num­ber.

Play­wright David Geary’s inno­v­a­tive script has moments of high com­e­dy, yet with the pow­er to get right down into some real­ly grit­ty emo­tion­al moments. But what I real­ly enjoyed the most was how New Zealand this play is. I’m sure all the places Twain vis­it­ed on his 1895 tour have their own sto­ries to tell (or make up), but it’s just real­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see an inven­tive, enter­tain­ing play like this that’s come out of New Zealand.

• Mark Twain and Me in Mao­ri­land
  Down­stage The­atre until 24 July

Review: Mauritius

I tried stamp col­lect­ing when I was younger. It end­ed some­what dis­as­trous­ly when I got bored with the gummed hinges used to afix stamps to the album pages and instead switched to PVA glue. My grand­fa­ther would not have been so proud of me.

And it’s anoth­er phi­lat­el­ic pop­pa that’s at the cen­tre of Cir­ca The­atre’s new play Mau­ri­tius. It tells the tale of New York half-sis­ters Jack­ie (Danielle Mason) and Mary (Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford) and the stamp col­lec­tion that belonged to Mary’s grand­fa­ther. And in that stamp col­lec­tion is the extreme­ly rare and extreme­ly valu­able Mau­ri­tius “Post Office” stamps.

Checking out the checkins

Since loca­tion-based social media web­site Foursquare became avail­able in here in Novem­ber last year, iWelling­to­ni­ans have tak­en to it with enthu­si­asm.

But, you may find your­self won­der­ing, with all the check­ing-in going on, just where it is that all these iPhone-wield­ing hip­ster geeks are going?

Well, web­site Map.pr is able to cal­cu­late a list of the top 20 Welling­ton loca­tions, based on high­est num­bers of Foursquare check­ins:

Review: Te Radar’s Eating The Dog

Te Radar’s show Eat­ing The Dog has the hypoth­e­sis that New Zealand’s his­to­ry and nation­al char­ac­ter have been shaped by all the crazy fools out there, hav­ing ill-fat­ed adven­tures, mak­ing things that don’t quite work, and gen­er­al­ly get­ting a bit car­ried away.

Eat­ing The Dog is a slideshow at heart, but the selec­tion of sub­jects and Te Radar’s enthu­si­as­tic deliv­ery make it more than just a bunch of old pho­tos. It’s like vis­it­ing a provin­cial muse­um and get­ting a guid­ed tour from a fel­low who shows you all the weird objects out the back and tells you all the good sto­ries.

And I get the feel­ing that a show like this would­n’t be pos­si­ble with­out the excel­lent online col­lec­tions avail­able via the Nation­al Library. In fact, I’d love to see more inter­est­ing pho­tos and sto­ries from the archives pre­sent­ed in such an inter­est­ing way.

About halfway through the show, I was hit with a sud­den real­i­sa­tion — there are no women in Te Radar’s sto­ries. A few wives are men­tioned, but all the main char­ac­ters are men.

Te Radar did address this. He swears he looked for some inter­est­ing wom­en’s sto­ries to include in the show, but it turned out that all the peo­ple doing bloody stu­pid stuff in the old­en days were men. Or, at least that’s how his­to­ry records it.

But based on the wide range of bloody stu­pid con­tem­po­rary hand­crafts show­cased on com­e­dy web­site Regret­sy, I sus­pect that look­ing back at the hand­crafts of New Zealand’s pio­neer women would reveal a com­e­dy gold­mine.

Minding your Manners

There was a bit of a ruckus on Vic­to­ria Street yes­ter­day, when anti-Man­ners Street, pro-Man­ners Mall pro­test­er Ben­jamin Eas­t­on start­ed smash­ing up the road with a sledge­ham­mer.

The inci­dent drew a large crowd, who watched as the police arrest­ed him. One of the bystanders — a Dom­Post reporter — filmed the inci­dent, and the video is avail­able to view on Stuff.

Watch as police­men with shields and a police­manette with a Taser do their best to dis­arm the self-described “polit­i­cal busker”.

The busi­fi­ca­tion of Man­ners Mall is prov­ing to be good enter­tain­ment val­ue.

