Category: Wellington

Ian Curtis Wall

Every day I walk past the Ian Curtis wall, the graffiti memorial to the Joy Division singer that has marked up Wallace Street’s concrete expanses for nearly three decades. (Mentioned on his Wikipedia page.)
Recently, it was removed by the local graffiti clean-up crew.
This is a genuine international attraction, and it’s been scrubbed off the map. (That link goes to Meredith Yayanos, international lady of mystery and recent emigre to Wellington; I have been bemused to watch her discuss Wellington’s many positive attributes in Twitter conversations with William Gibson and Warren Ellis, among others.) I’d be frustrated except its only a matter of time before the graff reappears; it’s already been chalked back up, bigger and brighter than ever.
But – it’s yet another blemish in the council’s record of understanding and dealing with street art. (See also the Drypnz fiasco.) Not that this is an easy task, graffiti slips right through the cracks of our social mechanics, but they can do a damn sight better than they’ve been doing. If we’re trying to a be a city of culture, then a bit of sorting out is past due.

Smashed plates and diamonds


Thoroughly caught up in the world of Marie Antoinette for The Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which is on Saturday evening.
Today, I smashed a plate by letting it fall from my head. That’s a new one. But the dances are going rather well I think.
There are still tickets to be had, if anyone is feeling keen. It will be a spectacular evening in every way.
But while the spectacle is being prepared, blogging will be light.

Glossy brochures

On the scene now in Wellington: glossy, sexy brochures for The Affair of the Diamond Necklace, the interactive theatre event I wrote for the St James Theatre here in Dubtown. It’s a full-colour piece of eye candy that really makes the show look awesome – which is as it should be, because the show will be awesome.
There’s something very exciting about having classy collateral showcasing your wares. It makes the whole endeavour feel suddenly real, which is an important effect when the experience from this side of the coin is people in a room having fun and emails going back and forth about costumes and script edits. It’s like a feedback loop – we put something out there that announces us in a big way, and then we get extra movitation to live up to that high standard.
It has not escaped my notice that this is, by coincidence, ten years exactly since I was last distributing glossy, sexy brochures around Wellington in order to promote an interactive theatre event. That was Apocalypse, also called Aliens: Apocalypse (but not on the official literature so we didn’t violate any copyrights). Apocalypse was the last of three biannual weekend events where a big crowd of people pit themselves against the Giger-creatures of the Alien movie series. I was the prime mover behind all three, but was far from alone. They were all successful, but this third one, Apocalypse, was the most fitful and compromised success. It was, to be plain, an over-reach not in scale of event but in the content – I was trying to do with it something that I didn’t have tools to do. These days, with a vibrant live action gaming scene in New Zealand, with alternate structures for interactive gaming like Jeepform, online RP, pervasive games and the technique-focused Forge diaspora, and with just more know-how under our collective belts, it is safe to say we would have done it differently. But still: a success, a memorable occasion.
The flyers were beautiful but ultimately fruitless. A careful media strategy saw us garner coverage in newspapers and radio; we were supported by a handsome website and these impressive flyers completed the image of an interesting and well-assembled event. From all of these efforts, we pulled in only a handful of people who didn’t come from word-of-mouth. (On the other hand, these few people were also enthusiastic supporters of the event, and we benefited from their presence greatly; so perhaps it did balance out in the end?)
And again, I think back to the second Aliens weekend, Fury, and how every person who arrived encountered a huge and impressive movie-style poster dramatising the event they were about to join. Those posters, I’m convinced, set the tone; they told every participant that this was something big, something special. And so they believed, and so they acted, and so it was.
But then again, I remember walking the dealers room at Gen Con 2005 and seeing the people sitting lonely in their booths, surrounded by product they would never shift, with incredible art on the cover of their piled hardbacks, art that would have cost a fortune. The magic didn’t work with that transaction.
I’m excited that people will be picking up our brochure and stuffing it into their jacket pocket and pulling it out later on as they walk along the waterfront and inspecting it, decoding it, evaluating it. The glossy brochure is a promise; it says that we’re delivering something worth your time. I am deeply confident that we are doing exactly that.

The ENnies!

