Standing Room Only for Sunday 5 December 2021

12:16  Teresa Peters - ceramics but not as we know them

Teresa Peters is an actress, production and graphic designer and make-up artist who's collaborated for many years with her partner,  filmmaker Florian Habicht. 

Today she can add Aotearoa's top ceramacist to her CV, having taken out the top 2021 Portage Ceramic Award for a work that the judges suspect may raise eyebrows - given that it's a photograph.

To be more precise, ECHOES is a large scale framed photograph of ceramic pieces arranged to look like a natural history collection.It's the first time a winning work hasn't been a physical piece of art.

But Teresa likes to experiment - she's also integrated sound design, animation and large digital projections into her clay-based art over the years.

Teresa tells Lynn Freeman that her parents Maree Horner and Roger Peters were both pioneers in conceptual, post-object and land art in New Zealand.  They taught her bronze casting, print making and plaster casting. 

 

12:31  Destination Mars - theatre meets online gaming technology

It's 2034 and you're part of the team in the control room on an international space station on the planet Mars.  Suddenly there's a code red - and it's going to take a team effort to avert a catastrophe.

Part video game, part live theatre, Destination Mars is the latest production from the award winning company that created APOLLO 13: Mission Control.  That was an interactive show about the ill-fated moon mission that went on to tour the USA and Australia.

It was also relatively low tech - some computer consoles and great sound effects.  Now, more than a decade on, the team's roped in the makers of the viral Fortnite online game to integrate video-game technology into this new production.
 
Brad Knewstubb and Kip Chapman have created Destination Mars which will premiere as part of the Aoteara NZ Festival of the Arts in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.  Then they have plans to tour it around the country.

Lynn Freeman asked Kip what adding video game technology adds to a live performance?

 

 

12:43  Paul Maunder's eventful life in theatre and film

In his just-released memoir Performer, theatre-maker, film director, writer and community activist Paul Maunder reflects on a life lived in both the mainstream and on the fringes.

His CV includes working at the National Film Unit and on the film Sons For The Return Home.

On the stage he's worked in experimental,  bi-cultural, mainstream, fringe and community-based theatre.

In the 1970s he found the Wellington theatre scene too dull and set in its ways.  So he founded the influential Amamus Theatre group that staged improvised documentary plays on historical subjects like the Great Depression and the 1951 waterfront lockout.

Paul Maunder now lives in Blackball on the West Coast, where he works with a community-based theatre group.  Kiwi/Possum Productions who look at local issues including 1080 poison, race relations and the Pike River Mine disaster.

Lynn Freeman first took Paul back to his childhood, which was marked by several quite traumatic events, including his mother's sudden disappearance.

Performer, a memoir by Paul Maunder is published by Te Puawai and available here.

 

1:10 At The Movies

This week Simon Morris looks at Cannes Film Festival winner Titane, the latest outing of Marvel Comics' Venom, and the short and very sweet Petite Maman.

 

1:31 Two artists talk about a residency in the great outdoors

Many residencies offer artists and writers a comfortable house for a few months to relax in and concentrate on completing a project.

You need to be a bit more intrepid to apply for the Auckland Regional Parks Artist in Residence where you're going to be spending a lot of time in the wilderness, night and day, 

Titirangi poet Elizabeth Welsh has recently wrapped up her residency at Āwhitu Regional Park.

Lynn Freeman talks with Elizabeth, and with last year's artist in residence Chris McDowall.   Chris is an award-winning cartographer who roamed and mapped the Glenfern Sanctuary at Aotea Great Barrier Island.

 

 

1:50  Our best Science Fiction and Fantasy stories of 2021

The strange made familiar and the familiar made strange find a home in the stories gathered together in Year's Best: Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Volume 3.

Marie Hodgkinson has selected 22 stories for this third celebration of short stories in both genres.

But are science fiction readers in the mood for stories that relate in any way to the coronovirus nightmare the world's currently going through?

Lynn talks with Marie Hodgkinson and with one of the writers in the collection, Terri Te Tau.  Her story has nothing to do with pandemics but instead has a connection to the extinction of our native species.

Year's Best: Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Volume 3 is published by Paper Road Press.
 

2:06 The Laugh Track - publicist Kelly Geater

Many of the people we've had on the Laugh Track over the last four years or so have benefited from today's guest. Including us, I have to say.

Kelly Geater has saved our bacon so many times - coming up with brilliant ideas for guests, or angles for guests we have, or just reassurances.  "They'll be fine, trust me!"

