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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
You know when you tag on with a Snapper and the voice goes "PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO TAG OFF"? Well, duh.
Or when you tag on with less than $12 on your card – gasp! – and the voice goes "CARD VALUE LOW" in a tone that sounds really concerned for your financial wellbeing, like it wants to add "This has been happening for a while now. Oughtn’t you get some budgeting advice?"
Well, Snapper have realised that these voice alerts are kind of annoying and/or unnecessary; and that we as public transport users have learned how the magical fish box works, so they’re updating the Snapper sounds.
Here’s a handy table of the changes:
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That’s right – the Snapper boxes will now go beedoo beedoo beedoobie diddly doo.
And not only that, it’s also going to be a lot quicker to tag on. No waiting for the previous passenger’s tag-on message to play before you can tag on.
Go Wellington buses will be updated with the new beeps and sounds from this Friday evening, 9 April.
And there’s a comprehensive post about the changes over at the Snapper blog.
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.