Standing Room Only for Sunday 3 December 2017

12:15 Graffiti Forum with Berst and Trust Me

The country's top graffiti artists are gathering in Avondale, Auckland for a forum to talk, teach and paint.

As part of the event, the artists are creating a mural featuring the words of poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh - who grew up in Avondale, one of Auckland's graffiti hotspots.

To find out more about what's planned at Forum Lynn Freeman speaks to Bobby 'Berst' Hung and Ross 'Trust Me' Liew.

 

12:30 Mimedian Trygve Wakenshaw

Comic and mime artist Trygve Wakenshaw is one of three New Zealand artists taking part in the Sydney Festival in January.

It's a huge deal for this multi-award winner who currently lives in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and he told Simon Morris he's really looking forward to joining artist Lisa Reihana and singer/songwriter Aldous Harding as the Kiwi connection in Sydney.

 

12:40 Auckland, Wellington, & Dunedin celebrate their theatre scenes

Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin are celebrating the year's best theatre productions in their cities with award ceremonies.

So what do the award nominations tell us about what's hot and what's not in theatre. Are these three main centres producing very different work or is there a lot of crossover?

 

1:10 At The Movies

Simon Morris looks at three movies that are mostly driven by men - a bleak New Zealand drama, a comedy about New and Old Men, and the man and boy behind one of the most successful children's books ever.

 

1:30 Le Moana at the Measina Festival

New plays and dance works based on Pasifika stories and issues from mixed marriages and the environment to superstitions will be presented at the Measina Festival in Porirua.

The Samoan meaning for Measina is 'cultural treasure' and the festival is designed to be a showcase for the country's pasifika arts practitioners.

The fourth Measina Festival includes Le Moana's Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street a multi-media show based on a children's story by Patricia Grace, and a series of dances based on the experiences of young people in their communities.

Lynn Freeman talks to the Director of Le Moana Tupe Lualua, as well as stage manager and co-founder of the Measina Festival Taofi Mose-Tuiloma

1:45 Sian and Makyla make art!

When they each signed up for artist residencies at the New Zealand Pacific Studio in the Wairarapa, Irish writer Sian Ní Mhuirí and Kiwi poet and printmaker Makyla Curtis couldn't have predicted they would end up collaborating on a new work.

Sian's Dublin based company Super Paua creates theatre with a strong social focus for children and teenagers. For the residency though, she's writing a solo show inspired by her Irish and New Zealand grandmothers as well as exploring Kiwi identity.

Makyla is helping her with the Te Reo Maori component of the play as well as working on poems about place.

 

2:06 The Laugh Track – Simon Leary

Actor Simon Leary is appearing as Captain Hook in Pinky Agnew & Lorae Parry’s Peter Pan: The Pantomime at Circa Theatre.

For The Laugh Track; Simon picks comedy from 30 Rock, Simon Amstell, The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

 

2:25 Taking The High Ground

The actors in a new play about two pioneering women mountaineers will be performing up high on scaffolding.

Taking the High Ground tells the stories of the first woman to scale Aoraki/Mount Cook in 1910 - Australian Freda du Faur, and of Kiwi Lydia Bradey who was the first woman to scale Mount Everest solo and without oxygen. That was in 1988.

In the play, writer Jan Bolwell imagines the two women are able to talk to each other, about their climbing feats and the challenges they each faced, personally and professionally.

 

2:35 All Our Secrets

Jennifer Lane's an Aussie expat living in New Zealand, but still writing about The Lucky Country.

She's set her novel All Our Secrets in a small rural community where a religious sect have moved in and divided the locals.

Some are attracted to The Believers while others believe they are linked to the disappearance of one person after another.

 

2:49 Symposium on the Future Imaginary

In Canada artists, activists and academics from around the world are debating what the future holds for indigenous people.

It's the third Symposium on the Future Imaginary - but the first time the public's been allowed in to listen to the conversations and take part.

This year's event in Winnipeg includes a screening of the film InDigiNous Aotearoa: Virtual Histories, Augmented Futures.

Lynn Freeman speaks to Wellington artist Suzanne Tamaki on the phone from Winnipeg, Canada, where she's taking place in the indigenous art forum - in particular about her new app.

 

3:06 Drama at 3 – Words of Love: Grit and A Promise for Jake

Words of Love is a series of five plays by award-winning writer and actor, Fiona Samuel. Alice Fraser plays an elderly actress who rediscovers the meaning of 'Grit'.

When she started to write, Amy Brown said she wanted to create material for the media . . .'to show or even indicate, the very real differences between Maori and Pakeha'. The result is A Promise for Jake.