Kelly has been one of the secret weapons of Auckland's Elephant Publicity, with a particular interest in comedy, festivals and, of course, comedy festivals.  

But we couldn't keep her secret forever.  Kelly was head-hunted by famed Sydney company the Michael Cassel Group.  As a farewell gift Simon Morris invited her on the Laugh Track herself.   Kelly's picks included Janaye Henry, Rhys Nicholson, Liv McKenzie, Eli Matthewson and Demi Lardner.
 

2:26 Textile artist Jenette Verster still retains all her marbles!

"Do Not Regret Growing Older, It Is A Privilege Denied to Many" is the defiant wording on one of the works by Taranaki textile artist Jeanette Verster in an exhibition called I Haven't Lost My Marbles (Yet).

The title's taken from her embroidery of a head with a brain filled with shiny green marbles.

It's part of what Jeanette calls "an ABC for the unyoung", the opposite of all those first ABC books for children.

She tells Lynn Freeman she came up with the idea before the pandemic but believes it's super timely to ask why our senior society is important to us.

Jeanette's exhibition is on at the From Out of The Blue studio gallery in Opunake, South Taranaki.  Its aim is to teach and nurture traditional textile practices - from embroidery and painting to paper making and knitting - while at the same time encouraging them to be used in new ways.

 

2:37 Ian Austin's new thriller has a stamp of authority

 

The rarest postage stamps, the fabled Plate 77 Penny Reds, are at the heart of the latest Detective Dan Calder crime novel by Ian Austin. 

You can throw in a terrorist bombing plot at Auckland Airport, a photograph that's been torn in two and Dan's chaotic family life into the mix.

Ian Austin is a former detective himself so he clearly knows what he's writing about.  Bonded is the fourth novel featuring Calder, and he tells Lynn Freeman that it was inspired by a real story "almost too amazing to be true."

Bonded is published by I.A. Books.

 

 

2:48 Story-tellers at the end of Napoleon's Empire 

Were the Brothers Grimm saving traditional stories from oblivion when they published them, or stealing the livelihoods of travelling storytellers?

This is one of the questions posed in Coromandel-based writer Stephanie Parkyn's new historical novel.  Freedom of the Birds is set in 19th century Europe just as Napoleon's Empire was collapsing.

Remi is a teenage storyteller with an aptitude for getting into trouble, and he and his loyal best friend Pascal are members of a travelling acting company. 

After fleeing Paris, they meet Saskia who's a runaway circus performer.

Stephanie Parkyn tells Lynn Freeman that, having written about Napoleon's wife Josephine, this time she wanted to explore the impact of the crumbling Empire on France's underclass. 

Stephanie Parkyn's novel Freedom of the Birds is an Allen & Unwin publication.

 

3:06 Drama at 3 - Potiki's Memory of Stone by Briar Grace Smith

A deal made is a deal made - someone has to pay.   

A small-town, Gothic, saga of love and loss from acclaimed playwright Briar Grace-Smith, starring Jamie McCaskill and George Henare.

Music played in this show

Artist: Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Song: Jupiter Bringer of Jollity
Composer: Holst
Album: The Planets
Label:  DG
Played at: 12.12

Artist: Shocking Blue
Song: Venus
Composer:  Van Leeuwen
Album: Teenage Links
Label:  Disky
Played at: 12.28

Artist: Alan Jackson
Song: Mercury Blues
Composer: Douglas, Geddins
Album: A Lot about Livin'
Label:  Sony
Played at: 12.58

Artist: Kaiser Chiefs
Song: Man on Mars
Composer:  Hodgson
Album: The Future is Medieval
Label:  Bunique
Played at:  1.07

Artist: Emmylou Harris
Song: Jupiter Rising
Composer:  Harris-Kennerly
Album: Stumble into Grace
Label:  Nonesuch
Played at: 1.43

Artist:  Stevie Wonder
Song: Saturn
Composer:  Sembello-Wonder
Album: Songs in the Key of Life
Label: Motown
Played at: 1.58

Artist: Nicole Atikins
Song: Neptune City
Composer: Atkins
Album: Neptune City
Label:  Columbia
Played at: 2.05

Artist: Belinda Carlisle
Song: Heaven is a place on Earth
Composer: Nowels, Shipley
Album: Heaven on Earth
Label: MCA
Played at: 2.58

Artist: Don Partridge
Song: Breakfast on Pluto
Composer:  Partridge
Album: Hits of 1969
Label: EMI
Played at: 3.58