Layered with myth and fable, The Mooncake and the Kūmara is a moving story about a mixed-up, Māori-Chinese love affair that sprouts among rows of potatoes. Told in a mixture of English, Māori and Cantonese, the play is showing in Wellington as part of the Kia Mau Festival. Māori-Chinese playwright Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen talked […]
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 […]
At BATS Theatre: Starting this week is an encore season of Onstage Dating by performance artist Bron Batten. Watch as she goes on first dates on stage. (These are actual first dates with a stranger, not with a performing audience plant.) Witness the vulnerability, thrills and heartbreak of the dating experience up close, as Bron […]
From the mind of Wellington based artist Rose Kirkup, the recipient of the 2016 Fringe Festivals’ NZ Pacific Artist Residency award, comes I Am Tasha Fierce. We’re introduced to Kirkup’s alter ego Tasha: your typical Kiwi chick. Her time at polytech, as well as following the teachings of Beyoncé, has helped her get out of […]
Dido and Aeneas: Recomposed is a fringe fest style opera brought to BATS by UnstuckOpera. Directed by long time Wellington creative Frances Moore and re-composed by one of NZ’s leading young composers, Alex Taylor, their re-work of Henry Purcell’s classic includes samples from Stravinsky, Jazz Greats, and even Beyoncé and is performed by singers in over-the-top gowns, crazy make-up […]
Dank Presents is a series of experimental comedy shows created by Wellington comedians and producers. Hosted by Fringe Bar this Fringe, every show is different. I saw The National Average, based on an award winning routine in BATS Theatre’s Late Night Knife Fight. Jonny Potts and Matt Powell are brothers Cosmo and Carl, left a whisky/whiskey […]
This is an experimental spoken word/poetry event. James Nokise explores Captain James Cook’s voyage through the Pacific. It’s presented from several different points of view – Cook, his wife, an outside narrator. Some of the pieces are funny. Some are more reflective. Some, I think, are supposed to be funny, but we don’t laugh. There’s […]
Paying for it: an insider’s guide to the NZ sex industry The Prostitution Reform Act was passed in 2003 but apparently sex work is still a controversial job choice. As one of the speakers says “It seems like never is a good time to talk about sex work. “ So it’s really neat that several […]
On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people and injured more than 200 in Norway. Before he attacked his fellow citizens he sent out a 1500 page manifesto containing racist propaganda, philosophical reflections, bomb manuals, interviews he conducted with himself and diary entries. Danish theatre makers Christian Lollike, Olaf Højgaard and Tanja Diers […]