‘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, […]
Tag: theatre
Auckland Theatre Company 2026 Programme Launch
8.30am on a drizzly Monday morning in downtown Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland for the breakfast launch of Auckland Theatre Company’s 2026 season might sound like quite a big ask but ‘something’ told me there was ‘something’ pretty good in the offing so, armed with our new pink umbrella and more than a tad (good 1970’s theatre […]
Rosemary ~ That’s for Remembrance
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 […]
The Theatre
2024 was a good year for the theatre, the theatre in me and even me in the theatre. Just a tiny wee bit of me in the theatre It’s a garbage misquote (by me) from the wonderful Raymond Hawthorne (‘love the theatre in you, not you in the theatre) who had most probably borrowed it […]
Moe Miti ~ a theatre review
I will taste the bitter separation and oil my skin with it. I will listen for all that is old and with my ear pressed to the dirt, hear those who sing my name on the wind. In September 1966, Paul Simon released the iconic album ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’ and buried in the […]
Dirty Work: Ode to Joy ~ a theatre review
Maybe this explains why I’m up at 3.30am writing this – because it’s a job. It’s not just a job of course, not many people who are driven to engage in the performing arts in Aotearoa do it simply because it’s a job. Or for the money. Ask us why we are consumed by the […]
Kōpū ~ a theatre review
I’ve been looking forward to experiencing Kōpū since I first saw the ads a few months ago. It just looked extraordinary. Initially, looking at an attractive photograph of the cast, I recognised performers I knew and whose work I have grown to admire and, for me, that’s always the strongest hook. Narratives not so much, though I’d […]
Dirty Work: An Ode to Joy ~ a theatre review
The Cambridge Online Dictionary describes work as ‘an activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money’. Maybe this explains why I’m up at 3.30am writing this – because it’s a job. It’s not just a job of course, not many people who are driven to […]
I Want to be Happy ~ a theatre review
On the surface, I Want to be Happy is the simple story of a guinea pig and a laboratory researcher. It’s not, of course, it’s written by Carl Bland so it’s much more. Paul (Joel Tobeck) is doing ‘research’ on Binka the guinea pig (we don’t find out what this involves) while going through a difficult relationship […]
Mike and Virginia ~ a theatre review
Let’s start with a disclaimer and a comparison. Yes, comparisons are odious, and disclaimers often an excuse to hide something else but please indulge me and let’s do it anyway. Mike and Virginia, the two central characters in Mike and Virginia, are academics at an unnamed university. All good, so far. In 1998 I began work […]
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