It's NZ Festival time
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It's a hard job but someone's got to do it! Armed with her love of arts, flair for writing and the lowdown from the capital, Wellington-based Renee Gerlich has trawled through the NZ Festival programme to bring us the highlights.
Renee will also be taking time out from her fest-crammed calendar to post rants and raves on shows and plays in her weekly Fest Digest on The Big Idea.
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From a Russian Jack Russell doing Shakespeare, a bullet-catching magician, Daleks in the NZSO and Victor Rodger's Black Faggot - as of February 21, Wellington will become a playground for more than 1200 dancers, thespians, musicians and writers from 18 countries. This however may not be apparent to those who can’t afford to splurge on more than a ticket or two, and if you must choose wisely among 347 events, it helps to know a little about the programme entire.
The Festival has been running since 1986, but this year sees a new director who has come a long way since her nineties stint as a Festival gofer. Suitably international herself, Shelagh Magadza grew up in New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Sweden, and she's eager to share her ever-“ferocious” arts appetite with as wide possible an audience. Organisers are expecting to sell 100,000 tickets this year, with the Festival contributing $40-$50 million and 440 FTE creative sector jobs to the Wellington economy. Here is what the 2014 programme promises Wellington beyond the dry numbers.
(Keep an eye out for the free lunchtime artist talks highlighted with an asterisk*)
Vision
The most anticipated and critically acclaimed piece in 2014's programme must be Robert Lepage's Needles and Opium. This is a newly updated surreal exploration of art and turmoil. It promises to be a work of passionate creative integrity, thoughtfully made cutting edge with the integration of stunning contemporary visual effects. The visionary Quebecois began his journey in theatre as a teen seeking to overcome depression, founding his theatre company Ex Machina by 1994 to integrate the performance and cinematic arts.
Most of the punch in this year’s programme is packed in its theatre and dance line-up. Expect powerful and politicised works from Samoan choreographer *Lemi Ponifasio, who in 2008 convinced the High Court to allow Tame Iti to tour with him to Belgium as his lead in Tempest. Ponifasio’s theatre company MAU, the most prolific of its kind in Aotearoa, offer a world premiere for the Festival with Crimson House. Both this and Stones in Her Mouth promise to thrill in haunting chiaroscuro.
The dance highlight must be Israeli Ohad Naharin’s *Deca Dance. This musical pastiche represents the culmination of a richly eclectic career. One of Magadza’s own festival favourites is Dmitry Krymov’s acrobatic interpretation of Shakespeare’s *Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring six-metre puppets and a Jack Russell.
Circa performers promise spectacle in their adventurous and buoyant Beyond.
Equally upbeat, Rian is a fresh, inventive and jubilant take on Irish folk: less Riverdance and more Billy Elliot having watched Josephine Baker.
Ross McCormack's *Age is a treat from an otherwise underexposed local talent. The first full-length work of one of Aotearoa's proudest creative exports, this world premiere introduces ten-year-old dancer Harry Eathorne.
The music programme also features Magadza’s much-anticipated *Bach Collegium Japan, led by Maestro Masaaki Suzuki.
Interactivity
This Festival is participatory: Rob Drummond may invite you to shoot him with his gun. Watch him snatch the bullet in his biters in his ‘magic’ Bullet Catch. For a more meditative interactive experience, Writers’ Week includes Tim Etchells’ Quiet Volume. Indulge your imaginations on a reading journey guided by headphones, books galore and fellow reading fiends. Participants should also venture to Circumstance’s *Subtle mobs, where the electro-urban journey enlarges to encapsulate the city.
Magadza’s programme clearly seeks to be contemporary, quirky and technologically innovative, with Ursula Martinez exploring the perils of social networking in her risqué burlesque performance My Stories, Your Emails.
Don’t miss creative professionals - Ponifasio, McCormack and Deca Dancers among them - sharing secrets at the St James Theatre in a series of nine lunch-time talks.
The Festival’s many family-friendly events include Power Plant’s enchantingly illuminated walk through the Botanic Gardens, NZSO’s Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, and Tiffany Singh’s Pataka exhibition Fly Me Up to Where You Are. Inspired by the Tibetan tradition, Singh has gathered almost ten thousand prayer flags from children in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. This Pataka exhibition is the third of an ongoing series and suspends the dreams and hopes drawn by a thousand Wellington children from strings of bright coloured flags.
