Author: Robyn

Wellington Pecha Kucha Night #6

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha Night, where cre­ative peo­ple of Welling­ton will each give a short talk — with 20 slides each at 20 sec­onds per slide.

It’s TONIGHT — Mon­day 19 Octo­ber, at the love­ly Down­stage The­atre. Doors open at 6.30pm, with the event start­ing at 7.30. It’s $9 admis­sion — cash only.

Tonight’s line-up:

Ralph Johns — land­scape archi­tect
Meena Kadri — design lecturer/communications strategist/researcher
Philippe Cam­pays — architect/artist
Sarah Max­ey — graph­ic designer/artist
Andy Irv­ing — artist/designer
Hilary Beat­on — Down­stage The­atre
Troy Dono­van — facade design­er
James M. Mad­dock
Mar­garet Austin
Craig Nichol­son — inter­cul­tur­al­ist
She­ba Williams — artist
George Hajian — graph­ic design­er
Meighan Ellis — artist
James Everett — game design­er
Ali­son Wong — novelist/poet

Review: Biography of My Skin

Miran­da Har­court’s new one-woman play “Biog­ra­phy of My Skin” has just opened at Down­stage, and, crikey, it’s good. My co-the­atre-goer Kowhai and I have spent a bit of time since dis­cussing its impact on us.

The premise of “Biog­ra­phy of my Skin” is that it’s a one-woman bio­graph­i­cal play writ­ten for actress Miran­da Har­court by her hus­band, Stu­art McKen­zie. So she’s telling her sto­ry, but in her hus­band’s words. Clever, huh?

Day Tripper

Some­times it takes the eyes of a vis­i­tor to shed a new light on the ordi­nary.

Fer­nan­do Ramierez is a Chilean pho­tog­ra­ph­er who’s been spend­ing a bit of time trav­el­ling around Welling­ton bus­es using the Daytrip­per tick­et.

He start­ed notic­ing the oth­er pas­sen­gers on the bus, and began talk­ing to them and pho­tograph­ing them. This lead to his Daytrip­per pho­to essay series.

[I] soon real­ized that Welling­ton is a beau­ti­ful city not just because of the great archi­tec­ture. It’s a beau­ti­ful city because of its peo­ple. Real­ly kind, they let a com­plete stranger approach, take pho­tos, learn about their lives and hope for the best.

Scoop has some pho­tos online and also the pho­to essay avail­able as a PDF. And there’s also Fer­nan­do’s Flickr group with the pho­tos.

Review: Good Night — The End

For the last cou­ple of weeks, Welling­ton has been teased with the sight of grim reapers going about their busi­ness around the city. These hood­ed folk were pro­mot­ing the new play “Good Night — The End”, which has recent­ly opened at Down­stage.  Writ­ten by the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Jo Ran­der­son, the play looks at a group of three grim reapers (and their zesty Ital­ian admin­is­tra­tor), just spend­ing time in their break room between reap­ing.

And like most peo­ple, the stuff that gets dis­cussed on breaks is often noth­ing to do with their work. So instead it’s argu­ments about doing the dish­es, using all the Milo, and Cheezels, pies, piz­zas and hash browns, com­ing across as an unruly mix of between The Office, passiveaggressivenotes.com, Big Broth­er and a bit of the Mighty Boosh thrown in for good mea­sure.

Google Maps

A cou­ple of cool new fea­tures have arrived at Google Maps.

First, the images used in the satel­lite tiles have been updat­ed, and with images of a high­er res­o­lu­tion so you can zoom in right down to the small­est click on the slidey thing.

The old images pre-dat­ed the bypass, so it’s good to see more up-to-date images.

Also, the images appear to have been tak­en on a bright sun­ny day and the city looks absolute­ly gor­geous.

View Larg­er Map

Sec­ond thing is Google Tran­sit, which lets you plan jour­neys using pub­lic trans­port (click on Get Direc­tions in Google Maps).

Welling­ton is the first city in Aus­trala­sia to have Google Tran­sit, as report­ed in this envi­ous arti­cle in the Her­ald.

