Two Pecha Kucha Nights

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few days feel­ing rather glum and not in much of a going-out mood. But there are a couple of Pecha Kucha Night events com­ing up in Wel­ling­ton this week­end that look pretty good – one with an arts theme, the oth­er with a sci­ence theme (includ­ing a […]

Profile: The mysterious guy behind Weird in Wellington

A few of us at the Wel­ling­tonista are fans of the TAWA-nom­in­ated Weird in Wel­ling­ton photo blog, a col­lec­tion of oddit­ies, curi­ous­it­ies and just real weird stuff out there in the city. So, using a trail of car­pet offcuts, I lured the mys­ter­i­ous fel­low behind the blog in to Wel­ling­tonista Towers, strapped him to the […]

Review: Long Cloud Youth Theatre

For the last few weeks, a group of bright young act­ors have been hard at work at the Long Cloud Youth Theatre’s sum­mer school work­shop. The sum­mer school attendees – aged from 16 to 21 – were split into two groups that pro­duced Daugh­ters of Heav­en and The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray. And these two […]

Review: Heat

Baby, it’s cold out­side. “Heat”, by New Zea­l­and play­wright Linda Chan­wai-Earle, returns to Wel­ling­ton after its 2008 debut at Bats. I did­n’t quite know what to expect of this icy Ant­arc­tic tale, but I ended up really enjoy­ing it, and found it sur­pris­ingly mov­ing. Set in an isol­ated research hut in Ant­arc­tica, it focuses on […]

Offbeat is on

When Off­beat Ori­gin­als mys­ter­i­ously and sud­denly closed last year, we were ter­ribly update. Back in Octo­ber, a sign sadly advised that the joint was “closed until fur­ther notice”. We did­n’t hold out much hope, nom­in­at­ing Off­beat in the Most Missed cat­egory at the TAWAs. But today Wellin­gonista Tom spot­ted this new sign: Reopen­ing Feb­ru­ary? Yay! […]

WordCamp

Word­Press is a kick-arse con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem. It’s what we use to power the Wel­ling­tonista, and many of us also use it on our per­son­al blogs. Word­Press is open source and has a lively com­munity of users, developers and gen­er­al fans, and it’s these sorts of people who will be com­ing togeth­er for the second […]

Review: Etiquette

A man and a woman sit across a table from one anoth­er at a Wel­ling­ton cafe. He’s mak­ing some­thing from a ball of Blu-tack, she’s draw­ing some­thing with chalk. The latest pro­duc­tion from Down­stage, Etiquette, does things a little dif­fer­ently. Gone is the famil­i­ar loc­a­tion of the Han­nah Play­house. Instead the action takes place at […]

The Indian job

Those of us around the Civic Square or water­front areas may have noticed a bit of a ker­fuffle involving a fleet of Minis hoon­ing where cars aren’t nor­mally allowed. This is, it turns out, part of a Wel­ling­ton-based shoot for the film “Play­ers”, a cheeky Bol­ly­wood remake of the Michael Caine clas­sic “The Itali­an Job”. […]

PhotoChop III

On this week at Thistle Hall is the bien­ni­al Pho­toChop exhib­i­tion, centred around the art of col­lage. It’s all about tak­ing the ordin­ary paper mater­i­als, and with scis­sors and glue, turn­ing it into some­thing new, with a selec­tion of fine works includ­ing repur­posed post­cards, a scen­ic Uruwera set­ting for Wil­lie Api­ata and a couple of […]

So long, Marbecks Cuba Mall

It looks like the Marbe­cks on Cuba Mall is clos­ing down, leav­ing the blessed Slow­boat and Real Groovy the only music shops in the area. It does­n’t really come as much of a sur­prise – record shops today seem to exist mainly for music nerds and CD-buy­ing grans. ’90s-style music shops like Marbe­cks are a […]