Notional Significance: Yellow Earth

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] Wind-hur­ried rain­drops pelt against the Shade­house roof, which provides but mea­gre shel­ter as I wait out the passing shower. Cold droplets des­cend through green air into the expect­ant foliage, main­tain­ing a humid atmo­sphere to feed a pteridomaniac’s wet dream. In a fern-fevered nation this is an orgy of pat­ri­ot­ic sym­bols, […]

Back to REALITi

Jonath­an King and Chad Taylor’s micro-budget film REAL­ITi, which deb­uted at last year’s Film Fest­iv­al, is now avail­able for paid stream­ing or down­load on Vimeo On Demand. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/realiti/137721192 A dark thrill­er set in the very near future, REAL­ITi was shot in and around Wel­ling­ton. One strik­ing aspect (at least for me) was the invent­ive use it made of […]

Black Dog Relief – A Cabaret for Robbie Tripe

On Sunday 6th Septem­ber at San Fran, in a one night only per­form­ance to raise money and aware­ness for the Men­tal Health Found­a­tion, Wellington’s per­form­ing arts fra­tern­ity band togeth­er to hon­our a beloved friend and col­league. This trib­ute is their way of hon­our­ing a tal­en­ted mem­ber of the per­form­ing com­munity, who left us after los­ing his battle with the Black Dog. Act­or Rob­bie Tripe, […]

Review: Stutterpop: the Queen’s speech

Stut­ter­pop writ­ten and per­formed by Sam Brooks is enter­tain­ing mix­ture of lip­syncing and storytelling which explores Brooks’ love life, and his love for life. He walks onto the stage look­ing fab­ulous in a long hooded cape. It’s whipped off to reveal a glit­tery top and spark­ling heels leav­ing him look­ing a little like clas­sic Eddie Izzard. […]

Lord of the Dance – Dangerous Games

My son’s friend John, who is Irish, said that there’s always some­thing sexu­al in Irish dan­cing (he prob­ably just calls it “dan­cing”). Malo explained this to me when I expressed sur­prise that all the women Irish dan­cers in Lord of the Dance – Dan­ger­ous Games had stripped off their pretty tra­di­tion­al out­fits to bras and […]

Music to brew your beer to

Wel­ling­ton on a Plate is well known for its exquis­ite din­ing, incred­ible bur­gers and inter­est­ing events and this year San Fran are put­ting on a fant­ast­ic series. Music2Brew2 brings togeth­er three Wel­ling­ton brew­er­ies who have been brew­ing under the influ­ence. Inspired by three Wel­ling­ton bands Pan­head, Gar­age Pro­ject and Tuatara have all brewed a beer that […]

WOAP: those doughnuts

The dough­nut popup web page said Wed­nes­day! Leeds Street Bakery! Rhu­barb and cream! Salted car­a­mel and bacon! Chocol­ate and hazel­nut! This all soun­ded pretty prom­ising. So I circled the day on the cal­en­dar and wondered. Would the dough­nuts be iron­ic­ally Simpsonesque, or would they be inspired by Portland’s finest? This morn­ing, hav­ing heard the popup […]

The hill that isn’t there

Last week saw the launch of Pukeahu: an Explor­at­ory Antho­logy, an online col­lec­tion of writ­ing and pho­to­graphy explor­ing Pukeahu/Mt Cook from his­tor­ic­al, cul­tur­al, geo­graph­ic and ima­gin­at­ive per­spect­ives. Col­lated and pub­lished by staff and stu­dents of Mas­sey Uni­ver­sity, it explores a part of Wel­ling­ton that’s seen more than its share of anguish, con­flict and grandeur. It fea­tures work […]

WOAP: Dining through the Decades

This is going to sound a bit silly, but I choose my Wel­ling­ton on a Plate events look­ing for value for money.  The silly part, obvi­ously, is that no one needs to drop over a hun­dred dol­lars a head on din­ner, but if you’re look­ing to have a degust­a­tion and matched wines, you’re going to spend […]

Our advice for Wellington on a Plate 2015

Tomor­row begins that most magic­al time of the year. The stu­pid film fest­iv­al has released my friends from its evil clutches and it’s time to eat, eat, eat. We’ve been cov­er­ing Wel­ling­ton on a Plate for a  long time now and I think we’re get­ting pretty good at know­ing what’s what. So here’s our thoughts. […]