Culture 101

When Isabel Haarhaus got Tracey Slaughter's comment comparing her book to Katherine Mansfield, she was staying in the house next door to Mansfield's in Wellington, looking out on Mansfield's garden. Her debut collection Feral and Other Stories, from Otago University Press, took 10 to 12 years. It began in a writers' group of six women who were, in her words, pretty ruthless with each other. Isabel arrived on the East Coast at 10 speaking only Dutch and German, and soon worked out that being a fast runner was a currency all of its own. She explains why her parents chose nuclear-free New Zealand...

The new Taranaki Fringe Festival is on in New Plymouth until 15 November, with comedy, theatre, cabaret, dance and circus, and international acts alongside local talent. Artistic director Josie Hunter-Annand talks with Perlina about the festival highlights and the Evolution Dome where the shows are held. She also covers the work going into schools, why they chose a fringe over a general arts festival, and how the region has reacted.

When you hear an unseen voice introducing stars at an award show, it's usually a real person sitting backstage, or in a trailer outside, reading live. Queen Noveen is one of those voices. She fell into the work through acting classes and booked the MTV Video Music Awards in her first year with an agency. She tells Perlina Lau how she handles a script that keeps changing during the broadcast, why a mistake has to sound like a normal sentence, and why she skips cheese on show day but keeps green apples and Lay's chips handy. Social media has become...

Dan Slevin reviews three new releases. In Wicker, Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman whose basket maker (Peter Dinklage) builds her a husband from wicker, played by Alexander Skarsgård, and his arrival shakes up the whole village. You Can See Everything is Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, filmed with her and her family during the 34 days before she went to prison for fraud. Godzilla Minus Zero is Takashi Yamazaki's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One. It's set two years later, as a recovering Japan is attacked by a new three-headed monster.

Maaka Pohatu's nickname is the human jukebox, and Perlina Lau puts it to the test with a quickfire round of choruses, from Al Green to Peter Andre. He's one of the singers in Back to the 80s with the Auckland Philharmonia, and he'll be performing Tears for Fears, Simply Red and Billy Joel backed by what he calls a giant wall of sound. Maaka talks about growing up with te reo Maori in Dunedin until Sesame Street got in the way, and why the original Modern Maori Quartet now only gets together a few times a year. He remembers a...

The She Shed Tour began on a morning beach walk. Cheryl Scott knew plenty of women with she sheds along Gisborne's northern beaches, and when out-of-town visitors were surprised by how many there were, she wondered if people would pay to see inside. The first year had six to eight venues and about 200 visitors. For its tenth year next Sunday there are 14 venues across Wainui, Okitu and Makorori, and 1500 tickets are selling fast. Cheryl, a mosaic artist, explains how the day works, the frantic tidying before the gates open, and this year's dress-up theme: wear a piece of art, or...

Karl Puschmann joins Perlina with his November TV picks. He starts with It Gets Worse, out on Neon and narrated by Zadie Smith. Three university friends in their twenties face eviction in London, and a hole one of them punches in the wall sets off the trouble. Karl calls it sharp and very funny, with plenty of cringe, and gives a content warning because sex is a big part of the show. Dead Ahead season two starts from 3 November, and Karl says the first episode is a cracking start. Miriama Smith plays a high-powered Maori lawyer whose ancestors come back...

Painter Shane Cotton and writer Anthony Byrt talk about their book, a mix of history, biography and personal storytelling rather than a conventional art monograph. Byrt quotes his line that Cotton has been walking backwards into his own future for over 30 years. The two met in Brisbane in 2013 and spent the next decade in conversation, including at Cotton's studio in Palmerston North. Cotton grew up in Upper Hutt, drove trucks for his dad, and then went to art school in Christchurch, to the surprise of his family. He talks about his recurring image of preserved heads, and says there is...

Kate Rodger reviews Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim and released by A24, which stars Robert Pattinson and Skyler Gisondo in an unauthorised biopic about Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator. Pressure, directed by Anthony Maras, stars Brendan Fraser as General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Andrew Scott as meteorologist James Stagg, who is asked to forecast the weather for D-Day. Black Sheeps is the sequel to the 2006 New Zealand horror-comedy Black Sheep, with Nathan Meister returning as Henry.

Tongan and Scottish artist Benjamin Work talks about his Pacific Contemporary Artist Award, presented at the 30th Arts Pasifika Awards in Tamaki Makaurau, which hosted the ceremony for the first time. His Sydney Biennale work uses 30 metal forms based on a Tongan dance paddle, with whalebone inlay. It is linked to an 1863 whaling voyage, when a captain took pacific people and sold them into the Peru slave trade. Benjamin traces the story back to a family question about his great-grandfather's green eyes. He also talks about his first visit to the Venice Biennale.

