Graze at the Portlander

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by the lovely people at the Portlander to head in one freez­ing even­ing, along with a num­ber of Ins­tagram­mers, to feast on their new graz­ing concept. From our sig­na­ture long bone OP rib-eye presen­ted at your table, to our on the bone grass fed Sir­loin dry aged in house […]

Review: STOA

A stoa, in Greek archi­tec­ture, is a por­tico used as a prom­en­ade or meet­ing place. For the NZ School of Dance, it’s a place to bring people togeth­er for explor­ing new ideas and chal­lenges. Well, tech­nic­ally two places. We returned to our seats after inter­mis­sion only to be lured into a new space. (pro tip: […]

Five questions with Wanda Harland

Full dis­clos­ure: the Wel­ling­tonista is all about nepot­ism. So we thought it was about jolly time we sat down (well, emailed) our Martha, who has been a very import­ant part of the ‘ista since like 2006 at least (although she is much less of a bad influ­ence on us now than she used to be), […]

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: Meremere

Simply put, Meremere is a mem­oir come to life. I don’t feel qual­i­fied to ‘review’ the piece and the rich lay­ers of cul­ture, his­tory, iden­tity, and art con­tained with­in. It’s not quite dance, nor a film or a play – there’s a raw­ness that will appeal to those well-versed in the per­form­ing arts as much […]

Review: The Elixir of Love

Friends, plough­men and coun­try­men, you’re invited to the Elixir of Love, NZ Opera’s utterly mad­cap new cre­ation. Though my com­pan­ion and I were likely the young­est and the poorest in the audi­ence (opera con­tin­ues to be an art form seem­ingly gran­ted to those above a cer­tain age), it was a show that could be enjoyed […]

Preview: Meremere

Meremere is a power­ful and mov­ing per­form­ance in which dan­cer Rod­ney Bell (Ngāti Maniapoto) brings to life his incred­ible jour­ney; ran­ging from the highs of an inter­na­tion­al per­form­ance career to the lows of home­less­ness in Amer­ica to redemp­tion in the form of a return to Aotearoa and recon­nec­tion with his Māori and artist­ic her­it­age. It […]

Review: The Blender (Sundays with BaseJump Improv)

With a dash of insan­ity, a smidge of ridicu­lous­ness, and a lot of Wel­ling­to­ni­an wit, Base­Jump Improv’s new show The Blender is a wild ride for your Sunday even­ing. We don’t tend to see Sundays as a ‘going to theatre day’ but with a show run­ning at roughly forty-five minutes long, this piece is eas­ily man­age­able between […]

Naked girls. Reading. In Wellington.

In advance of Naked Girls Read­ing; the moth­er­hood edi­tion this Sat­urday at the Fringe Bar, I put a few ques­tions to its pro­du­cer, Hugo Grrrl. Okay, first off. Naked girls read­ing – what in the heck is this? And who are you? Naked Girls Read­ing is exactly what it sounds like – it’s com­pletely naked […]

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 […]