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 […]