[A Case for Removing Commercial Imperatives for Artists?] Would you accept public money to make an arts project if you had to return any profit that you generated back to the government? Would you want to live on 200-something dollars a week (plus accommodation supplement) if it meant you could make your art without being forced by Work and Income […]
[Theatre by the Numbers] 150,000 Aucklanders can’t be wrong, right? These are the approximate combined totals of audiences who flocked to the Pop-up Globe and Pleasuredome: The Musical in 2017. Compare that with the record-breaking 130,000 who went to Adele’s Auckland concerts this year. And that’s not even including the Globe’s jump across the Tasman, where their productions are still […]
[Ways of knowing Death] The passing of a beloved is always is painful. From the body’s disintegration to its last breathe, to what lies beyond, for both the dead and those left to mourn it is as unfathomable as it is matter of fact. Sacred ritual provides a means to negotiate this pathway. Atamira Dance Company’s work, Atamira, choreographed by […]
[Ballet in the Sky] It seemed an unlikely combination when this show was first announced. Dust Palace and the APO? What sort of arranged marriage was this? Had both companies’ marketing departments recently been on a misguided training course on audience diversification? It initially seemed my fears were confirmed at curtain up. A warm but minimal exchange between conductor and […]
[A Long Way From Home] It’s one of the most audacious and head-spinningly ambitious theatrical endeavours ever mounted in New Zealand. Promising to transport us to 1984 and the notoriously hedonistic underground New York clubs (the last hold-outs from the disco era), audiences arrive in Henderson and enter, via a subway station portal, a NYC wonderland. You walk a block-long […]
[The Stars Look Very Different Today] We begin with a voice-over with some out-of-this-world numbers: the number of people that have lived in all of human history is the same number of stars that there are in our universe. There’s a planet out there for each of us. Here’s something else amazing. What were the odds, out of all of […]
[A Streetcar Named Trump?] The cry that has resounded through the ages, courtesy of an iconic performance by Marlon Brando, is Stanley’s forceful “Stelllaaaaa” as he hollers for his wife to come back to him. Stella had taken refuge with the upstairs neighbours after Stanley had struck her. But in Silo’s production, Stella’s anguished and defeated cries of “Blanche” at […]
[Children will Listen] Matilda the Musical asserts its ambitions in the opening number, ‘Miracle’. Precocious children at a birthday party, dressed as ballerinas, princesses and superheroes, sing about the positive messages they have internalised from their parents as they make havoc about the stage on an ADHD sugar high: “Ever since the day doc chopped the umbilical cord, it’s been […]
[Grief and Belonging] It’s a hard thing, to write something from tragedy and history, knowing that a lineage of survivors will be reviewing your best attempts to honour them. Directed by Chris Molloy, and written and produced Naomi Bartley, Te Waka Huia responds to New Zealand’s worst road incident: the 1963 Brynderwyn bus crash. It follows an interpretation of historical tragedy, […]
[The Rebirth of the Theatre] Of the many great responses from liberal tweeters commenting on the backlash to Jodie Whittaker’s casting as the thirteenth Doctor, my favourite was from playwright Dan Rebellato: EXT. PLAYHOUSE. 1660. AUDIENCE MEMBER runs from theatre. PASSER-BY: What ails you sir? MEMBER: ’Sblood, they have a WOMAN playing DESDEMONA. — Dan Rebellato (@DanRebellato) July 16, 2017 […]
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