Arnav Taode, event manager of the Auckland Diwali Festival 2026, speaks to Perlina from the festival. Originally from Pune in India, he grew up moving around the country with his family, which gave him a lifelong interest in Indian arts and culture. He moved to New Zealand in 2014, went to the festival in his first year, and was struck by its scale. He has returned almost every year since, including as a stage designer.

Sarah Ell was a sixth former camping on the shores of Lake Tarawera when she first imagined writing about the eruption. That was 1986, a century after the mountain blew. Forty years on, her story has a cast of visitors gathered at the hotel with lies to tell and plans to carry out. The reader knows what's coming. They don't. At the heart of A Sky Full of Fire is Mohi, a young Tuhourangi boy. Sarah tells Perlina why she couldn't write this book without a Maori voice, and what it meant when a Tuhourangi reader loved it. She also explains...

Kirsten Vangsness was halfway through an ab workout when a distinguished voice across the gym announced that it worshipped at her throne. It was Tim Curry. She went straight to work and burst in on her bosses to tell them he wanted to be on the show. Kirsten has played Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds since 2005, a part she only auditioned for to help a friend in casting look good. She was working three jobs to pay the rent at the time. Twenty seasons later, she still gets excited every time she sees her name on a call sheet. She...

It's Labour Weekend, which in Raglan means the studio doors are open. The Raglan Arts Weekend is in its 16th year, with more than 70 artists inviting thousands of visitors in to see where the work gets made. Co-ordinator Nicky Brzeska joins Perlina to talk about what's on show, from ceramics to taxidermy, and how the weekend makes room for emerging artists alongside the familiar names.

There's a lot more singing in season two of Happiness, and Luke Di Somma is the one writing it. This time the show within the show is a Sherlock Holmes musical. Luke helps run the writers room, so the songs are planned from the ground up rather than dropped in later. TV is tough on a songwriter, though. A stage number can run six minutes. On screen, two minutes is a long song, and a close-up can say what a lyric would. Luke also looks back on a Christchurch childhood with an activity every lunchtime, and years spent as a...

Not many people decide to sit down and watch a 40-minute drama on their phone. Plenty of people will watch 40 one-minute episodes, though, one easy decision at a time. That's the hook behind micro-dramas, the vertical, cliffhanger-loaded soaps turning up in social media feeds, more and more of them made with AI. University of Auckland business lecturer Johnny Chan has been studying why they're so hard to put down. He's never watched one for fun, and after his research, he probably won't. In China, 850 million people do. Johnny walks Perlina through how a typical storyline keeps twisting to hold you...

Jonathan Smart knew artist Mark Braunias since 1988, the year Jonathan opened his gallery and Mark graduated from Ilam with a remarkable class of artists. Almost two year's after Mark's death, Gliff, the current show at Jonathan Smart Gallery, offers a glance across a career that began with Donald Duck in conversation with the Virgin Mary and ended in bright fluoro colour. Jonathan remembers Mark moving in for days to paint straight onto the gallery walls, knowing it would all be painted over when the show came down. For Fast Favourites, he's reading Richard Russo and heading to a West Coast...

Todd Karehana is a Maori and queer writer-director from Kawerau, and his short film Socks is in Show Me Shorts. He says the story starts with his own childhood in the Mormon Church. His brother died when he was about nine, and the visiting missionaries were around at the same time. Todd says the film is in black and white because colour pulled attention away from the performance. He describes the Jane Campion and Philippa Campbell development programme as a big part of the film's making. Venice gave him the drive to make a feature, and he is writing it...

Dylan Reeve takes Perlina through The Reality Machine, a seven-part RNZ podcast with two episodes a week. He has worked in and around reality TV for more than 20 years and was a contestant in the first season of The Traitors NZ. He says reality TV gets written off, yet ratings show plenty of people watch it. Dylan talks about duty of care and the tension between producers and participants. He also recalls the X Factor incident involving Joe Irvine and his suit, and the storm that followed.

Dan Slevin joins Perlina on Zoom to review three films. Sense & Sensibility is Georgia Oakley's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, written by Diana Reid. The Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, move to a cottage in Devon after the family estate passes to their half-brother. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles plays Marianne. Whalefall is a survival thriller directed by Brian Duffield. Austin Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, who dives off California's central coast to find his late father's remains and is swallowed by a sperm whale, with about an hour of oxygen. Josh Brolin co-stars as the father. La B...