Locals and Tourists

Eric Fish­er has been geomap­ping Flickr pho­tos of cities around the world. He tracks the loca­tions of pho­tos tak­en by locals (blue) and tourist­s/out-of-town­ers (red). This is what Welling­ton looks like:

There are notice­able tourist areas around Te Papa, Mt Vic­to­ria look­out and Par­lia­ment. Tourists and locals are both dom­i­nant along Courte­nay Place, Cuba Street, Lambton Quay and the water­front. Aro Val­ley gets a locals-only burst of blue, as do Te Aro streets off the gold­en mile.

The New York ver­sion of this has been tout­ed as a way for locals to avoid tourists, but the way Welling­ton’s com­pact geog­ra­phy works, there’s real­ly nowhere to run. And besides, our tourists are quite nice.

Click though for a look at the big­ger Welling­ton pho­to, and if you have any obser­va­tions (or cor­rec­tions of my notes!), share them here.

Maranui v2

It’s a cold, rainy Tues­day after­noon in the first day of win­ter. Why, it’s a per­fect day to go to the beach!

The occa­sion is the first day of busi­ness for the back-from-the-dead Maranui Cafe. After being dam­aged in a fire last year, escap­ing the threat of demo­li­tion and man­ag­ing to keep not just the build­ing intact but also the busi­ness, the cafe has been reborn, like a phoenix ris­ing from a pile of cof­fee grounds and sand.

While there’s still a lit­tle bit of work going on in the rest of the build­ing, the cafe is well open for busi­ness. It’s much like the old cafe, only with a fresh, shinier feel to it.

One mas­sive improve­ment is the sound-absorb­ing ceil­ing, which helps cut down the Sat­ur­day morn­ing echo cham­ber of doom ambi­ence old Maranui was noto­ri­ous for.

The new kitchen is bright, white, tiled and with one of the bet­ter views offered by a cafe kitchen in Welling­ton, is back in full effect. The staff seemed busy and buzzy and they have every rea­son to be.

The cheer­ful inte­ri­or was a per­fect place to be on such a crap­py win­ter day (espe­cial­ly after a tor­tu­ous­ly slow bus trip over on the #3), com­plete with a view of the tru­ly mis­er­able, grey Lyall Bay, that seemed to say, “Oh hai guyz. I’m a surf beach. Let’s go surfin’!!! Lol”. (Man, Lyall Bay is a dick.)

It’s real­ly good that Maranui Cafe is back. It’s quite dif­fer­ent from your stan­dard Welling­ton Cafe, and come sum­mer, the place will sure­ly be jam-packed.

But the best thing about the new Maranui — the all-impor­tant Maranui SLC vis­i­tors’ sign-in book is charred and smoky from the fire.

Pecha Kucha 7

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha evening.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, a Pecha Kucha evening con­sists of a num­ber of speak­ers who present 20 slides, talk­ing about each slide for 20 sec­onds each.

The details:
Mon­day, 19 April 2010
Down­stage The­atre, Cam­bridge Ter­race
Doors open: 6.30pm, start: 7.30pm
$9 cash door­sales only

This one is going to be awe­some for two rea­sons:

1. It will incor­po­rate the set for Down­stage’s cur­rent pro­duc­tion, “Biog­ra­phy of my Skin”, which fea­tures a giant video screen — per­fect for PK pre­sen­ta­tions.

2. The Welling­ton­ista’s own Tom will be one of the speak­ers! Yes, our Tom will be giv­ing a talk “about a sen­tence by Baude­laire”. What is that sen­tence? Well, you’ll have to come along to find out, etc.

After the jump, the full line-up.

Dialogues with Tomorrow

We’re not sure if sci­ence is the new rock ’n’ roll, but art and sci­ence are com­ing togeth­er in Dia­logues with Tomor­row, a series of col­lab­o­ra­tive talks over the next cou­ple of months:

DIALOGUES WITH TOMORROW places artists in con­ver­sa­tion with sci­en­tists, busi­ness peo­ple and thinkers on themes relat­ing to cli­mate change. In each ses­sion, an artist or cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor presents ideas and work inspired by envi­ron­men­tal issues. A response is pro­vid­ed by an expert in the field, fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion that brings togeth­er the knowl­edge, ideas and reac­tions of the speak­ers.

The first talk is next Thurs­day, April 15, 5.45pm at Down­stage The­atre. Called Antarc­ti­ca Ter­ra Nul­lius?, it looks at art’s role in giv­ing us a new under­stand­ing of Antarc­ti­ca. Tick­ets are $15 and can be booked at Down­stage.

Check out the full pro­gramme here — there’s a fine selec­tion of speak­ers and top­ics.