Which are like the Emmies, only they’re for role-playing games and they’re not presented by Doogie Howser!
Nominated this time are good friends of this parish: Hot War (words by Malcolm Craig and visuals by Paul Bourne) for Best Writing and Best Setting; and 3:16: Carnage Amongst The Stars for best cover (which was Paul Bourne art with design by game author Gregor Hutton).
Congratulations!
This recognition is very well-deserved. I’m sure, should Malcolm win, he will mention in his acceptance speech the crucial role in Hot War’s genesis that was played by Fidel’s Cafe on Cuba St here in Wellington. Those tasty breakfasts fuelled many of his writing binges…

Folk Music Revisited

Way back in December 2003, in what was only my 9th post to this blog, I generated a small eddy of argument over this:

Made me reflect for a bit on the absence of a ‘traditional music scene’ in Wellington, and perhaps in wider New Zealand. Traditional/cultural music groups exist, of course, but they’re pretty hard to find – I certainly never stumbled across more than one or two. (Although, now I think of it, the Cuba Street Carnival always seemed to summon them out of their shadowy corners.)
In New Zealand we have little in the way of local traditional ‘folk’ music that is shared with the community. Certainly, we have cultural music traditions that are strong – I defy any New Zealander’s spine not to tingle when a waiata rings out – but they are bounded into particular spaces and contexts. The Pacific Island musical traditions are likewise heavily tied into their particular communities. New Zealand’s European-descended pakeha seem to be largely happy to let the musical traditions of their various forefathers fade to nothing. The Asian communities are still a long battle away from being accepted as ‘part of New Zealand’ and their music likewise.

There was much discussion and a follow-up post with even more discussion. Lots of people challenged me, basically.
Anyway, I was thinking about that again when I read an interview with Stephen Fox, one of the PhD candidates at my workplace. It was printed in the DomPost a couple weeks ago but hasn’t turned up online, so here’s the excerpt I most want to quote:

He says pakeha today don’t have an equivalent to Maori and Pacific Island cultural arts. Pakeha folk arts and rituals, including annual celebrations and rites of passage, were replaced about the time of the Enlightenment, he says, although some survive in small pockets such as folk music and dance. “But they don’t have that deep core of information. With Polynesian dance, you have these massive genealogies. You are getting this massive dose on information of who you are within this cultural context.”

And that, I think, sheds some light on the position I was arguing back in ’03, and still have some sympathy for today. It also points at the value of, say, putting Maori cultural practice into play with Maori prisoners – they get information from it that pakeha wouldn’t get if someone turned up to make them morris dance, or sing “Thank You Very Much For Your Kind Donation”. (I kid because I love.)
Anyway. I really wish you could read the whole article, but you can’t. I can link you to Stephen’s website though.

Marie Antoinette Project – Live


The Marie Antoinette interactive theatre event is now fully live on the St James website. Very exciting! It will shortly be appearing in the next St James season brochure that is mailed out to many thousands of people.
Rehearsals are about to begin, and I’ll be giving some direction about how I want the interactivity to work in this evening. Our performers are incredible and enthusiastic and will be up for every challenge. I also need to do a bit of re-writing in response to the first cast read-through we had; I was very pleased that the script came out looking very good at the end of that, with several people specifically complimenting me on it. Believe it or not but I think working on the 48 and collaborating with an artist on a comic have both helped a great deal, forcing me to get better at cramming more content into fewer words and trusting in the performance/artwork to do a lot of communicating.
Ticket sales are open to the public – a key St James staffer was sick for a couple of weeks when they should have been hitting up corporate clients, so they’ve just thrown the doors open instead. If you’re interested, details at the webpage. (Yeah, it’s on the spendy side but it’s not that ridiculous for dinner, drinks and a show combined.) If we sell out I might even make some pocket money…

News Roundup

Bernie Madoff thrown in the klink. Good. Dude may just be the sacrificial goat for the sins of an industry, but still feels mighty satisfying.
The strange, sad story of Bastareaud, the French rugby player who claimed to have been violently attacked here in Wellington by a gang of angry locals, gets stranger and sadder as he is admitted to a psychiatric unit after attempting suicide; the injuries that he covered up with his story of being assaulted may have come from his own team-mates. Horrible. I hope the guy finds his way right.
Women tennis players who make noise are now “grunters”. Am I the only one who wonders what men would be called if this was about them? “Roarers”? “Shouters”? “Growlers”? Okay maybe not that last one.

Marie Antoinette Project

(This is a repeat of a post from last week that got mysteriously lost.)
One of my sekret projects has been announced. I’m the writer and interactivity guy for a co-production between the St James Theatre and Eklektus, Inc.
The Affair of the Diamond Necklace: an evening with Marie Antoinette in the Gardens of Versailles is an interactive theatre experience being presented in August 2009. It’s going to be awesome.
Also, will be interesting. I haven’t found anything quite like what we’re doing, and I’ve done a lot of looking. It isn’t quite a murder-mystery type dinner theatre or dinner party, it isn’t a live roleplaying event, it isn’t a conventional performance, it isn’t like any kind of improv I’ve been able to find out about… We’re carving our own path here, and that’s great fun, because I’m convinced there’s lots of unexplored space in the interactive experience realm.
You probably won’t see it advertised through normal channels, because the St James Theatre will be offering the tickets first to their corporate clients and expect to sell them all that way. However, if its successful (and we hope it is!) it will be offered again. Other such events are also in development.
I’m pretty excited!