The Wellingtonista

Random stuff about Wellington since 2005

Kris

Review: Dance me to the end

by librarykris February 13, 2020

Director Carrie Thiel is seeking to “create connectivity using multimedia, motion capture and virtual reality technologies in a theatre setting.” Working with professional dancer Laura Jones, sound designer Chris Winter and 3D180 VR filmmaker Ed Davis, she’s brought together something that’s quite special.  The performance itself is short and is designed as a ‘proof of […]

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Review: STUPID BITCH wants a puppy

by librarykris February 12, 2020

This is a ‘tune up’ of 2018’s STUPID BITCH which played in a dance studio above Cuba Street in the Fringe Festival. As a work in development it garnered actor/writer Claire Waldron nominations for Outstanding Performer in the Wellington and Dunedin Fringe Festivals. This time around it’s at BATS Theatre in The Heyday Dome. Waldron […]

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Festival time!

by librarykris January 24, 2020

Late January 2020 and the summery weather is here. I finally feel like I’m waking up in 2020  – which is a bit awkward given I’ve been back at work for a few weeks…but enough about work!  Brace yourselves for a busy theatrical start to the year. We’ve got three Festivals coming our way in […]

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Preview: Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God

by librarykris September 6, 2019

‘Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God’ by Roland Schimmelpfennig is opening at Circa Theatre next week. A New Zealand premiere appropriate for our modern lives, this play examines colonialist attitudes over freshly baked bread, and discusses quarantines and vaccinations while sharing drinks – it’s irony, of a sort. Are we doing enough to help […]

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Review: Ideation

by librarykris July 1, 2019

A team of ‘management consultants’ are recalled from their project overseas in order to work on an urgent proposal. The question in front of them – if there was a deadly virus that killed the carrier and easily infected others, how would you contain it without alarming the community? As they start to work through […]

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Review: Digging to Cambodia

by librarykris June 14, 2019

Sarita So revisits her Toi Whakaari solo show, turning it onto a longer exploration of making memory and history telling. “Through words, movement and songs from Cambodia’s 1960’s rock era – Digging to Cambodia is a letter to her past, present and future self, it asks us all “What is worth remembering?”” So wears a […]

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Review: Windigo

by librarykris June 13, 2019

Wow, did I misunderstand the marketing for this show. “Fierce and visceral, Windigo resonates like a scream, the vibrant echo of a long history of hu-man ransacking and destruction, a violation of a land and its culture.” I went in bracing myself for the emotional equivalent of a hurricane. This is not that. For me, […]

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Review: The Weekend

by librarykris June 12, 2019

Lara has only the weekend to track down her partner as she traverses the world of public housing, drug dealing, and addiction. The Weekend is based on a situation that first time playwright that Henrietta Baird (from Kuku Yalanji/Yidinji country in Queensland’s Far North) experienced. From this she’s written an extremely funny, emotionally horrifying one-woman […]

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Review: Pōhutu

by librarykris June 7, 2019

Pōhutu is a multidimensional contemporary dance piece that thrives in liminal space. Drawing parallels between Choreographer Bianca Hyslop’s grandmother’s diagnosis of Alzheimers and the geothermal landscape she grew up in, it’s an unsettling and utterly beautiful work. The beginning and end sequences draw gasps from the audience. The middle sequences contain some of the most […]

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Review: Over My Dead Body: Little Black Bitch

by librarykris June 5, 2019

This is the world premiere of the play by Jason Te Mete. The script shared the Adam New Zealand Play Award for Best Play by a Māori Playwright in 2018. It is a theatrical representation of one way depression can manifest. It starts with a mihi from Te Mete (also director and musical director) welcoming […]

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