a mixtape for maladies is a poignant yet entertaining new work by Ahi Karunaharan depicting a family’s experience of unrest in Sri Lanka. Presented as a ‘performed reading’ in the Auckland Arts Festival, the event begins with each of the performers introducing themselves and giving a brief description of their background. It is highlighted that in a perfect world, a […]
[Spellbound] How do you put this story on the stage? With North by Northwest, you have a property that was written for the screen by Ernest Lehman and directed by the iconic Alfred Hitchcock – there is no other source material to draw on. North By Northwest is defined by its sense of forward momentum, and its cinematic set pieces. […]
Funneling Rage into Art Written by award-winning Chinese Kiwi playwright and poet Nathan Joe and directed by Jane Yonge with dramaturgy by Ahi Karunaharan, Scenes from a Yellow Peril is a show about the everyday racism East Asian New Zealanders experience in Aotearoa. Part performance poetry, part political commentary, part story telling, part confessional, Scenes from a Yellow Peril confronts […]
[More than a Youth Show] In 2019 I wrote a review which included a meme that intimated that the ATC youth shows excite me more as an audience member than much of what appears in the main programme. Now in 2021 ATC, with the support of Proudly Asian Theatre (PAT), offers Yang/Young/杨 as part of the Here and Now season […]
[Use Science Wisely] The scene is 17th century Italy. Legendary astronomer Galileo Galilei is unsatisfied with what he has achieved in his life so far, and fixated on one subject in particular: the movement of the earth around the sun. Yet as Galileo tries fervently to share his discoveries with the world, it’s clear that there’s a big, black hole […]
[Smartest in the Room] It was Lady Bird Johnson who said a first lady is “an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband.” Nancy Harris’s 2019 play Two Ladies puts the women in the shadows centrestage. Deliberately not-so-fictional, its titular ladies Hélène (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) and Sophia (Anna Jullienne) are transparently based on Brigitte Macron and Melania Trump; they […]
[Unearthing the realities of Anti-Black Racism] Black Lover is a tale about colonial violence during the mid-1960s prelude to Zimbabwe’s fight for independence, sparked by increasing resistance to rule by a White-only minority. Written by Stanley Makuwe, it follows the fever-ridden agitation of Rhodesia’s former colonial leader, Garfield Todd (Cameron Rhodes), who is trapped at home due to a house […]
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Auckland Theatre Company launched a four episode adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull created within the constraints of social distancing at the time. Using the now widely used Zoom app as its mode of production, it was also set within the world of Zoom too, placing its characters squarely within the circumstances of our global pandemic. […]
[A Kiwi Hero in Zimbabwe] When Sir Garfield Todd denounced racial injustice in 1950s Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he was fiercely hated by supporters of white minority rule. Among the pejoratives they called him was “black lover”. Stanley Makuwe’s Black Lover is an illuminating glimpse into an overlooked chapter of history: a remarkable chapter which saw the Invercargill-born Todd become Prime Minister of […]
[Connect the Dots] John Guare’s 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation has helped to popularise the concept that we are all ultimately connected to one another. The work also discusses how we often yearn to be connected to both famous and infamous individuals as a measure of the rich pageant of our lives. This critically acclaimed play has garnered numerous […]
Copyright © 2024 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes