Standing Room Only for Sunday 25 April 2021

 

12:15 Selling kiwi films in a pandemic market 

It's been an interesting year for film makers and distributors in Aotearoa. While cinematic releases were restricted and filming schedules were interrupted kiwi film makers and producers got busy finding new ways to their work in front of viewer's eyes. 

Script to Screen Aotearoa are running a series of workshops over the coming fortnight on taking films to audiences in a Covid 19 world. One of the speakers is producer Alexander Behse whose polyamory documentary There is no I in Threesome has come out in that environment. 

12.30 Single Asian Female to premiere in Tāmaki Mākaurau

Adapted from an Australian play, Single Asian Female Kiwi-style tells the story of a first-generation Chinese immigrant and single mother living in Mount Maunganui. Pearl Wong is also a restaurateur and karaoke addict and actor Kat Tsz Hung is delighted to be one of three Chinese leads in a play with a Chinese director.

Auckland Theatre Company is collaborating with Proudly Asian Theatre Company to present the New Zealand premiere of the work by Michelle Law.

12:45 A Boy Called Piano 

A stage play about the abuse of a boy in state care and the lifelong emotional damage that came from that traumatic time, is about to be broadcast as a radio drama. The bold move is partly due to Covid-19 interrupting a planned tour of A Boy Called Piano, which had premiered in Wellington in 2019 as a development season for the work that tells playwright Fa'amoana John Luafutu's harrowing story.

it was a follow up to his earlier play The White Guitar that looked at his troubled relationship with his children. Instead of sitting and waiting for theatres to re-open, John and his collaborators Nina Nawalowalo and Tom McCrory opted to work on reworking the script for A Boy Called Piano to work on radio. 

1:10 At The Movies

Simon Morris checks out the success-rate of recent bigger movies when it comes to encouraging world audiences back to cinemas.  And he looks at the latest would-be crowd pleaser, as well as two more Netflix films up for Oscars this year. 

1:33 Restoring a historic typeface 

A new series is looking at our past through material history. The series Single Object traces the whakapapa of items to tell the many histories of Aotearoa. The series has just launched and today I'm speaking to one of the researchers featured in an upcoming episode. 

Ya-Wen Ho is a publication assistant and Masters student at Wai-Te-Ata Press at Victoria University in Wellington. She is working on restoring the typeface of the NZ Chinese Growers' Monthly Journal - the journal is the object she is bringing to the table.

1:50 The tenth tenor! 

Like many of New Zealand's opera singers who would have been singing on international stages now if it weren't for the Coronavirus pandemic, tenor Cameron Barclay has come home looking for other opportunities to sing. For the past few years he'd travelled the world with the Australian singing group Ten Tenors.

Cameron will rejoin the other 9 tenors later this year but before then, he's touring New Zealand with a crossover classical show called Geoff Sewell & Special Guests. Base baritone Jonathon Lemalu who's also returned home until he can perform overseas again, is another of the special guests in the tour.

2:06 The Laugh Track - Angella Dravid & Nick Rado 

One of the great things about the upcoming, mostly all-New Zealand Comedy Festival is to see just how wide the range of comedians in this country has become.  

Angella Dravid is different.  She describes her comedy style as "dark, strange and low energy".  She's also hilarious and constantly surprising - like when she won Series One of TV's Taskmaster New Zealand. Nick Rado is hugely experienced, the five-time winner of the award for best comedy MC, and one of the best gag-writers in the business. 

Angella and Nick chose Eddie Pepitone, Nate Bargatze, Brian Regan and Steven Wright.

2:25 The Movement captures algorithms in dance 

A new dance show is attempting to put one of the big changes of the 21st century into a human format. Artifact approaches the world of "Future Tech" by putting the algorithm on stage. It's part of an upcoming touring show called The Movement! The show was originally going to tour last year, but the pandemic interrupted it. Lynn is joined by Footnote Dance General Manager  Richard Aindow and the principal performer of the work Rose Tapsell. 

2:40 The Devil's Trumpet sounds 

There is a real edge to the latest short stories by writer Tracey Slaughter, containing cautionary tales for people considering illicit relationships through to a dig at New Zealand's attitude to sport. Tracey Slaughter's new short story collection, The Devil's Trumpet, is published by Victoria University of Wellington Press.

2:49 David Eggleton: The Wilder Years 

There is almost 40 years of poetry for Poet Laureate David Eggleton to choose from for his new Best Of anthology. The Dunedin based writer has called his collection of selected poems The Wilder Years. He's selected around 300 from previous collections and added a few new ones that include his response to the Mosque attacks and the reframed use of the word bubble due to the pandemic. 

3:06 Drama at 3 - Cliff's Last Mission 

Our ANZAC Day drama today is Cliff's Last Mission by Justin Eade starring Aroha White and Simon Ferry.