Europe and Pacific punch
Martinez and Bullet Catch will perform in the new Hannah Playhouse, which is also hosting Black Faggot, Victor Rodger’s provocative 'Multinesian' response to New Zealand’s Civil Union Bill protests.
Alongside Rodger and the powerfully political Ponifasio, other Pacific titles include *¡Paniora! and Pasefika, in which George Henare portrays a nineteenth-century Parisian artist’s nostalgia for Akaroa.
¡Paniora! too has a European twist, as Briar Grace-Smith’s love story set in a hapu with Spanish blood. Those attending for love of todos Latino may also enjoy La Curva’s Galvanised contemporary flamenco, and Grammy-winning Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, an operatic celebration of the life of Spanish cultural icon Federico García Lorca.
Francophiles will enjoy Jon Toogood and Julia Deans’ James Cabaret Jacques Brel show.
Shigeyuki Kihara’s live performances, video and photographic exhibitions at the City Gallery Wellington and Pataka Museum both explore colonial European relations with, and appropriation and fetishisation of nineteenth century Samoa.
Two Greek Homer classics are reworked in Unmythable by the boisterous Temple Theatre, with True Blood star Denis O’Hare’s braving the Iliad solo. Fans of the one-man show should catch Irish actor Aidan Dooley’s Antarctic adventure as Tom Crean.
Cheap(ish!) Thrills and Cheek
While the music programme does not appear to sport its popular, experimental and critically acclaimed Lepage, Ohad Naharia or Eleanor Catton, it does feature fast-selling jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux and much-loved indie band Yo La Tengo.
The James Cabaret, a 1930s establishment fast becoming a regular haunt in the Wellington music scene, also offers a number of gigs for under $50. See Frente Cumbiero’s modern Afro-Caribbean cumbia, ex-James Brown impersonator Charles Bradley’s heartfelt soul, and the folk-inspired sounds of alt-country and Irish singer-songwriters Neko Case and Paul Brady.
For a quirkier evening check out Suitcase Royale’s ‘junkyard theatre’ or Candice McQueen’s comedy cabaret.
If the cheek appeals, swipe the last tickets to see musician-performers the Tiger Lillies perform a freakish and carnivalesque *Rime of the Ancient Mariner among lush and eerie seascapes at the St James Theatre.
If you can’t attend Strike’s energetic Between Zero and One, see their 200-strong drumming group perform in the Festival’s free Civic Square Big Bang opening.
Beaming Bookworms and Gallery Hoppers
Bookworms and stargazers alike will swoon in their seats Under the Stars as novelist Eleanor Catton, poet Robert Sullivan and astrophysicist Marcus Chown guide them through the heavens at the Planetarium. Catton’s Book Council lecture on the topic of “change” must be the other highlight of a week that also features New Zealanders Elizabeth Knox, Damien Wilkins and Duncan Sarkies within its own extensive programme.
For Festival lovers of art, books and film alike, writer-curator Jill Trevelyan will talk New Zealand artists and the Film Archive will screen The Man in the Hat, a beautiful biopic of art dealer Peter McLeavey, the subject of Trevelyan’s latest book. Head uphill too on the cable car to the Adam Art Gallery’s exhibition on Cinema and Painting.
Though the Pacific directors appear to be the most socially responsive in this year’s cohort, it is the visual artists and writers who appear to have most to say about the state of the world in this year’s programme. Enjoy Gallery hosts Arab Winter, while political analyst Loretta Napoleoni explores capitalism‘s collapse, Francis Spufford talks religion, and witty public intellectual Terry Castle’s events have almost sold out.
Rachel Kushner, Jaspreet Singh, Anne Kennedy, Kei Miller, Liam McIlvanney and Tony Birch all engage the intersection of fiction and social analysis.
Catton is not the only Man Booker alumni: see Tom Keneally of Schindler’s List renown. Much loved popular writers Jung Chang (Wild Swans) and Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) are sure to draw audiences too, with Gilbert’s three events almost booked out.
The Dowse, Expressions, Pataka and City Gallery are also showing a range of interdisciplinary exhibitions exploring personal and social identity and art making, such as Turner Prize Winner Simon Starling‘s In Speculum and the Dowse’s Slip Cast, a collection of delightfully clever contemporary ceramics.
Looks like we need to get booking!
Thanks to playwright and critic Uther Dean for his assistance with this piece.
Renee Gerlich is a freelance writer based in Wellington. Renee will be a roving reporter for The Big Idea during 2014's NZ Festival, and will bring us a weekly diary of her adventures.