On the up 
Auckland juggler Mike Twist is building a name for himself internationally with his uniquely entertaining act. Twist began his career in at the Rainbow's End theme park in Auckland, and has gone on to perform in Dubai, Hawaii, Germany and Japan. Last year he travelled to Berlin to train with renowned Cirque du Soleil juggler Viktor Kee. Twist is currently based at the Tokyo Bay Hilton, the official hotel of Tokyo Disneyland. 
(November 2007)

Disney classic gets Kiwi treatment
A new Walt Disney stage production of Beauty and the Beast has proved a double coup for NZ. Weta Workshop is to design costumes for the $1 million extravaganza, which will be presented by the Wellington Musical Theatre – the first time Disney has ever licensed the musical to a company outside the US. “It's certainly the biggest project we have ever undertaken and it's great to have Weta on our doorstep,” said Wellington Musical Theatre spokesman Adam Blackwell. The Weta designed costumes will also be used for the show’s Australian tour.
(29 August 2005)
  

The first, second, and third Noel
The trio behind Kiwi comedy act The Four Noels - James Pratt, John Forman, and Jesse Griffin - interviewed in SMH. The group formed in 1996, without any strictly comic ambitions. "We just wanted to create theatre that people would be excited by, and want to come along and see. And it happens to be funny," says Griffin. The Four Noels are regular participants at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival - where they have twice been nominated for awards - and were crowd favourites at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They also perform frequently on Australia's Triple J radio.
(4 July 2003)
    

Ballet Bebe
NZ ballet export Bebe Eversfield profiled in the Victoria Times. Now 78, Eversfield won a government scholarship to study at London's prestigious Sadler's Wells Company (now the Royal Ballet) and made her Albert Hall debut at age 14. She ran the School of Theatrical Arts in Victoria, Canada, for more than 30 years, and is now an advisor to Ballet Victoria. Said Wendy Vernon, vice-president of the Greater Victoria Danceworks Association, who last month honoured Eversfield's contribution to the city: "She's just a ball of fire."
(9 May 2003)
 

A New Zealand first
NZ Drama School student James Ashcroft has secured an internship at New York's prestigious theatre and film company, The Wooster Group. The Wooster Group was founded by actor Willem Dafoe in the late 70s, and has a well-established reputation for innovation and excellence. Alumni include Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand.
(17 April 2003)
 

The quality of Maori Merchant of Venice is not strained
Don C. Selwyn's The Maori Merchant of Venice won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 22nd Annual Hawai'i International Film Festival's Golden Maile Awards. The Maori film adaptation of Shakespeare's revenge drama "brings an exotic look, a musically rich soundtrack and a unique cultural mix to Shakespearean tradition." Based on Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones' 1945 translation of the play into formal Maori, the production aims to "keep the poetic side of the language active", says Selwyn, an active promoter of Maori language preservation. 
(8 November 2002)
 

Alone it Stands: a good clean ball
Irish playwright John Breen's tale of Munster's famous victory over the 1978 grand-slam All Blacks recieves winning reviews and box office at the Sydney Opera House on its way to a season in Auckland's Sky City Theatre. The sux Australian actors (including NZEdged Rupert Cox) conjure 50 characters in the course of the play, including some artful Kiwi and Irish accents, a rousing haka and a touch of the blarney: "For its comedy and craft, Alone It Stands proves a winner - a play as charming as it is ballsy."
(29 July 2002) 

Xena tackles Vagina Monlogues
Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless learns "new respect for the vagina, for the power and sacredness of it", as she stars alongside Madeline Sami and Danielle Cormack in Auckland Theatre Company's staging of the feminist play, The Vagina Monologues. "[While] I never felt disadvantaged by having a vagina...I never realised it was a privilege", comments Lawless.
(5 February 2002)

Icon and storyteller who inspired all 
Veteran actor and filmmaker Don Selwyn has died aged 71 after a long illness. Selwyn was a founding member of the New Zealand Maori Theatre Trust and He Taonga Films, and was a lifelong advocate for the inclusion of Maori culture in mainstream NZ film and television. Born in Taumaranui, Selwyn was a qualified teacher before he became hooked on acting after attending a Shakespeare rehearsal with a friend as a dare. Selwyn toured NZ with Nola Miller's Shakespeare company and eventually broadened his acting career to include musicals (Porgy and Bess), television (Marlin Bay, The Governor, Pukemanu) and film (Sleeping Dogs, Came a Hot Friday). He produced and directed Don't Go Past With Your Nose in the Air, which won Best Foreign Short at the New York Festival in 1992, and in 2001 made the first Maori language feature film with English subtitles - the Merchant of Venice. Around 300 mourners attended Selwyn's tangi in Taumaranui, including many of his high-profile industry mates. "There are so few of us [Maori actors, writers etc] who didn't walk through his door, sit at his table," said actor Waihoroi Shortland, who played Shylock in Merchant of Venice. "He invested his life in others." Selwyn was presented with an Arts Foundation of NZ Icon Award in hospital last month. 
(15 April 2007)