Duncan and Erin McKellar talk about turning their family story into a musical. Duncan is a psychiatrist who works with people living with dementia, and his mother was diagnosed with younger onset dementia at 60. The show grew from a song Erin wrote using lyrics her dad had written. Duncan says the aim is to bring the person back into the story, and he has heard from families who used what they learned to speak up for a loved one in hospital. Erin says the music is built to be accessible, with pop inflections and room for comedy as well as...

Jason Te Mete explains how Battle Chorus works. The audience is split into two teams, learns a set of choruses on the night, then sings off. Jason co-created it with Rutene Spooner, and it began in 2019 as a commission for the Auckland Cabaret Festival. This year's disco edition is at the Nelson Arts Festival, with songs from Earth, Wind and Fire and the Village People, and Jason says most people will already know the tunes. He is artistic director of Tuatara Collective and also talks about a 2021 infection that left him needing months of rehab before he could play piano...

Megan Brown, Artistic Director of the Tauranga Arts Festival, gives Perlina a heads up on this year's festival highlights.

When Roberta Flack died, Zoe Moon felt like she'd lost a teacher. Flack was the singer who helped Zoe find her own voice, away from the sonic expectations she felt as a Black woman. Real Black for Me weaves Flack's speaking voice from interviews through the songs, with a string quartet and original arrangements by Seth Boy. After its first outing last year, the show is now part of Wellington Jazz Festival. Zoe also talks about growing up in a family where everyone harmonises at the end of dinner, 16 years of working with her sister Deva Mahal, and her hidden...

Auckland-born, Melbourne-based dancer and choreographer Rebecca Jensen brings two works to Tempo Dance Festival, and both are about threes. Natural Basic is a trio built on the waltz step, with layers of choreography stacked on top until the body becomes a kind of barometer for chaotic times. Marking Out, at Tapac in Henderson, puts professional wrestlers and dancers in the same space for three hours. It riffs on the referee's three count and asks what a referee is really for when the match is already fixed. Audiences can come and go as they please. Rebecca also talks about kayfabe, the...

The New Zealand Film Commission is ending its Core Funding Programme, which gives just over $1 million to 10 screen organisations and guilds, including Equity, the Directors Guild, SPADA and Pacific Islands Screen Artists. The funding has existed in various forms for more than 20 years, and the current contract ends next June. The Film Commission says the programme is no longer the most effective way to deliver its mandate and wants to direct funding toward fewer, higher-impact investments. Perlina speaks with Alice Shearman of the New Zealand Writers Guild, Roseanne Liang, co-founder of the Pan Asian Screen Collective, and Patricia Watson of...

Kate Rodger reviews three new releases: Verity, The Social Reckoning and the Netflix documentary Unabomber.

In 2000, Tom Eslinger became the first global creative director of digital at any agency network, at Saatchi & Saatchi, in a role that had no job description. It started in 1989, when a mentor in Minneapolis sent him a teaching job ad for New Zealand. Before long he and his colleagues were making ads on weekends and sending them to Saatchi, which led to work and then a job. These days he's an artist making collages from album covers, stickers and lyrics, an obsession that goes back to clearance stickers in his North Dakota hometown when he was five. His Festival of...

Ten of the 120 artists at this year's Lyon Biennale are from Aotearoa, after curator Katherine Nichols was told to return to where she's from. Taarati Taiaroa was at the opening. In the main venue, a former locomotive workshop in the south of the city, visitors walk past a sound installation of a woman's karanga followed by synchronised gunshots, then a 61-metre line of white pine trunk sections in the form of a fallen kahikatea, both by Tamaki Makaurau artist Ashley Topic. John Miller's billboards declare Honour the Treaty, and Fiona Clarke shows a 1970s photographic series that has never been...

After two years of major upgrades and earthquake strengthening, City Gallery Wellington is open again. The work covered the internal masonry walls, the roof, heating and ventilation in the gallery spaces, new display walls, reading room skylights and accessible toilets. The gallery has reopened with a major exhibition of Cornelia Parker's work, which runs until March 2027. Director Charlotte Davy joins Perlina after a weekend of celebrations.

Karl Puschmann joins Culture 101 with his picks for October. He recommends Happiness Season Two on Three and ThreeNow, the local musical comedy about an ex-Broadway director forced to return to Tauranga, which won him over completely in its first season and hasn't dropped the ball in its second. He's enthusiastic about Kill Jackie on Neon, a stylised Catherine Zeta-Jones action thriller with comic book energy and a 90s vibe in which she dispatches a squad of assassins one by one, and which lets Zeta-Jones use her own Welsh accent on screen for the first time. And he's most looking forward...

