Search results for: fringe

The Princess and the Sausage

Most “pop-up shops” emerge in vacant retail spaces, but The Prin­cess’ Bed­room was dif­fer­ent: the shop itself popped up, in the form of a brightly-painted cara­van in a grav­elly old Ghuznee St car­park. Now it has com­pany, in the form of a “Saus­age Sizzle” cara­van in the adja­cent park­ing space, serving an odd com­bin­a­tion of Kiwiana saus­age sarnies, tem­pura veget­ables and hearty soups & stews.

Neither this cara­van nor its girli­er neigh­bour fit in with the emer­ging high­brow design­er vibe across the street (Milk Crate, Quilters, Cus­toms and Bowen Gal­ler­ies), but it sure beats a puddle-rid­den car­park. Per­haps we’ll see more of this cara­van urb­an­ism set­ting up tem­por­ary shop in vacant spaces until we crawl our way out of the reces­sion, and it looks like a cheap and flex­ible way for small busi­nesses to get up & run­ning in the gaps and fringes of the city.

Band Substances

An unfor­tu­nate num­ber of Wel­ling­tonis­tas are rather fond of mak­ing rather ter­rible puns quite fre­quently, which means a lot of my time is spend mak­ing “Badoom chish!” sounds. Ima­gine how much cool­er it would be if the jokes were bet­ter and instead of me, there was a whole damn band play­ing the rim shots. Wait, you don’t want to have to ima­gine it? You want it to be real? Well, have we got the gig for you then!

Remem­ber TAWA-nom­in­ated Rob­bie Ellis and the bus lane you put through his heart? Well, he’s been work­ing on a new show called Band Sub­stances:

It’s music­al stand-up com­edy with a full band!

Join some of Wel­ling­ton’s favour­ite music­al comedi­ans:

• Gab­ri­el Page
• Sarah Harpur
• Carlo & Cyn­thia Wake­field from Young and the Wit­less IV
• The Fringe Bar Opera Soloists and more!

It’ll be Band to the Bone! (Jo’s note: BADOOM CHISH!)

The show has with Jerome Chandra­hasen as MC and Rob­bie as music­al dir­ect­or.

Sax Pack – The Mack is Back

 

Remem­ber this guy and all of those drums? (Incid­ent­ally, all of those drums will be turn­ing Kora up loud this Fri­day). 

Or per­haps you remem­ber him as that crazy, sexy, cool guy play­ing veget­ables at Fringe last year (win­ner Best Music and Best Solo Show at 2009 Fringe Fest­iv­al).

Adam Page is back at Down­stage this Sunday along with three more sax­o­phon­ists, as the Adalaide Sax Pack, fea­tur­ing some silky vocals from Welly’s Lisa Tom­lins (Shape­shifter, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Rhom­bus, Trin­i­ty­Roots).

Billed as:

4 world class Sax­o­phon­ists, 1 HUGE quar­tet sound, stacks of the chees­iest music you know you love but choose to hate.

This girl is look­ing look­ing for­ward to the cheezy ’80s cov­ers and being a vocal mem­ber of the rauc­ous fun-time crowd.

Come along, it isn’t that expens­ive and will be down­right fest­ive (in a good way).

Details and a taster after the jump.

Spartacus R rounds off Soundstage for 2009

The debut sea­son of Downstage’s Sunday music pro­gramme ‘Sound­stage’ has been a tear­away suc­cess. The for­mid­able line-up of bands includ­ing The Woolshed Ses­sions, Little Bush­man, Sam F Scott and The B.O.P and Rhi­an Shee­han have all thrived in the the­at­ric­al envir­on­ment play­ing to capa­city audi­ences.

We’re now at the last Sound­stage gig for 2009 and Wel­ling­ton six piece psy­che­del­ic psy­chonauts Sparta­cus R are the per­fect band to close out the sea­son. Their the­at­ric­al cre­den­tials are impec­cable hav­ing built a repu­ta­tion for unique and innov­at­ive per­form­ances at the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al. At the Fringe 07 they presen­ted Sparta­cus R in Octo­phon­ic, and the fol­low­ing year at the Fringe 08 Sparta­cus R in 3D, com­bin­ing live music with 3D visu­als in the Para­mount.

Based on a found­a­tion of blues, rock and funk, Sparta­cus will deliv­er a cap­tiv­at­ing and elec­tri­fy­ing per­form­ance that explores new music­al and visu­al ter­rit­ory. For Sound­stage on 15 Nov Sparta­cus R have craf­ted a com­pletely new show com­bin­ing 100% new music­al mater­i­al with pro­jec­ted visu­als, act­ors and even live poetry.