Killer opportunity 
Annie Crummer has been handpicked by the surviving members of Queen to sing on the remake of their best-selling single Another One Bites the Dust. The NZ singer caught the attention of Brian May and Roger Taylor after they saw her performing in the hit Queen musical We Will Rock You in Japan and Australia. Crummer was flown to London to record the track at the pair's studio in a historic 400-year-old mill. "Annie is one hell of a singer! A voice in a million," May reportedly told friends after the session. May and Taylor were so impressed with Crummer's performance that they have signed her on for a percentage of the song's royalties - which could potentially earn her millions. Crummer played the lead character Killer Queen on the Australian and Japanese tours of We Will Rock You, and will repeat her performance in NZ in October. The Auckland-born singer is best known in NZ for her hit 80s and 90s singles For Today, Melting Pot and See What Love Can Do. 
(30 May 2007)

Fashioning humour
Kiwi comedy queen Cal Wilson on frocks and laughter in the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
(11 April 2001)

Science made funny
Auckland's Indian Ink Theatre Company - with co-founder Jacob Rajan in the starring role - performed The Candlestickmaker to Australian audiences at Brisbane's Cremorne Theatre. Rajan, who wrote the play with the other half of the partnership Justin Lewis, "deftly plays all characters; through the frenetic changing of character through mask, he draws the audience in from the beginning. The Candlestickmaker is enchanting theatre. It embraces the themes and narrative of modern New Zealand. The same themes and narrative have relevance for Australia, yet when the performance ends, one is left wondering where these voices are in Australian theatre and do they get enough support or exposure? In the meantime, we await more from Indian Ink Theatre Company." The Company takes their latest "comedy with bite", The Dentist's Chair, to Wellington and Auckland later this month. 
(11 August 2008)

Dale's no loony 

Funny man finds his feet 
In just over a decade, Hawera-born comedian Alan Brough has established himself as one of Australia's most popular talents. Since moving to Melbourne in 1995, Brough has appeared in films The Nugget and Bad Eggs, co-hosted the Tough Love radio show on Triple M, and written, directed and acted in numerous theatre and stand-up performances. He is currently a team captain on the hugely successful ABC music trivia show Spicks and Specks. "You'll never get any dirt on Alan," said an ABC audience usher in the Sydney Morning Herald, "Everybody loves him." Brough describes his move across the Tasman as self-imposed exile. "One of the reasons I moved to Australia was because of [his NZ television debut] Melody Rules. It truly was one of the reasons. It was such a horrendous experience and I was so embarrassed by it I had to go overseas." Brough will appear in the one-man show Top Town in next month's Melbourne International Comedy Festival. 
(26 February 2007)

Bogans go global 
New Zealand comedians Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, of Back of the Y and Bogan's Heroes fame, have taken their special brand of gross-out humour to London, as contributing stuntmen on Channel 4's Balls of Steel. "It's ridiculous," says Heath of the flashy studio set-up, in NZ's Sunday magazine. "We're spending huge money just to make things look as crap as they always have." Earlier this year, Balls of Steel made international headlines for spraying Tom Cruise with water from a fake microphone at the London premiere of War of the Worlds.
(October 2005)

Might of the Conchords
“New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody act,” Flight of the Conchords (a.k.a Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement), made a triumphant return to this year’s Edinburgh Festival, with a new show entitled ‘Lonely Knights.’ Guardian: “Last year, [the Conchords] were still late-night Fringe underdogs. This year, they are greeted like rock gods. With their superior wordplay, virtuoso musicality and superbly gormless banter, they've taken comedy song to a whole new level … This is dazzling conceptual comedy delivered in the voice of a man reading the gas meter. But their relationship is so strong, and their talent so prodigious, they could probably make that irresistible too.”
(10 August 2004)
  

AllOver UpOverDownUnder
Waikato University film graduate, Hadyn Butler, won both the best film and audience award at the annual UpOverDownUnder Antipodean Festival in London this year. His entry – Fresh – looks at the quintessential OE practice of dossing, and the cultural intricacies involved in living on the cheap. Festival director, Susan Arden-Wood: “By providing Antipodeans with an outlet to express what they love about London, we're also encouraging them to be part of the wider London community rather than remain on its fringes.”
(13 October 2003)
    

For him (and her)
First we were treated to the infinite variety of feminine experience in The Vagina Monologues; now actress and playwright Geraldine Brophy has penned the masculine equivalent. She describes The Viagara Monologues - which opened to rave reviews in Auckland in July - as "a celebration of men, and of the positive things about them." Says Brophy; "I would never assume to be the voice of men. I'm not purporting to have any answers - this is simply a presentation of different male voices."
(28 July 2003)

