In Auckland, we're in the middle of an Arts Festival. All over town there are actors, musicians, dancers and pornographic puppets doing their artistic business at myriad venues.

Bernard Orsman talks to the people behind a most generous offering to Auckland.

The 42 Indian musicians of The Manganiyar Seduction work their wiles in the glare of red and light-bulbs, piled up in a grid inspired by Amsterdam's red-light district.

Wildlife artist Chris Gaskin spends hours drawing the intricate patterns on a bird.

Martha Wainwright describes her look as "ageless" - she is poised on the stage dressed like a school-girl with hair all wispy like her grandmother's.

Teatro de Los Andes, based in Bolivia, offered to stage their "earthquake play" here instead of La Odisea, but were turned down for logistical reasons.

If you are looking for a show that is funny and uplifting, it is unlikely that you would settle on something that has interminable and suicide in its title.

Named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of 50 moments that changed the history of rock and roll.

The stage is dark with just the faint gleam of drum kit, sita, cello, violin and four seated musicians.

When the Basement theatre is packed out at 10pm on a Monday night for a local production based on a 19th century novella by Henry James, I think it is safe to say the Auckland Fringe Festival and the Auckland Arts Festival are going off.

Boldly and cleverly, this Flaxworks solo show is built upon one solitary, striking symbol of celebrity.

French dancer-choreographer Rachid Ouramdane's multimedia performance reviewed by Raewyn White

Set designer John Verryt shows Viva a few of his favourite treasures.

Bernadette Rae talks to the man many consider the guru of New Zealand dance, master choreographer Douglas Wright.

Heroes don't come much kookier than Xerxes. He may be the King of Persia but he opens Handel's opera by extolling the beauties of a plane tree; a man who, as one character comments, "is aroused by a rough trunk."

The latest piece of youth-oriented theatre from Massive Company adopts the admirably egalitarian but dramatically unsatisfying strategy of giving what amounts to a lead role to each member of the 14 person cast.

Jacqueline Smith's week of tv, music and movies.