[Bend it like who?] There’s an ongoing frustration in theatre when it comes to female roles that has been addressed over and over again. Even in 2019 it’s uncommon to witness complex female characters on stage, let alone with an all female cast. This winter Silo Theatre leads the charge by delivering us Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer Prize nominated play The Wolves. […]
[Unleashed] Wild Dogs Under My Skirt speaks volumes to the intersection of fa’asāmoa (traditional Sāmoan) and diasporic upbringing. Having been a NZ-born cis-queer-male of Sāmoan descent, the performance highlights the various women I grew up with and hold dear to my heart. Although Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt collection of poetry was published in 2004, the spoken text […]
[Representation Matters] Silo Theatre’s production of Mr Burns presented a vision of theatrical futures. In the play by American writer Anne Washburn, survivors of an electricity-ending event band together to form a travelling theatre troupe specialising in the recreation of classic The Simpsons episodes. I begin with Mr Burns here because, while it presents a bleak image for our planet, […]
[All that Glitters is not Gold] If you’re after a fun and entertaining end-of-year night out, Silo Theatre’s production of Here Lies Love is perfect. It is based on David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s concept album Here Lies Love, about the life of the former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos. The performances from the five divas – Villette Dasha, Colleen Davis, […]
[Will The Simpsons Save the World?] This play reminds of a fantasy David Mamet told in one of his books about working in Hollywood. If the apocalypse ever happened, he could make a living telling stories around the campfire, while the studio executives he worked for would starve to death. The power of storytelling to act as a vehicle for […]
[Transitory Spaces] When prodigal son Isaac (Arlo Green) returns from Afghanistan to find his family home turned upside down, he’s rightfully shocked. Having spent his last three years in the Marines’ Mortuary Affairs division, and dishonourably discharged, it’s no surprise he longs for something familiar and recognisable. Mommy Paige (Rima Te Wiata) has done away with all the rituals and […]
[Big Fish] If truth is often stranger than fiction, why is plausibility so necessary in theatrical plot? While Shakespeare was never opposed to using coincidence or serendipity in order to drive the action of his plays, when such treatments are applied to contemporary modes of theatrical style, the resulting juxtaposition between anachronistic action and modern spectacle risks becoming jarring to […]
[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 […]
A Simple Dish [by Matt Baker] Before the plethora of cooking shows both at home and overseas, there was Peter Hudson and David Halls. Commissioned by Silo Theatre, Hudson & Halls Live! is the fictional account of New Zealand’s best cooking duo, two men whose love of cooking, entertaining, laughing, living, and most importantly, each other, introduced an entire nation to […]
Asking the Unanswerable [by Matt Baker] When we hear reports of mass shootings, we can recognise the actions of, in the case of the forcibly nameless Anders Behring Breivik, a complete stranger in “human” terms. Tragedy without character is comprehensible, but it remains impersonal, however empathetic one may be. So how do we understand beyond the ‘what’ without character motivation? How […]
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