Alan’s already had a bit of a play with it:

Review: Whero’s New Net

Whero’s New Net, by Albert Belz, is a play inspired by The New Net Goes Fish­ing, Witi Ihi­maer­a’s 1977 col­lec­tion of short sto­ries look­ing at the expe­ri­ences of rur­al Maori mov­ing to the cities.

This play takes the idea for­ward to the next gen­er­a­tion, look­ing at Whero (played by Bree Peters), a young Maori woman liv­ing in Lon­don and try­ing to make a break as a singer-song­writer. She’s rather good, but a lit­tle ner­vous and some­what over­shad­owed by Red, her con­fi­dent, glam­orous musi­cal part­ner.

Whero is sup­port­ed by her Irish man­ag­er and his boyfriend, also urban Maori. All is going well, when Whero meets a mys­te­ri­ous stranger — an East Coast Maori ful­la who has the diary of her deceased father.

And it’s there that things get inter­est­ing, with Whero hav­ing to deal with aspects of her fam­i­ly’s past, her present and the pres­sures of the future.

Another reason to love Wellington

We’ve always known that Welling­ton is a warm glow­ing love­fest of pinko lib­er­al left­ies. And no mat­ter what your feel­ings are on the ambigu­ous­ly word­ed opin­ion poll cit­i­zens-ini­ti­at­ed ref­er­en­dum on kid-hit­ting, look­ing at the spe­cif­ic results of the Welling­ton elec­torates is pret­ty inter­est­ing.

As it hap­pens, as of Fri­day night, the top two elec­torates in New Zealand with the high­est per­cent­age of ‘yes’ votes are Welling­ton Cen­tral (35.9%) and Ron­go­tai (29.22%), and Ohar­iu isn’t too far behind with 19.73%.

The oth­er big pock­ets of ‘yes’ are found in Auck­land Cen­tral (28.84%) and Mt Albert (22.67%).

So if you’re feel­ing a lit­tle let down by the over­all ref­er­en­dum result, a lit­tle com­fort can be found in know­ing that Welling­ton is still ace.

Review: Le Sud

If you’ve vis­it­ed Akaroa, you’ll know how the li’l Can­ter­bury vil­lage prides itself on its French­ness. See, it was found­ed by the French.

Dave Arm­strong’s new play “Le Sud” takes the idea of the French in Aotearoa a few steps fur­ther — ce qui si le français avait colonisé l’Île du Sud?

Uh, I mean, what if the French colonised the South Island?

The com­e­dy is set at a polit­i­cal meet­ing, with the Kiwi-as North Zealan­ders pay­ing a vis­it to their Gal­lic south­ern neigh­bours to see about buy­ing some of that elec­tric­i­ty they have an abun­dance of.

We meet the sleazy South Zealand prime min­is­ter, his les­bion­ique deputy, and their min­is­ter of native affairs, who’ll do any­thing for a dol­lar. Or a franc. And if you’ve learned a bit of French in school, you’ll be able to feel clever through­out their open­ing dia­logue en français.

The North Zealand team are lead by the good ol’ Kiwi bloke PM, and his coali­tion part­ners — a very left-wing Maori woman and a very ACT-like young dude.

The sto­ry man­ages to be quite naughty at times — much more naughty than you’d get on the tel­ly — and the cast are bril­liant with both the ver­bal and phys­i­cal com­e­dy.

I will also praise the bold, effec­tive cos­tumes by Nic Smil­lie. It’s kind of nice know­ing that New Zealand polit­i­cal cul­ture can be summed up in three well cho­sen suits.

And when all this comes togeth­er, Dave Arm­strong’s pen of lolz man­ages to skew­er French, Kiwi, Maori and polit­i­cal cul­ture, throw in a bit of sex farce (Oh-haw-haw! Baguette!), and pro­duce a real­ly fun, fun­ny play.

“Le Sud” plays at Down­stage until August 22.

Review: Strike Sessions with Adam Page

Strike Ses­sion with Adam Page is about halfway through its run at Down­stage. Strike is a long-stand­ing New Zealand-based per­cus­sion group, and they’ve teamed up with Ade­laide mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Adam Page for this show. 

After the jump, kumaras, mir­im­bas and old car parts.