Community Makeovers LOUD AND PROUD 2020 marks my first Pride and Fringe in Tāmaki Makaurau not as a resident but as a mere visitor. Both events also took on new directors and new directions as they entered the new decade. While I still find myself deeply invested in the arts ecology of the city, and undoubtedly see my future here, […]
A Break in the Space-Time Continuum There’s a portal hidden in the corner of Cupid Bar in Point Chevalier. Some might mistake it for a black tent, but it’s bigger on the inside: there’s a confetti chandelier and a large wooden trunk, a string of fairy lights, and a pedestal fan on its highest setting, trying but failing to regulate […]
[The Walls That Divide Us] Billed as a ‘kaleidoscopic tale about migrant experience and reactions to migration’, The Wall is an original, devised production based on real stories that aims to open questions about identity, unconscious bias and the state of the world. Written by Mallika Krishnamurthy and directed by Daniel Fernandez from Babel Theatre, The Wall involves a large […]
[Keep on Pulling the Laughs] Dressed in lurid summer clothes, nine Lust Island revellers drink and dance to chart hits as audience members fill the Basement main stage. The performance kicks off as Heartthrobs Comedy producer/director and MC Brynley Stent steps up and explains the format of the hour long improvised show, which is based on the controversial reality TV […]
[An Open Body] Perhaps the best thing about seeing a dance piece like this is its openness to interpretation. It is visual and auditory but without any text to impose meaning on the audience, leaving us to be affected by what we see in a visceral and extremely personal way. Critiquing, by nature, is an act of interpretation – itself […]
[A D8 with a D&D] Dungeons and Dragons has had a meteoric rise in recent years, which some put down to the resurgence of 80’s culture – with the game being heavily featured in Stranger Things – alongside the huge success of RPG shows – namely Critical Role and The Adventure Zone (Can I Get an Underground Location and a […]
[Embracing our Inner Bitch/Witch/Goddess] Stupid Bitch Wants a Puppy is inspired by writer and performer Waldron’s “sheer frustration of hitting the late forties and being relegated to the Death Star for aging actresses”. This one-woman show offers the audience a kaleidoscope of snippets of women’s lives, that range from a published author whose marriage has ended, an exhausted mother, a […]
[Are We Ready for this Jelly?] (And by this jelly I mean the joyful deconstruction of symbols of diet culture and fat discrimination) The Oddballs’ latest experiment Jelly Baby, starring co-founder Alice Kirker, can be called nothing less than that, as 1 of 5 experimental entrants in The Basement’s 2020 Fringe Provocation ‘Duration’. Each of these four shows is a one-night-only, […]
[Tampax: Fury Road] Why don’t we see characters in apocalypse movies dealing with menstruation? It’s a glass-shattering insight – a detail that, once noticed, has the ability to change your view of apocalyptic media forever. It speaks to the preoccupations of the genre: spooling mythologies predicting the end of civilisation; tense reconnaissance of abandoned cityscapes; frenetic combat scenes with the […]
[Seduction, Sex, and Shame: Sexuality Beyond the Skin] A packed house waits in the Basement main stage space for the first performance of Gemishka Chetty and Aiwa Pooamorn’s Have You Ever Been With An Asian Womxn? which promises to ‘unleash a bold commentary on the hypersexualisation of pan-Asian womxn in pop culture.’ Audio plays on loop over the chatter as […]
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