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.