Review: Three days in the country

Set against the back­drop of 1850’s Rus­sia. Serfs (aka slaves) still work the land under the estate holder’s con­trol.  Reform is com­ing and the coun­try is rest­less. Rakitin is vis­it­ing his friend Arkady at his coun­try estate.  Arkady’s wife Nat­a­lya is recov­er­ing from her ill­ness. Their son Kolya, and their ward Vera, are spend­ing time […]

Preview: Kia Mau Festival

New Zealand’s only con­tem­por­ary indi­gen­ous theatre and dance event Kia Mau Fest­iv­al returns to Wel­ling­ton from Fri­day 2 – Sat­urday 24 June. It’s a unique and innov­at­ive oppor­tun­ity for whānau and com­munit­ies across the Wel­ling­ton region to engage with today’s tangata when­ua and First Nations artists from across the globe. Led by Wellington’s own Māori and Pasi­fika theatre […]

BATS fundraiser preview ‑White Rabbit Red Rabbit

BATS is bring­ing the “auda­cious the­at­ric­al exper­i­ment“ White Rab­bit Red Rab­bit to Wel­ling­ton for a fun­drais­ing sea­son.  Writ­ten by Ira­ni­an play­wright Nas­sim Solei­man­pour, the play premiered in 2011 and has since been trans­lated into 20 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. There are no rehears­als, no dir­ect­or, a dif­fer­ent act­or each per­form­ance, and a script wait­ing in a sealed […]

DCM Bookfair dates & donations

The day of  the 2017 DCM Book­fair is Set. Set aside time for book for­aging on Sat­urday August 5th from 8am till 8pm, at Shed 6 in Queens Wharf. Want to donate books to DCM’s Book­fair on 5 August? This week, is your last chance to donate books because there is a strong like­li­hood DCM may have […]

Review: Olive Copperbottom

Penny Ashton presents a new music­al inspired by the writ­ings of Charles Dick­ens as part of Com­edy Fest­iv­al 2017. Olive, a beau­ti­ful vir­tu­ous orphan, teaches the young­er orphans at Mrs Sour­tart’s squal­id orphan­age in exchange for a place to live. Her suit­or, Edward Good­sort, was reclaimed from the same estab­lish­ment by his moneyed fam­ily and now lives […]

Shape of the Suburbs

Last week­end a friend asked on Twit­ter wheth­er any­one had made a New Zea­l­and equi­val­ent of this poster of Lon­don bor­oughs, which took the out­lines of the bor­oughs out of con­text by arran­ging them alpha­bet­ic­ally while keep­ing them to the same scale. This revealed both the weird­ness of some of the shapes, and the strik­ing […]

Win a double pass to the 2017 Food Show in Wellington!

We’ve writ­ten before about the Food Show and how it’s basic­ally Rex Man­ning Day for people who like to try lots of food and taste a lot of wine. If you’re look­ing for ways to fire up your cre­at­ive juices in the kit­chen, look no fur­ther. The Food Show Wel­ling­ton is on at West­pac Sta­di­um […]

Preview: LUX festival

The con­tain­ers are start­ing to appear on the wharf – the LUX light fest­iv­al is back and opens Fri­day night! Fest­iv­al dir­ect­or Mary Laine says they’re explor­ing some new ways of doing things. The fest­iv­al grows big­ger each year so this year they’re exper­i­ment­ing with five dis­tinct themes. By focus­ing five pre­cincts on par­tic­u­lar types of work […]

Wrap battles: Nam D vs Wraps & Rolls

There’s been an explo­sion of Viet­namese places to eat in Wel­ling­ton in recent years and we are def­in­itely not com­plain­ing about that. But with so many options, how do you choose where to go? For this post, I’m going to com­pare two places that are right by each oth­er on The Ter­race. Both are around […]

Review: Onstage Dating

In the age of ‘swip­ing right’ and ‘real­ity’ dat­ing shows, the concept of live onstage dat­ing by far provides more enter­tain­ment. Bron Bat­ten so bril­liantly proved this on her open­ing night of Onstage Dat­ing. In this show, there’s no oppor­tun­ity to accept or reject based on appear­ances and no pro­du­cers or edit­ors decid­ing on the […]