Standing Room Only for Sunday 30 January 2022

12:15 The Film Artisans 

Hundreds of New Zealand film crew were gutted by the sudden end to what were expected to be two big budget long term screen series. Amazon's Lord of the Rings wrapped after filming just the first season here, while Netflix's Cowboy Beebop was canned not long after the first series went to air.

Many artists and artisans work in the film industry so we decided to talk to four of them, all very experienced crew with impressive CVs and all wildly creative people using their different skills in different ways.

Lynn Freeman spoke to Martine Bijker, Kathryn Lim, Hannah Webster and Carolyn Fenton.

 

12:45  Measuring the Anzacs

An ambitious project to gather information from 1000s of military personnel files - of those who served in the New Zealand military in World War I and the South African War - needs your help.

The files have been digitised by Archives New Zealand, but international researchers and citizen scientists are needed for the time-consuming work of transcribing the information.

Measuring the Anzacs started back in 2015 but due to the volume of files needed to be transcribed and more recently the pandemic only around 12 percent are done and dusted.

The Zooniverse online citizen science webpage is the main outlet for the team spearheading  the project. To get involved go here.

One of the project leaders Evan Roberts - who's based at the University of Minnesota - joins Lynn Freeman.

 

 

1:10 At The Movies

Dan Slevin looks at four new films released during the summer break: King Richard stars Will Smith as the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams; Nightmare Alley is a remake of the 1947 classic film noir starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett; in Gold, Zac Efron stars as a drifter in a post-apocalyptic landscape who stumbles across unimaginable riches and Spencer stars Kristen Stewart as the Princess of Wales.

 

1:35 Rijula Das: bringing new verve to the Verb

Scheduling any festival in the time of a pandemic is going to be a nightmare. Rijula Das is the new Verb Readers and Writers Festival Programmer for 2022, and it's one of the big literary events in the capital. Rijula has a long involvement in the literary scene, as a writer, translator, ex-bookseller and buyer. She's also taken part as both a speaker and audience member at Verb, a festival that's been running since 2014.

Rijula's debut novel A Death in Shonagachhi was published in July 2021 by Picador India and will be published as Small Deaths in the USA and elsewhere in 2022. A Death in Shonagachhi was longlisted for the JCB prize 2021 and won the Tata Lit Live First Book Award 2021. 

Rijula's English translation of Nabarun Bhattacharya's novel Kangal Malshat is forthcoming. 

She received her PhD in Creative Writing and prose-fiction in 2017 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she taught writing for two years. 

Verb is scheduled to start on the 3rd of November in Te Whanganui a Tara.

 

1:48 Wheel of Experience

Teaching Benedict Cumberbatch how to play the banjo for the Netflix film The Power of the Dog has been one of the most intriguing recent gigs for banjo player David Ward.

David's also one of the three multi-instrumentalists who've been performing their show Wheel of Experience for a decade now around the country. He, Peter Daubé and Dave Khan present a series of ballads about characters from Aotearoa's early settler history.

Like so many live shows, Covid's scuppered some of their planned concerts including this year's Auckland Folk Festival. But they have just confirmed that they can go ahead with five planned shows in Hawkes Bay as part of the Small Hall Concert Series.

Lynn Freeman speaks to David and to lead singer Peter Daubé about their unflagging fascination with the legends they sing about - from the notorious Burgess Gang to confidence trickster Amy Bock and the flamboyant Portuguese 'westie'' Don Buck.

 

2:06 The Laugh Track - Lizzie Tollemache

Until a few days ago, we would have been introducing our Laugh Track guest Lizzie Tollemache as a performer at the upcoming Splore Festival in Tāmaki Makaurau. Splore, though, is one of the many and increasing number of Covid-19 casualties. Lizzie though describes herself as an incurable creative and is widely respected as a collaborator with artists in all kinds of endeavours. She's a past Associate Director of Palmerston North's Centrepoint Theatre and co-founder of Rollicking Entertainment.

Her Laugh Track picks are Flo and Joan, Mawaan Rizwan, Crazy Ex Girlfriend and the Maori Sidesteps.

 

2:25 Timberrrr...!

Two-time world champion axeman Ned Shewry hailed from Taranaki. A hard man, by all accounts, and more than half a century on, elements of his life have now been fictionalised for a new play.

Timberrrr....! is set in Taranaki in 1940 when Ned Murphy is about to hang up his axe, at least until a city kid called Billy turns up, claiming to be his son. 

Matt Chamberlain and Damon Andrews have co-written Timberrrr....!, while Stephen Papps is one of three actors playing 18 characters. Matt Chamberlain joins us to explain how he came across the original Ned's story.

Timberrrr....! premieres on the 12th of February at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerson North.
 

2:35  Trisha Hanifin's The Time Lizard's Archaeologist 

There are books that simply don't fit neatly into any literary genre, and the new one by Trisha Hanifin is definitely in that camp.

The Time Lizard's Archaeologist is part Speculative Fiction, part Cli-Fi, with lashings of psychology and mythology.

The novel's set in 2016, 2026 and 2036, and the central character is psychologist and dream therapist Jason Winston. While trying to help other people to make sense of their dreams, he struggles to analyse his own.

The Time Lizard's Archaeologist is published by Cloud Ink.
 

2:48 Artist Peter Lange - brick by brick

Since the 1970s ceramicist Peter Lange has pushed the boat out with his art form - literally in the case of a two-tonne boat that famously floated on Auckland harbour 20 years ago.

But these days he's working using individual bricks as canvasses.

The images reflect his trademark sense of fun and irony. He's also experimenting with selfies - in fact painting itself is a new adventure for the pioneering ceramicist.

Peter has titled his new show Brick (the what I did in lockdown). It's just the second show at Auckland's new Oddly Project Gallery on Dominion Road and opens Monday.

 

3:06 Drama at 3 - Te Pō

There weren't many upsides to the Covid-19 pandemic but our drama today was one of them. As a result of the scheduled tour of the play Te Pō by Carl Bland being cancelled due to the lockdown a radio version was commissioned.

A policeman, a priest and a blind man look for clues that will lead them to the missing playwright Bruce Mason. Where has he gone? What made him leave his desk and vanish into the night?  For Te Pō's odd characters finding Bruce Mason has become a matter of life, death and catching a big fish. Te Pō is an eloquent and surprising comedy. It’s about searching for someone you have loved and lost and finding them again.