Magenta Creative Space is Nelson's only fully resourced creative studio, giving people the chance to try their hand at a range of artforms. Strategic director Rose McGrannagan joins Culture 101 to talk about what the space offers, why it's been struggling to stay open, and the fundraising effort underway to carry it through the year.

Rua is the debut novel of Candice Tutauha, who completed a Master of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland and has spent close to a decade developing the story. It follows a young Maori woman in a tight-knit small town who dreams of becoming a writer and moving to New York City, navigating gang tensions, domestic violence and the weight of community expectation. When a soldier's diary from the Taranaki Wars surfaces, she finds herself pulled into long-buried truths. It's the first part of a planned series. Candice joins Culture 101 to discuss the book.

Michelle Langstone reviews three new releases: Big Girls Don't Cry, Paloma Schneiderman's Sundance Audience Award-winning debut feature and New Zealand International Film Festival Best Film winner, starring newcomer Eny Palmer as a teenager navigating an Omaha summer in 2006, which Michelle describes as acutely observed and immersive in the way it captures that teenage feeling of waiting for life to start; Digger, Alejandro González Iñárritu's satirical thriller starring Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon who causes an environmental disaster and tries to spin himself as its saviour, with Rose Ahmed, Sandra Hüller and John Goodman; and The Wizard of t...

Cornelia Parker is one of Britain's most celebrated contemporary artists, known for large-scale installations that begin with acts of destruction. Her 2022 retrospective at Tate Britain cemented her status. She's now in Wellington for the opening of her first solo public gallery exhibition in New Zealand, at the newly earthquake-strengthened City Gallery Wellington, bringing together more than 50 works including era-defining pieces Cold Dark Matter and War Room. Parker tells Perlina Lau about persuading the British Army, Julian Assange, the National Rifle Association and prison inmates to collaborate with her on different works, and why she has never worked in a traditional...

The Sargeson Prize is New Zealand's richest short story competition, named after Frank Sargeson and sponsored by the University of Waikato. Conceived by writer and lecturer Catherine Chidgey, it's open to original, unpublished work of no more than 5,000 words, with a prize of $15,000 for the Open Division winner. The award evening took place last night. Perlina Lau speaks with this year's winner.

Manchester writer and theatre maker Chris Thorpe spent the week in Aotearoa running an intensive workshop, Conversations for Impossible Times, organised by Playmarket and the British Council. The workshop brought together 16 practitioners including Pip Hall, Sam Brooks, Ni Dekkers-Reihana and Alice Canton to explore how theatre can engage with subjects that feel overwhelming, from nuclear disarmament to climate change to economic justice. Thorpe, a seven-time Fringe First winner who has written for the Royal Court and the Royal Exchange Manchester, got into theatre through a clerical error on a university application form at 17, applying for American Studies and ending up...

At The World's Edge is a non-profit chamber music festival running 3 to 16 October across the Queenstown Lakes, founded by violinists Benjamin Baker and Justine Cormack. This year's programme includes Orbital, a new commission pairing Victoria University composer Michael Norris with Arrowtown-based artist and designer Ed Cruikshank. Norris describes the 15-minute piece for string trio and live electronics as tracing a space between the infinite and the infinitesimal, opening with sounds somewhere between a distress beacon and a Purcell aria before becoming increasingly personal. Cruikshank contributes a physical sculptural work in gun-blue steel with light projected through Braille holes, alongside a...

Dan Slevin reviews three family animation releases: Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, a Halloween special from Aardman in which Shaun accidentally mixes a pumpkin growth serum with the farmer's hair tonic, with predictably chaotic results; Forgotten Island, an animation inspired by Philippine mythology following two best friends who discover a portal to a magical island where their friendship is put to the ultimate test, featuring the voices of H.E.R., Liza Soberano and Dave Franco; and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, direct from this year's New Zealand International Film Festival to AroVision, a F...

Jason Chasland, known as cabaret performer Leather Lungs, was discovered at WOW in 2004 when Dame Susie Moncrieff came into his Wellington performing arts school while he was rehearsing Rocky Horror in shiny heels and liked what she saw. He grew up on a farm in Wairarapa where his father was a farmer, a bodybuilder and a wood chopper, and started in community theatre in Carterton aged seven after begging his parents. Now based in Queensland, he's back as MC for this year's show, and the role evolves through the evening as Jason transforms into Leather Lungs on stage. The name...