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. […]