Kiss My Arts is an arts and entertainment blog facilitated by THE EDGE with contribitions by staff and audience members. THE EDGE is the home of Auckland venues the Aotea Centre, The Civic, Auckland Town Hall and Aotea Square.
Controversial is probably a good word to use when describing Wellington creative Tao Wells’ work. He calls himself a Community Conceptualist, Conceptual Abstract Expressionist or a Public Relations Specialist… and you’re invited to take your pick. His 2010 work The Beneficiary’s Office saw him come under immense scrutiny and criticism. For The Risk of Listening, the actors create the beginnings of the script by writing down their every thought and word – Tao then mixes these up into a brand new script which the actors read for the first time on the night of the show.
We ask Tao – is performance social?
Intensely. The play seeks to whittle down the audience layer by layer to reveal a hard core, what I call the open minded. The experience of discovering yourself leaving at the first opportunity or being there at the last is one of acute definition, belonging in a social strata that empowers social conceptualizing in a way that anchors the audiences entire intelligence and experience on to a larger experiment. The danger of asking for more, for better and for meaning to make sense and be made. From a context that has already radically undermined the "facts" of reality as all propaganda; the opportunity to strike out on bold new ground is left with the audience, like that of the initiated to the listening of Jazz, Noise or the most radically new mode of music. It is participatory.
Intriguing? Yes. Boundary pushing? Yes. And there’s only one performance at New Performance Festival!
Find out more about previous works and delve into Tao’s blog – which has a content warning before you enter.
Crossing the ditch from Sydney Festival, Germany’s reality theatre superstars Rimini Protocol (trust us, they’re a big deal) bring their hit Call Cutta in a Box to the New Performance Festival.
Audience members don’t watch this show – they become the show. You walk into an office, pick up the phone and start talking to a genuine call centre working in Calcutta.
”Theatre can be a tool to create experiences that don’t fit in the standard settings of perceiving the world and its so-called order – be it regarding the person next door, or the ideology of global markets. This play offers you an opportunity to talk to subjects on the backstage of the globalisation process.” Rimini Protokoll
There aren’t really words to say how excited we are about this work, so we’ll just show you the trailer and warn you to get in quick for tickets.
Call Cutta in a Box
17-25 February
Meet at Festival Box Office, Festival Club, Upper NZI, Aotea Centre
This one looks like a lot of fun. Noted Choreographer and Auckland Fringe darling Alexa Wilson joins forces with actress and musician Nisha Madhan (yes, she was Shanti in Shortland Street and yes, she is alive) in Show Pony, a satirical look at celebrity through the lens of avante-garde performance.
When asked what the role of the body is in her work,Alexaresponded:
Um, is that a joke? I'm a choreographer. I like to get naked a lot and wield weapons (its true). The body IS my art, inseparable from the voice also is the body. Together, we rock it out and make it happen. It’s exciting stuff. But seriously, the body is all we have,itsthe vehicle for inner and outer expression, the movement I make is reflecting the political world around me and vice versa, it’s a spiritual dialogue. Body is for transformation. Its political, its deep stuff. Dancing is for the soul you.
Louise Tu’u went undercover over three years to research Providence, spending time in an Auckland homeless shelter and drop in centres so that she could gain an understanding of life without a home. The work is not a traditional play – rather it is an investigation into the state homelessness, with many characters played by two actors
When performed in 2010, the NZ Herald hailed it as one of the works of the year.
“Best of 2010... Providence masterfully led its audience into “experiencing a replica aspect of homelessness.”
Louise leads We Should Practice, an organization that curates work as calmly staged events of activism.
She continues to break down performance barriers…
My latest work began as an investigation about my mother tongue, Samoan then led me to directing my mother in a live performance. She’s what in our great Western society what you would call untrained. She’s actually one of the most volatile performers I’ve ever seen.
The evening is shaped by the audience and their choices (there were several pieces on the menu that weren’t chosen).A seriously non-serious good time. Go gogogogogogo.Go.
Sean says on performance: I like the idea of performance being a constant – that all things, activities, thoughts and actions are involved. I have been tinkering with performance in a variety of situations from dog parks to my local retirement village. The underlying question is 'how do I choose one activity over another as performance?' This comes from a hunch that each and every 'thing' bares an equal access to a potential to differ. That the forces for change or difference are as alive in the most banal occurrences just as they are in more extravagant or celebrated productions. The question becomes what to do or how to act? How can I engage with such forces for change without further masking or reducing their vitality.
Josh Rutter is a dancer and choreographer and has danced for some of the most respected names in the dance scene including the likes of Michael Parmenter. He has collaborated with artists from here and overseas and takes the lead on the Dance Like a Butterfly Dream Boy project.
Josh says the most consuming aspect of performance is: Having freedom to improvise towards honesty/earnestness.
He says the role of the live body in his work is: Something to be looked for - I try to get past affectation or expression to some kind of unknown body language.
The show blurb says Joshgleefully steals from prepubescent vlogs, protein supplement package design, and Hungarian backyard wrestling to create Dance like a Butterfly Dream Boy. That sounds awesome. Plus – who has been to a show on the rooftop of the Aotea Centre before? Not us, and we work there!
Read this Crop Magazine review of an earlier presentation of the work.
Josh is also one half of music group Sweat City Heat Wave. Check out their Bandcamp.
Happy long weekend Auckland! Bathing with Elephants and other Exotic Reveries opened at The Civic last night and if you’re into weird art stuff then this is the show for you. There are a bunch of creators of art/performance works all showing off their talents inside some of the small rooms at The Civic. It was sold out last night, sold out tonight so if you’re keen to experience Bathing with Elephants get yourself sorted for the last show on Saturday ASAP! Here’s an instagram shot from last night by Catherine from Metro of a man playing a musical elephant.