Henwood plays Burton
Welsh-Wellingtonian actor, Ray Henwood, thrilled Melbourne audiences with his portrayal of theatre legend Richard Burton, in Mark Jenkins' Playing Burton. The Age: "Henwood's fine performance, beautifully paced, movingly builds real tragic stature for his fascinating subject."
(12 June 2003)
   

D'Acclaimed funny-man
Kiwi comedian Tarun Mohanbhai has taken his acclaimed one-man show - D'Arranged Marriage - across the Tasman, with high-profile stints at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Opera House. Mohanbhai made his name in NZ with the stand-up act Curry Muncher, and continues to use his experience of East-West culture collision as the basis for his comedy.
(2 May 2003)
    

Speaking in tongues
Applauded young Aotearoa actress Madeleine Sami, dodges questions about her involvement with Rings star Elijah Woods ("we kind of hung out and went to the movies a bit"), a day after Woods confesses he's infatuated with her in Britain's Arena magazine. Sami, however, is sure about her New Zealand edge: "I feel a strong desire to keep representing New Zealand and keep finding those New Zealand voices and put them on stage. In Hollywood all our actors don't do that; they go there and speak American". 
(6 February 2002)

"All the world's a stage"
24-year-old Aucklander, Miles Lattimer-Gregory, hits the big time in London's West End, with the company he founded, the British Touring Shakespeare Company opening its season of Hamlet and the Twelfth Night at the Westminster Theatre. "This production contained some of the best Shakespeare I have ever seen", praises Threatre Review magazine. "Witty and wonderfully engaging, it was an energising performance which left the audience cheering for more. This company's work is must-see stuff". 
(17 January 2002)

This is Our Youth
"Highly talented" 19-year-old Anna Paquin combines "prim formality of speech with an argumentative sexual ardour" as she stars alongside Hayden Christensen and Jake Gyllenhaal in the London staging of This is Our Youth. The "wry social comedy...about the rich-kid drop-out generation of the early 80s" is written by Oscar nominee Kenneth Lonergan. 
(18 March 2002)
        

Shakespeare goes Maori
The Merchant of Venice is turned into the first Maori-language film of a Shakespeare play. "Shakespeare's use of language is not dissimilar to the ancient poetic, lyrical and metaphorical Maori style," explains Scott Morrison, who plays Antonio in the film, due out in New Zealand in February.
(4 December 2001)
  

Pregnant pause
Hold the show, my wife's having a baby cried Jeff Knight of Christchurch's Court Theatre.
(8 June 2001)
             

Kezia comes alive 
Katherine Mansfield's Prelude and Carnation are amongst four of the writer's short stories adapted for theatre and performed by Toronto's Theatre Smith-Gilmour, celebrated for their stage adaptations of Chekhov. The Mansfield Project was created by Dean Gilmour and Michelle Smith. Gilmour says there is something about Mansfield's life that resonates for him. "She captures the dance of life and death with the same unsentimental eye for essential detail," he says. Co-artistic director Michelle Smith says: "Her passion for life intoxicates with images, scents and the tactile, like a garden in summer." The Mansfield Project opens March 18 at Factory's Studio Theatre, Toronto and runs through April 13. 
(15 March 2008)

Bright lights beckon for Wellington student
Wellington student Landen Hale-Brown has a lead role in the Australian production of Billy Elliot the Musical. Hale-Brown, 12, won the role of Billy's best friend Michael over 3000 other hopefuls. He made his debut during a preview performance in November, after four months of rehearsals. "I've done amateur stuff but not really big stuff like this," he said in an interview with Wellington's Dominion Post. "I think I thought it was scary but I liked it. You couldn't see the people in the crowd so that made me feel better." The former Paremata School pupil is now based in Sydney, where he attends the McDonald Performing Arts College. Billy Elliot the Musical opened in Sydney on December 13. 
(4 December 2007)

McKellen's Middle Earth return 
Sir Ian McKellen returned to NZ in August for the first time since 2003, to perform both Shakespeare's King Lear and Chekhov's The Seagull with the Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellen, who reached a new level of global fame as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings, performed at Wellington's Westpac St James Theatre and Auckland's ASB Theatre, following dates in the UK, Singapore and Australia. "This is a form of blood sport," said McKellen in the New York Times. "The fun of going to see 'King Lear' is to watch actors toppled from whatever status they have as the part defeats them." Far from being "toppled", McKellen has sold out every show and received near-unanimous critical praise for his performances. The RSC now heads to the US, before finishing up at London's West End. 
(2 September 2007)
Photo Jocelyn Carlin/Panos for The New York Times

