"I don't make lollies!" Lemi Ponifasio is talking about the often-extreme reaction to his latest production, I AM, from which many audience members walked out when it was staged at last year's Edinburgh International Festival.
Mother/Jaw is a youthful, passionate and promising exploration of being and identity. It emphasises "otherness" - arising from ethnicity, on one hand, and states of mind on the other - and takes a significant stance in the Fringe Festival dance programme.
In painting, even at its most abstract, a strong horizontal across a work is inescapably read as a horizon.
Deutsche Grammophon must be very happy to have Grigory Sokolov in its stable. The Russian came to the notice of the world in 1966, winning the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition at only 16.
On Thursday, Kathryn Stott caps off her first visit to our coundty playing Shostakovich with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Award-winning Auckland playwright Elisabeth Easther was once an erotic fiction writer. As Fifty Shades of Grey hits our screens, she reveals the highs and lows of her short-lived career in smut.
Other winning photographs highlighted animal cruelty in China and the Ebola crisis in west Africa.
There was only one thing that mildly irked Joyce Irving when she got her performance schedule for A Midsummer Night's Dream: she wouldn't appear every night.
As a setting for Shakespeare it would be hard to beat the café balcony of the historic Pah Homestead.
You're in the running for the Sunday Times EFG prize: How do you wish you could blow the winning 30,000?
Local playwright Victor Rodger has followed up last year's revival (Sons) and premiere (At the Wake) with a new play that brings a light touch to tragedy.
A NZ student who took only two years of art classes has received the best subject marks in the world in the Cambridge International Examinations.
Sections of the left-wing intelligentsia appear to believe the Eleanor Catton brouhaha says something disturbing about New Zealand.
Many writers resist national labels. Like Salman Rushdie, we'd rather belong to "the boundless kingdom of the imagination ... the unfettered republic of the tongue".
Prime Minister John Key says author's views shouldn’t be given any more credence than those of the Mad Butcher or Richie McCaw.
Je suis hua, writes Deborah Hill Cone, as she asks: "weren't we all just gargling on about free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre?"
Is Eleanor Catton a traitor? Does Sean Plunket have a brain? Has the Prime Minister read The Luminaries? Who would have thought an obscure Indian literary festival could cause such agitated ripples.
A March concert by Tafelmusik, a Canadian baroque orchestra, promises to be a highlight of this year's Auckland Arts Festival.
With the anniversary last year of the beginning of World War I and this year's remembrance of the Gallipoli landings there has been much comment on war and its consequences.
Author says she'll discuss “inflammatory, vicious and patronising things that have been broadcast and published in NZ this week” in future interviews with foreign media.
Feisty Bette Davis was memorably photographed by Roddy McDowall in 1981, holding a cushion inscribed, "Old Age Ain't No Place for Sissies".
Antony Sher compares him to the Bard, and he has been dubbed the greatest living playwright. John Nathan on Tom Stoppard's long-awaited comeback.
The Taxpayers’ Union says Kiwis have done more than enough to support under-fire author Eleanor Catton, who received upward of $50k in funding over the last few years.
Author's father blasts Sean Plunket for branding her an "ungrateful hua" as Catton herself tweets written interviews are nearly always edited.
New Zealand's original Booker Prize winner has defended her successor after Eleanor Catton was criticised for speaking out against the Government and some Kiwi attitudes.
The historic former headquarters of lingerie company Berlei, standing in the way of the $500 million-plus SkyCity International Convention Centre, will be gutted and only its facade will remain.
New Zealand's original Booker Prize winner has defended her successor after Eleanor Catton was criticised for speaking out against the current government.
He said what? RadioLive host Sean Plunket has called author Eleanor Catton as an 'ungrateful hua' over her comments...but that's not what many people heard.
Acclaimed author Eleanor Catton has called NZ politicians 'neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, and very money-hungry'.
This is your star sign as you've never seen it before. Artist and illustrator Damon Hellandbrand has reimagined every sign of the zodiac as a monster.
See what happens when the boss turns his back in the fantasy world of BLAM! says Dionne Christian.