Saturday Morning for Saturday 3 March 2018

This week, Kim broadcasts live from the upstairs foyer of Wellington's St James Theatre, featuring guests and artists from the New Zealand Festival -  come and join the audience!

The rundown for the programme includes performers from the Barber Shop Chronicles - arriving from the show's sell-out debut season at London's National Theatre; award-winning theatre artist Geoff Sobelle who created Home - a NZ Festival co-production; feminist Aussie comedian Zoe Coombs Marr;  Jonathon Young, the creator of the cutting edge dance work, Betroffenheit; composer Michael Norris and musician/engineer Jim Murphy and the instruments that play themselves in theMechanical Ballet; Nina Tonga, curator of the Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists exhibition at Te Papa's new Toi Art gallery; and the NZ Festival's artistic director, Shelagh Magadza. Kim also talks to four Kiwis who are guests at the festival's Writers and Readers events - Rajorshi Chakraborti, Sarah Maxey, Anahera Gildea and Morgan Godfery.

 

 

8:09 Geoff Sobelle - Home

What makes a house a home?  During Geoff Sobelle's show, Home, a house appears and the audience watches as generations of residents move in and live their lives. We witness them as they experience love and laundry, parties and pain, work and wonder. Award-winning Sobelle is described as an actor and a magician. He says his role in making theatre is to challenge the way the audience sees the world, and that comedy is "the highest order of art".

 

 

8:40 Nina Tonga - Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists

Nina Tonga is an art historian and Curator Pacific Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongowera. She joins Kim to talk about the exhibition, Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, opening this month at Te Papa's new art gallery, Toi Art. Working collaboratively across fashion, performance, music and film, the Pacific Sisters collective includes artists Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Ani O'Neill, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Niwhai Tupaea, Henzart Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall, and Jaunnie "Ilolahia.
 

9:06 Writers & Readers at the NZ Festival

In this hour, Kim talks to four NZ-based guests appearing at the NZ Festival Writers and Readers events next weekend: Rajorshi Chakraborti, who has just published The Man Who Would Not See; visual artist, performing artist and poet Anahera Gildea  (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-tonga, Ngāi te Rangi, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Kāi Tahu) whose poem about Meri Mangakāhia, one of the Māori wahine toa who was important in her work for women's rights, is featured as part of the celebration of New Zealand writing in the February 2018 issue of Poetry; award-winning graphic designer, hand lettering artist and concrete poet, Sarah Maxey, whose work has featured in publications around the world, including the New York Times and many literary books; and writer and trade unionist Morgan Godfery - Te Pahipoto (Ngāti Awa), Lalomanu (Samoa) who is the editor of the 2016 BWB Text The Interregnum and who wrote about his Kawerau childhood in the second volume of the Journal of Urgent Writing.

 

 

10:04 Jim Murphy and Michael Norris - Mechanical Ballet

 

Drums strike themselves, piano keys don't need fingers to make music - the instruments play themselves in the show Mechanical Ballet. Jim Murphy is one of the creators of the autonomous instruments. He has a PhD for his interdisciplinary studies at Victoria University School of Music and School of Engineering and Computer Science, and he is currently teaching at both schools. Michael Norris is a composer, software programmer and music theorist who teaches at New Zealand School of Music and is editor of Wai-te-ata Music Press and Co-Director of Stroma New Music Ensemble.

10:30 Sule Rimi and Kwami Odoom - Barber Shop Chronicles

 

From a sell-out debut at London's National Theatre, Barber Shop Chronicles takes the audience to barber shops of Africa and London where men tackle life's big topics - fatherhood, friendship and football. Kim talks to two members of the Barber Shop cast - Sule Rimi and Kwami Odoom.

 

11:04 Zoe Coombs Marr - Trigger Warning

Feminist Zoe Coombs Marr is described as one of Australia's weirdest and wildest comedians. In her award-winning show, Trigger Warning, she becomes her alter-ego, Dave, a sexist, second-rate stand-up with a neck beard made from strands of Coombs Marr's own hair. She talks to Kim about what it takes to beat the real Daves, get gigs, and win over audiences.

 

11:25 Shelagh Magadza - festival artistic director

Kim catches up with NZ Festival artistic director Shelagh Magadza about how the 2018 festival - her last - is shaping up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:35 Jonathon Young - Betroffenheit

An article from the LA Times best describes the story behind Jonathon Young's Betroffenheit: "The German word Betroffenheit has no single equivalent in English. But we can understand it all right - it describes the emotional condition that Canadian actor and theater director Jonathan Young experienced after his young daughter, niece and nephew died in 2009 in an accidental fire. Shocked, wordless, traumatized. Stuck in a looping, neverending hell. That was his Betroffenheit." Young made the dance-threatre show with choreographer Crystal Pite and dancers from her Vancouver-based company, Kidd Pivot. Last year, Betroffenheit won the Olivier award for best new dance production.