Review: Michael James Manaia

This solo show starts with a welcome and karakia. After a serious start it flips into a madcap story.  As the action progresses we hear a man telling us the story of his life –  what his parents were like, why he went to Vietnam, what happened there, and what happened when he came back […]

New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012

The New Zealand International Arts Festival opens tonight with a live event in conjuction with the launch of First Contact. It’s FREE, family friendly, and starts at 8:30pm outside Te Papa. There are visuals by Linechecker and music and dance from the Whitireia Performing Arts School, The Nomad, Horomona Horo, Rhombus in Dub and Rayjah45. First […]

We also have ‘opinions’ – a protest against transphobia

If you’re on the Twitters, you would have seen yet another digusting piece of bigotry and bullshit churned out by Rosemary McLeod about how transgender people shouldn’t be parents. The @dompost rebuttal? “The column is her opinion.”. Yes, and they’re the ones who paid for her to have that opinion published. Luckily, the Queer Avengers […]

It’s Shrove Tuesday, let’s talk religion!

Ha ha ha, of course we’re kidding. Let’s talk about pancakes instead.We wanna know where Wellington’s best pancakes are at. Today for lunch I went to Cafe Panama (in fact, I am still there. Woo!), and this is what I ate: I thought I was ordering standard pancakes with banana and bacon for $11.50, but […]

It was a very good beer

After having a great evening at Fork and Brewer last week for the Official Wellingtonista Unofficial Webstock Wednesday Warmup, where large numbers of local beer and large platters of delicious nibbles were placed before us like the Web Royalty we wish/pretend/believe ourselves to be, I was extremely excited to hear about the event they are […]

NZ Fringe Festival 2012 into week two

The New Zealand Fringe Festival presents emerging artists in a festival of weird and wonderful performances around Wellington. The shows are are reasonably priced (or free) and are held in venues all over the city. The programme is full of shows, conveniently divided in the programme into genres –  Comedy, Dance, Music, Theatre, or Visual […]

International hipster attraction

Air New Zealand have recently launched a campaign to persuade reluctant Australians to choose New Zealand as a holiday destination. It turns out there are actually some people who aren’t aroused by the thought of scenery, sheep and extreme sports. As part of this campaign, there’s a Rhys Darby-narrated series of videos, each smashing a […]

Incoming: Supermodel and Sleeping Dogs

Wellington rockers Supermodel are teaming up with Christchurch wave-makers Sleeping Dogs and kicking off the year with a North Island tour. They’ll be back in Wellington later this week. Both bands are promoting their UK-produced albums which were released in 2011. The Wellington show is the eighth of eight shows, so they’ll be niiiice and […]

Should they stay or should they go?

We receive a lot of press releases here at the Wellingtonista, but few are as charming as this one: Brad and Nancy are actors who are also a couple, and they’re trying to decide if they should live in England or New Zealand. Naturally, they’ve decided to do a show in the Wellington Fringe Festival […]

Island Bay Festival 2012

The 28th annual Island Bay Festival kicks off tomorrow (Sat 11 Feb), with a heap of events and activities planned for the coming week. All the favourite events are back: Blessing of the Boats, the parade down the Parade, Bands in the Park (featuring Family Cactus, Ryan Prebble, Joe Blossom, and Newtown Sound and MC Israel […]