features

The Editor's Informal

30/1/2025

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin & Jack McGee

In 2024 Art Murmurs reviewed 94 productions. 93 in Pōneke, and one in Tāmaki Makaurau (how could we pass up the opportunity to send someone to the red carpet premiere of The Lord of The Rings - A Musical Tale??). We are powered by amazing volunteer writers who consistently go above and beyond; case and point: Emilie Hope. Emilie received a community service award at the 2024 Wellington Theatre Awards because of her diligent and continuous work as editor, for years, despite being pregnant near the end of her reign at Art Murmurs. Congrats, Em! Thank you for everything.

Compromise: A Process

13/1/2025

Evangelina Telfar

I have been writing plays for over ten years now and have spent most of that time doing it alone. I don’t regret this. I love spending time making worlds and characters on my own. However, playwriting can also be a lonely process and I have grown jealous of actors and designers in their ability to collaborate in their work once we have completed ours.

Encounter: A Side of Wellington

11/12/2024

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

How much do you know about Wellington? Living memory is the concept of the accumulated memories of what happened within the longest current, ongoing lifespan. For example, the human living memory would span from right now, as you read this, back until the birth of the oldest living person today. An oral history is all that can be verbally recalled and remembered from person to person, and history as a whole is what is written and recorded on paper or device. The Wellington that we know today has had a few different coats of paint over the years, and with each wash over the seaside city we lose details of that which is painted over. The Chinese immigrant story is not unlike other immigrant stories you may have heard, but how familiar are you with Wellington’s historical relationship with Chinese immigrants?

Machina Ex o x o: A Long Distance Relationship Making More Sustainable Theatre

11/10/2024

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

Disaster is a theatre game about game-theatre. Here’s a link to its eventfinda page. It is part of an international show exchange/long distance relationship between contemporary performance group Binge Culture and game theatre collective machina Ex. Accompanying the run at The Hannah Playhouse the companies hosted a panel at Goethe-Institut New Zealand. I was invited to write a feature on the phenomenon and I was giddy to accept because I’m nosey and would love to know if this German nerd (machina Ex) can make long-distance work with the wide-eyed and excitable New Zealand greenie (Binge Culture). The panel was hosted by Hannah Smith and Ralph McCubbin-Howell from Trick of the Light, but has this trick been right (I’m sorry) between these two companies, now that they are halfway through their correspondence?

Dear Prime Minister: Arts in Schools is Valuable Actually

27/8/2024

Austin Harrison

18 Young People perform at BATS Theatre as part of one of the final Creatives in Schools Programs. (Faces Blurred for Privacy) Cred: Nina Hogg

Dear PM Luxon,
You’ve recently expressed that arts and music in schools could be “deferred” in favour of maths, and in response to letters asking you to reconsider that position- your office’s default response has been “if spending more time on numeracy and literacy means less time on the nice-to-haves, like music and arts, so be it.”. I’ve just completed, what will be, one of the last Creatives in Schools programs funded by the Ministry of Education. Here’s a summary of what we did and the outcomes of the project. I believe what we were able to do in just one term, had a marked and lasting impact on the education of the young people involved. I urge you to read it, consider it and think about the added value of arts in our education system.

Why We Do Opt-In Star Ratings Now

12/7/2024

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

I want to begin incorporating opt-in star ratings to our reviews. A rating out of five stars is an internationally recognised mark of success and prestige but our productions that look to tour internationally market themselves with quotes and awards… not stars. The fear from local productions is that this comes across more as a deliberate omission rather than a cultural absence. It gives the impression that the show has bad ratings and wants to hide its stars when in reality no one in our country seems to be giving them out.

The kaupapa of stars is about as damaging as the kaupapa of awarding the best theatre show. The issue is in quantifying the qualitative. I am drawn to this idea though and it requires a sturdy kaupapa in order for me to rest easy on its incorporation.

Why We Established A Charitable Trust

13/5/2024

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

It occurred to me some time in 2021 that something about making a new show every year for Fringe, and a new company to go with each one, wasn't quite right. It didn’t feel like the most responsible use of time and effort to just leave a project behind with no larger plan for it within a few months. Surely the art you put your blood, sweat and tears into making can have a life longer than one season? Surely not everyone in Wellington would have seen the show and there are more audiences to share the work with, more tickets to be sold? If the art I was a part of creating was as good as I thought it was, and had the audience reaction it did, wouldn’t it make sense to keep going?

Everything I Took from Clown School in France

16/1/2024

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
Voiced by the author

You wake up in your AirBnB with the light streaming through the gaps in the metal roller that is down over your windows. You didn’t close it so tight that there were no gaps because then no cool air would sneak in and blow away the sweaty heat from each day. You know a heat wave in the forties is coming across other parts of Europe but for now you are enjoying a bearable mid-thirties heat in the little town of Etampes, an hour south of Paris.

Election Murmurs Ep5: Chloe Swarbrick and a Fiery Panel

11/10/2023

Austin Harrison

Our final episode of Election Murmurs featued an exclusive interview with Green MP Chloe Swarbrick, and a fiery arts panel discussion with former Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Christopher Finlayson KC and Theatre Lecturer at Te Herenga Waka Dr Kerryn Palmer.

Election Murmurs Ep4: Arts Education and National Identity

3/10/2023

Austin sat down with award-winning performer, director, clown and educator Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin for a wide-ranging conversation on Arts and Culture as a part of our national identity and how the arts benefits education.