WELLINGTON REVIEW: Strasbourg 1518 (Borderline Arts Ensemble)

March 25, 2021

[Mystery and Frenzy] Partners in life and in work, creatives Lucy Marinkovich and Lucien Johnson as Borderline Arts Ensemble present Strasbourg 1518, their largest major full-length work to date. A tumultuous example of life-imitating-art or vice versa, Strasbourg 1518 is a production that opened in Wellington in March 2020 as Covid-19 infiltrated our shores, closing early due to a pandemic-related […]

REVIEW: Twinless (Basement Theatre)

March 25, 2021

[Joy within Loss] We enter with birdsong; she enters with silence. Twinless performer and creator Clare Marcie breathes out, reaches up, towards something above, something which we cannot hope to see. It’s a slow, weighted, and emotionally distanced opening—hardly a clue for the fun, vulnerable, and varied hour to come, and yet somehow, when viewed from the end of the show, […]

REVIEW: Tropical Love Birds (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 22, 2021

[Birds of a Feather don’t always flock together] Tropical Love Birds, a new offering by theatre-maker Vela Manusaute, promises to “venture into the often-muted world of domestic violence, using the gravitas of humour, sound and threatre-loving-goodness to uplift courage…” As I enter the Māngere Arts Centre, I’m prepared for lots of laughter despite the hard-hitting theme.   As house lights dim, three […]

REVIEW: Strasbourg 1518 (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 21, 2021

[Dance to Live] Combining dance, theatre and storytelling, Strasbourg 1518 is an exhilarating contemporary performance that explores ideas of revolution and the arts within both a historical and contemporary framework. Directed and choreographed by Lucy Marinkovich, with Lucien Johnson as writer and composer, Strasbourg 1518 is based around the dancing plague of 1518 – begun by a lone woman, up […]

REVIEW: The Griegol (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 20, 2021

[Dark Craft] A darkened space; a crash of piano notes; a candle carried wordlessly onstage. A man plans his elderly mother’s funeral as his young daughter stands behind him, uncomprehending. All she has left of her grandmother is a key she cannot fit into any lock, and the stories her grandmother would spin of the Griegol, a shape-shifting demon made […]

SCENE BY JAMES: The Lion King vs the NZ Theatre Industry

March 20, 2021

[Still Working on our Roar] An international production of The Lion King coming to Auckland is a vote of confidence from the world that New Zealand is the ideal place to put on live performance during a global pandemic, but what are the implications for the local theatre sector? As a Musical Theatre obsessed kid in the 90s and early 2000s, […]

REVIEW: Sing to Me (Auckland Arts Festival)

March 17, 2021

[Beyond the Pairs of Opposites] “Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.” ― Hermann Hesse Taki Rua’s Sing to Me opened at Rangatira Q Theatre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival on 11 March to limited capacity […]

REVIEW: Standard Acts (Auckland Fringe)

March 13, 2021

[For Women to wrestle with…] There’s a large black square mat in front of us. A small table sits behind it, with a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and a tape deck on top. Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson enter the sparsely designed space, both donned in workout gear and knee-pads, and we wait for someone to speak. The anticipation […]