·Last week it was Britney, this week Madge! Read the Arts Hub review of In Vogue: Songs by Madonnawhich is about to wrap up a season in Melbourne.
·Short+Sweet Dance festival is coming up from 7 February – they have a very active Facebook page and have just posted some great Q&As with artists.
·Entertainment Weeklyreports that an Australian cinema’s attempt to introduce at Twitter feed with comments about films currently playing in their theatres have fallen flat when inappropriate comments were included in the feed. Tweet seats have been more successful for some plays and concerts around the world – what do you think?
·Speaking of film – The Artist is a hot favourite for Best Picture at the Oscars. When you see it (and you should all see it, it’s a delight), keep in mind that it’s set right at the time that The Civic was built. Our gorgeous theatre was originally a picture palace and when it opened in 1929 would have been filled with people who looked just like the audiences in the movie!
·The second series of the ridiculously successful The Secret Lives of Dancers begins on TV3 on Tuesday 7 February. Not long after comes the chance to see the dancers live on stage in triple bill NYC. There’s a special offer to save on tickets for the Auckland season – offer ends at 5pm on Saturday.
·Love this video from the Sydney Morning Herald – an interview with Julie Andrews on the 45th anniversary of The Sound of Music, Glee’s impact on musical theatre and a hint that she might be heading down under. Yes please!
All the way from University of Otago’s Theatre Studies, we have Be | Longing: A Verbatim Play – the third documentary theatre work by theatre practitioners, students and lecturers. MP3 players are used to relay interviewees’ stories to actors in performance – this form of theatre aims for authenticity and compelling performances.
The work focuses of the stories of migrants to New Zealand, Kiwis who have moved overseas and returned and tāngata whenua. It asks – what does it mean to belong to a country, a place, a culture.
“The actors in our pieces have sometimes described themselves as “avatars”. The gestures their bodies make are copied precisely and specifically from those of our participants. We call this the “physical score” of our performance.” Talking House
Be | Longing debuts with two performances at the New Performance Festival before a season in Dunedin this March.
Read NZ Heraldand Theatreviewreviews for previous work Hush. Find out more about the Theatre Studies programme at Otago University.
Fleur Elise Noble (Melbourne) creates visual based theatre. She’s been to art school in Adelaide and New York and has won some impressive awards like the 2010 Greenroom Award for Video Design for 2 Dimensional Life of Her and the 2010 South Australian Young Achiever of the Year Award (Arts category).
RIGHT NOW, 2 Dimensional Life of Her is part of London Mime Festival, but soon she’ll be bringing that award winning show to the New Performance Festival for seven shows in five days.
We asked her: Is performance social?
She said: Being social is a performance. It’s funny- I’ve been touring with 2D Life of Her for three years now, and in many ways the most performative aspect of that journey has been learning how to graciously answer questions about the show for the 1000’nst time. The way I would have answered them in the beginning has changed a lot though. In the beginning, I would have talked more about what the show meant to me, and now I find it much more interesting to talk about other people’s perceptions and attitudes towardsit.
Coming from a visual arts world where I used to lock myself into a studio for days on end, without much contact with the outside world, I’d say performance is very social!
The work has been performed all over the world including Nelson and LA. Here’s an interview with Turnstyle News (there’s a link to a review so don’t read it if you don’t like spoilers) and the Nelson Mail.
We asked Nelson Arts Festival Producer Charlie Unwin what the audience response was to the work down in the 03.
Charlie said: Audiences were generally inquisitive as it was hard to fully articulate just what the show was in the brochure, however after seeing the show most people called it a festival favourite and were quite active in making sure their friends and family also saw it. 2D Life was one of our highest rated shows – people loved it!
Kia ora! We like looking at things on the internet and thought we’d share some of what we’ve seen online this week, as well as some of what we’ve been up to.
·Bathing with Elephants and Other Exotic Reveries is coming up next week. We were doing an online search and accidently found this adorable, but unrelated, video of a bathing baby elephant. Awwww.
·The New Performance Festival is just four weeks away and has a hot looking website and a hashtag #npfest which will get your tweets onto said website!
·I’m sorry, but what? How did we not know about this? Just heard about Australian show Britney Spears the Cabaret. Sounds amazingly hilarious.
·Theatre blogger James Wenley previews the 2012 theatre line-up.
·Watch this story from the BBC about how the English National Ballet is helping people Parkinson’s patients.
·The NZSO’s 2012 concert programme is on sale now and so is The Last Five Years, the first show presented by the brand new Last Tapes Theatre Company.
·Comic writer David Sedaris was in the house this week and the tweets and reviews were very complimentary. Here’s the NZ Herald review.
·Last weekend saw the Fleet Foxes take over Auckland Town Hall – we sent Jose Barbosa along and we think he liked it. So did the Stuff and Volume reviewers.
·Spotted this great New York Magazine article explaining what a conductor actually does posted on the APO’s twitter account. That answers a lot of questions.
Were you in the crowd at Fleet Foxes or David Sedaris? Thoughts on the articles?
This is an arts and entertainment blog facilitated by THE EDGE, the home of the Aotea Centre, The Civic, Auckland Town Hall and Aotea Square in Auckland, New Zealand.
The blog was set up in 2010, as a project sending six arts novices to a whole range of cultural events. They tried EVERYTHING and learned a lot. We continue to change things up - getting more bloggers on board, including insider blogs, artist Q&As and background stories.
We'd love to have your feedback - feel free to share the blogs and post comments!
This is an arts and entertainment blog facilitated by THE EDGE, the home of the Aotea Centre, The Civic, Auckland Town Hall and Aotea Square in Auckland, New Zealand.