Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking ~ a theatre review

‘Performance begins where memory leaves off.’ Any high-performance athlete or coach will tell you this, and it applies equally well to the performing arts. I thought about this quite a lot last evening as I blubbed my way through Auckland Theatre Company’s watershed production of Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking, directed by Katie Wolfe (Ngāti Mutunga, […]

The Gower Statue, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare, Ronald Gower, and frozen me in a short-sleeved blouse having just come from the sweltering antipodes!

The Shakespeare Memorial by Lord Ronald Gower. Bronze and stone, with a pedestal designed by Parisian architects, Peigniet and Marnez. 1888. Bancroft Gardens, Stratford-upon-Avon. At each corner of the Memorial, the sculptor has placed a representative Shakespearean character: “Hamlet, Prince Hal, Lady Macbeth and Falstaff. These characters were intended to be emblematic of Shakespeare’s creative versatility: […]

‘Rosemary, that’s For Remembrance’ ~ a reflection on Shakespeare’s old hometown

The harshest European winter for over one hundred years and there I was in a short-sleeved blouse in Warwickshire. Stratford to be totally accurate and staying at the Greensleeves Guest House just over the bridge to the north of the town. In the afternoon of the first day of my stay I visited the church […]

‘Tidying the House’~ when silence becomes a betrayal of principle

I was elected to my first governance role when I was eighteen. It was as a member of the board of a teacher union, a branch of the NZEI. I was elected to my most recent governance role – Deputy Chair of the Gender Equity and Inclusion Committee of the World Archery Federation – when […]