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.