Lōemis Festival’s Harmonic Tree

The Har­mon­ic Tree is a new art­work / music­al instru­ment resem­bling an exot­ic plant, with steel strings, per­cuss­ive fruit and ber­ries. Beneath the sur­face it houses an array of audio effects pro­cessors, all adjustable by tend­ing to twigs, branches and oth­er parts of the tree, enabling an oper­at­or to cre­ate elec­troacous­tic sound­scapes. The Har­mon­ic Tree was […]

That’s All She Wrote – Review

I’ve  found myself in a very lovely, very priv­ileged, and deeply uncom­fort­able space.  I’ve seen three pre­vi­ous Red Scare Theatre Com­pany shows, and I’ve genu­inely loved them all.  I will have to enlist one of my ‘Ista com­rades to review their shows in future, to pre­clude claims of bias and shame­less fangirl­ing. Each of those […]

A Definitive Ranking of Some of Wellington’s Most Cursed Locations

Cursed places. You might be famil­i­ar with them. Places you walk into and it feels like there’s ghosts, places that are a bit spooky or a bit weird or send a chill up your spine. To put it more col­lo­qui­ally – bad vibes. A place does­n’t have to be dilap­id­ated to be cursed – I […]

Review – The Dunstan Creek Haunting

“This is the true story of two trav­el­ling car­nies who devel­op an obses­sion with the occult, expos­ing and explain­ing the paranor­mal.” Liz­zie Tolle­mache and Dav­id Lad­der­man listen to their audi­ence.  It makes sense as per­formers who’ve worked with cir­cus, cab­aret, and vari­ety around the world…  so much of those skills rely on the audi­ence invest­ing […]

Review: Water

Based on the true story of Carl Hans Lody, a WW1 Ger­man Spy. He was caught then executed inthe Tower of Lon­don four months into World War I. This new play, from award-win­n­ing writer, Mark Langham, centres Lody’s story and his reas­ons for becom­ing a spy. Steph­en Lloyd-Coombs is a per­son­able and charm­ing Lody. Around […]

Review: Why are we still here?

Four women on the run break into an aban­doned theatre to shel­ter from a ter­rible storm. The group’s lead­er, Benny, is the first to notice they’re not alone – there are two oth­ers in the build­ing. It takes the group of women a little while to dis­cov­er that the ‘oth­ers’ are ghosts but by then […]

WOAP 2018: Forage Kitchen + Bar

I’ve lived in cent­ral Wel­ling­ton for more than five years and had no idea there was a hotel on The Ter­race behind Wil­lis Street, nestled just over a dark res­id­en­tial hill. The more you know.  A few weeks back, I got to sample the WOAP fest­iv­al menu of the hotel res­taur­ant, For­age Kit­chen + Bar, […]

Review: TRASH GLAM DRAG SLAM

Long Cloud Youth Theatre ensemble, under the dir­ec­tion of Brett Adam, present an enter­tain­ing show about power and gender. The script was cre­ated from their hon­est dis­cus­sions about their responses to cur­rent world events and inter­views with fam­ily, friends, and people on the street. Vari­ous scen­ari­os dis­cuss­ing sex­ism, slut sham­ing, gender ste­reo­types, peer pres­sure and […]

Review: Beneath skin and bone

Poto Man­awa has a new flat. She took a quick trip to pick up a few things from her Mum’s place…and now her rel­at­ives won’t stop phoning her. They want her to come to a whānau hui. She’s reluct­ant to return to the homestead although she can’t quite remem­ber why. Until Paia comes along to […]

Review: The Atom Room

150 years into the future Sarah and Danny meet, fall in love, and get mar­ried in a Wel­ling­ton dev­ast­ated by earth­quakes, cli­mate change, and the effects of a dis­tant nuc­le­ar explo­sion. Then their careers sep­ar­ate them by dis­tance – Danny in Wel­ling­ton work­ing to save the Earth, Sarah on Mars work­ing to cre­ate a new […]