More about Sparta­cus R and Sound­stage after the jump.

Downstage in High Definition

Just before my Wel­ling­tonista priv­ileges are removed due to, erm, non-com­pli­ance with accept­able post­ing chro­no­metry (or some­thing) here’s an update on every­one’s favour­ite pro­fes­sion­al theatre, Down­stage.

Last week they launched their new Sea­son bro­chure, “Life in High Defin­i­tion”, which lists all the shows between now and Christ­mas. High­lights are many, but include new plays by Jo Rander­son (Good Night – The End) and Stu­art McK­en­zie (Bio­graphy of My Skin, star­ring his wife Mir­anda Har­court), Col­lapsing Cre­ation (by the team that brought you On the Con­di­tions and Pos­sib­il­it­ies of Helen Clark Tak­ing Me as her Young Lov­er last year) and the return of beloved cir­cus-theatre show Adagio with extra, added, Christ­massy bits.

Also on the menu between now and Novem­ber is Sound­stage, Down­stage’s new ven­ture into the world of pop­u­lar music: Once a month Sunday even­ing shows fea­tur­ing favour­ite loc­al bands in a relaxed, the­at­ric­al set­ting, the first act is The Woolshed Ses­sions on Sunday night shortly fol­lowed by Little Bush­man on 2 August. The Woolsheds are so pop­u­lar that the Sunday even­ing show has almost sold out and an extra 3pm mat­in­ee has just been added. Seats are lim­ited and going fast.

Tonight the “Life in High Defin­i­tion” sea­son gets under way with the return of two of Down­stage’s best friends: Strike Per­cus­sion always raise the roof with their high energy, high pre­ci­sion per­form­ance. This time they are joined by the vir­tu­oso Aus­trali­an impro­vis­or Adam Page who wowed Wel­ling­ton audi­ences with his solo show dur­ing the Fringe. They have been col­lab­or­at­ing on new work, com­bin­ing Strike’s hit­ting things with Adam’s blow­ing into things and the res­ults are explos­ive.

Adam will also be doing his usu­al multi-instru­ment­al impro­visa­tions (with Strike sup­port) so no two shows will be the same.

You can down­load a pdf of the “Life in High Defin­i­tion” bro­chure here, or con­tact theatre@downstage.co.nz and ask for a paper one to be sent out to you. Inter­est­ingly 90% of Woolshed book­ings have been over the web at www.downstage.co.nz which is pretty remark­able. Also, today, Down­stage have launched TradeMe Tues­day – a chance to get Down­stage tick­ets for as low as $1 reserve. It’s a bit like Gra­baseat – check in to the TradeMe Down­stage Store every Tues­day for more spe­cials.

It’s funny season in the City

It’s Com­edy fest­iv­al time in the Cap­it­al.

Per­son­ally I think the tim­ing is always quite impec­cable as winter has just hit and with it comes the winter blues. There are loads of amaz­ing loc­al acts and also some bril­liant inter­na­tion­als.

Now nor­mally the inter­na­tion­al acts like to include a little loc­al con­tent to make the crowd love them more. Often it’s lim­ited to jokes about wind, jaf­fas and Aus­trali­ans. Sammy J is clearly the excep­tion to the rule, and to prove it he’s even been mak­ing some extremly cute videos.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQG1pRpTF‑c]

You can catch him at Down­stage from tonight.

My hot loc­al tip is the The Comedi­ettes.  Emma, Jim and Sarah were amaz­ing at the fringe fest­iv­al with their stand up show. Sarah’s been win­ning a few com­edy com­pet­i­tions lately, so you now she’s going to bring the giggles.

Heavenly Navigation

Fuse Cir­cus have joined The Fringe with The Nav­ig­at­ors, a new out­door show under the sails at Queens Wharf.

If you haven’t seen their pre­vi­ous shows, Heav­enly Bur­lesque or Grav­ity and Oth­er Myths, then get down there right now! If you have, then while a few of the moves may be famil­i­ar, it’s still won­der­ful enter­tain­ment. The “nar­rat­ive” may be little more than an flimsy frame­work from which to sus­pend yet more bio­phys­ic­al impossib­il­it­ies, and there’s a touch of pan­to­mime goofi­ness that detracts slightly from the inher­ent hot­ness, but there will still be plenty to make you gasp, laugh and won­der.

As someone who some­times struggles to stand upright in the morn­ing, let alone bal­ance sev­er­al people on one’s limbs while doing so, these guys will always be a source of amazement. They per­form most even­ings until Sat­urday the 7th of March, so you have no excuse for miss­ing them.