Preview: House of Sand season – Pedal & Castles
I couldn’t see any of the House of Sand shows in the Fringe Festival this year so I’m really pleased that two of them – Pedal and Castles – are coming back to BATS Theatre this month. Castles won the SYNZ Award and was nominated in a number of other categories. I sent some questions to […]
It never rains…
…but it pours, especially in Porirua today, causing sudden flooding and serious disruption. I downloaded the hourly rainfall data from Greater Wellington’s site (a rather painful manual process, but a big improvement from not long ago, when you could only get the charts as static images) and put together a quick graph. Here are cumulative […]
Preview: The great maiden’s blush
From the makers of Hook, Line & Sinker and Taking the Waewae Express comes a new female-centred story rich in drama and emotion. Two first time mothers, Bunny (Miriama McDowell) and Aila (Renee Lyons) end up sharing a room in a post-natal ward after the birth of their babies. A precarious friendship develops between them as they face the challenges […]
Towards Tangi-te-Keo
Up the back of Newtown — past the hospital, past New Zealand’s first branch library, past the community display-window where the Conscientious Objectors’ memorials absent from Pukeahu Park quietly underscore ANZAC celebrations — runs a narrow path marking the spine of Tangi-te-Keo (later Mt Victoria). Māori knew the spine of Tangi-te-Keo as Te Ranga-a-Hiwi, the Ridge of […]
A new taonga for Ngā Taonga
The 2014 amalgamation of our Film, Television and Sound Archives into Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision saw its nomenclature justified this week with the unveiling of an aural taonga for the ages. On the 35th anniversary of Wellington Access Radio’s arrival on air, broadcast material dating back throughout the station’s lively history has been added […]
Review: The moa show
The Junction Hotel is pub in rural Thames. It’s fairly typical– a bar, a dart board, a smoking area, the regulars. There’s Henry Hikoi from Ngati Pukeko, Brian Tritt who’s in every day, and Carmichael. When the three of them start drinking together and talking about the moa in the hills they wake up in […]
Escarpment
Abandoned railway stations. Precarious swingbridges over precipitous chasms. Hidden valleys full of lush forest. Remnants of ancient kāinga. Those might not be what you’d expect from the recently-opened Paekakariki Escarpment track. I certainly expected rugged landscapes and magnificent views, and you get those in abundance, but there’s much more here to be discovered than you might imagine […]
Snapshots of Mount Victoria
A few photos I took as I walked the dog in the Mount Victoria town belt, and of the unveiling of a new living sculpture at the Innermost Gardens. “A Living Sculpture” On April 3rd, Grant Lyon’s sculpture “Yeah, Nah” was unveiled by Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown at the Innermost Gardens in Mount Victoria, at […]
Beggars belief
You may have seen yesterday’s DomPost story on begging, which trumpeted that the Council was “considering banning begging or fining good samaritans.” This generated much justified outrage, even though deeper into the article it became clearer that this was just one extreme option among a wide range of measures that had been considered after complaints from the public, […]
Review: The Sevens Sons of Supparath
The State of Supparath has been at war with the demon lord Krunk for ninety years. Finally they have captured him (it?). The seven states sit in judgement and sentence Krunk to a terrible punishment. In order to enact their decree they send the Seven Sons of Supparath across the seven sections of the state to […]