Serial thriller 
October saw the UK premiere of hit NZ play, Serial Killers. Written by former Shortland Street scriptwriter, James Griffin, Serial Killers is a black comedy which takes place behind the scenes of a fictional Antipodean soap series. The very appropriate star of the UK version is Mark Little - AKA Joe Mangel, of Neighbours fame. As well as successfully touring NZ and Australia, the play was recently developed into a TV series by Griffin for NZ's TV1. 
(29 October 2005)

Star on the rise
14-year-old Wellington performer Letitia Forbes has a starring role in the latest production by Cirque de Soleil - Quidam. An accomplished singer and actress, Forbes plays the central character of Zoe. The show is currently playing in Montreal and will tour Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore next year.
(17 April 2004)

King of the jungle
20-year-old Turanga Merito has assumed the lead role of Simba in the Sydney production of The Lion King, after fellow Kiwi Vincent Harder bowed out for family reasons. The Disney blockbuster draws a minimum of 16,000 viewers a week. “I'm so humbled by all of it but it gets a little scary sometimes,” said Merito to the NZ Herald. “Sometimes I wonder how did this Maori boy from Okere Falls in Rotorua get here?” NZ performers play five of the nine principal roles in the show, as well as two ensemble parts.
(14 August 2004)

Richard's rocky road
Rocky Horror man, Richard O'Brien, interviewed about life and love in the Times. The weekly column - 'Love etc' - invites celebrities to divulge how different relationships have shaped their lives. A typically candid O'Brien discusses, among other things, his feelings towards his parents, his feminine side, and falling in love with the boss's daughter at 17.
(11 June 2003)
   

Kiwi gives life to Coppelia
NZer Malcolm Burn was the guest choreographer for Ballet Tech Ohio's production of Frederic Franklin's Coppelia. Currently associate artistic director of the Richmond Ballet, Burns' 25-year career includes stints as a principal dancer for the Royal New Zealand Ballet and Ballet West in Salt Lake City.
(12 May 2003)
   

"Snap, crackle and grace"
SMH: "Black Grace, New Zealand's all-male company of Maori and Pacific Island dancers, is the most engaging and entertaining company to visit Sydney for years. Maybe since the last time they were here [...] sources range from breakdance to the kind of contemporary work for which their fellow New Zealander, Douglas Wright, is famous, from Latin American to high-camp solos." The Age: "For all those performing arts venue managers who think contemporary dance can't pull the crowds, Black Grace is the answer to your prayers … The work has real integrity and an unpretentious originality." Says artistic director Neil Ieremia; "I felt that there was a need to confront that conventional, sports-mad, beer-swilling image that exists, especially among young, black males … I think in the sort of work that we've done, we've gone a long way to breaking down those stereotypes." 
(23 May 2003)
   

Best man for the job
NZ-born Alexander Grant is in the director's chair at Boston Ballet's Grand Studio, where a performance of Ashton's Fille is currently under production. The 77-year-old, widely regarded as "one of the great character dancers of his day," spent most of his professional career at England's Royal Ballet, where he partnered such legends as Margot Fonteyn. It was for Grant that Ashton originally created the role of Alain in Fille in 1960.
(16 February 2003)

Grand Dame
Dame Judith Mayhew has been elected chairperson of Scotland's Royal Opera House, the first time the position has been held by a woman. The NZ-born high-flyer previously helmed the Corporation of London, and remains financial advisor to the city's Mayor. Arts Council of England chairman Gerry Robinson: "Her broad range of experience, coupled with her love of opera and ballet, means she is well-placed to take the organisation into the next chapter of its development."
(4 February 2003)

Behind the scenes
Wellington-born Kristian Fredrikson, Australia's leading set and costume designer, interviewed in Weekend Australian. A designer "whose name is synonymous with opulence," Fredrikson is currently taking his third crack at creating "the perfect Swan Lake." On his 40 years in the business; "The theatre is my family, my universe - and a very demanding one at that."
(30 November -1 December 2002)
            

Alan Brunton: mystic gold from the edge
NZ performance artist Alan Brunton (57) died while touring Europe with his Red Mole theatre troupe, "[depriving] NZ letters of its one truly iconic radical figure." Coming to prominence in the late 70s as one of the emerging young artists to rally against established literary norms and perceived elitism, The Independent paints Brunton as an radical, ideologically committed and extraordinary figure, an unlikely hero amidst NZ's sporting giants and technological achievers:  "Brunton gave New Zealand a huge vein of mystic gold."   
(9 July 2002)
      

Edge stories in Ireland 
Rangimoana Taylor and a Ngati Ranana group are among the storytellers to be powhiried onto a marae recreated by Dublin school pupils for the  ninth Scealta Shamhna (festival of story-tellers),  highlighting New Zealand and immigration.
(2 November 2000)
    

Naked Success
Toa Fraser's first play, Bare, hits Sydney with "a saltiness that is unmistakably NZ". Fraser is compared to Raymond Carver and Tom Wolfe,  masters of edge and bite.
(22 October 2000)