Culture 101

The Southside Queens of Comedy are six Maori and Pasifika wahine from South Auckland who came together through a free community comedy workshop in 2025 and haven't stopped since. Their NZ Comedy Festival show, Once Upon a Struggle, runs 7-9 May at Poppy's Comedy in Manurewa. Ama Mosese, MC, radio host and podcaster, joins Culture 101 ahead of the shows.

Rose Matafeo came home from London to star in New Zealand Spy, a new local comedy set in the 70s about the country's intelligence agency recruiting the only three people who applied to protect the nation from the threat of Australia. Written by Paul Williams, the show also stars Bret McKenzie, Joe Thomas and Tim Key, and is streaming on TVNZ+ now. Matafeo, who won Best Show at the Edinburgh Fringe...

Marion Crawford, known as Crawfie, was nanny to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret for 16 years before a very public falling out with the royal family. The Queen's Nanny, written by Australian journalist and radio presenter Melanie Tait, puts her story centre stage at Takapuna's Pumphouse Theatre. Actor Anna Jullienne plays Crawfie and joins Culture 101 to discuss power, loyalty, sacrifice, and per...

Artist and book cover designer Todd Atticus is parked up in the window of Unity Books in Wellington this week, designing cover artwork for Mia Farlane's new novel And How Are Things With You in real time, turning his practice into a performance. Atticus has designed covers for Catherine Chidgey, Duncan Sarkies and Tusiata Avia. He joins Culture 101 live from the shop window.

The Weed Eaters is a Kiwi comedy-horror set in North Canterbury, following two couples on a New Year's camping trip who encounter a particular strain of weed with unexpected consequences. It debuted at the NZ International Film Festival, won Best Feature at SXSW Sydney, and is currently touring the country. Made for $19,000, the film stars writer Finnius Teppett and Alice May Connolly, known for S...

Lisa Reihana has spent more than three decades using film, photography and installation to centre Maori and Pacific perspectives in history. She represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and her work sits in collections from Te Papa to the Brooklyn Museum. Right now her installation ANZAC, eight metres high and twenty metres long and made from 180,000 shimmering discs, runs along the...

Dan Slevin reviews three new releases: Michael, Antoine Fuqua's biopic of Michael Jackson starring the pop star's nephew Jaafar Jackson; The Time Traveller's Guide to Hamilton Gardens, a documentary about the transformation of a former city rubbish dump into one of the world's great gardens, launching the Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival this week; and Sgt. Haane, Tearepa Kahi's ANZAC Da...

Laura Jean Shannon is a superhero speciality costume designer whose credits include Iron Man, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Murderbot. For the past seven years she's been working on The Boys, the Amazon Prime series about a group of corrupt celebrity supervillains led by Kiwi actor Antony Starr, with the fifth and final season now streaming. Shannon is in Auckland this weekend for Armageddon...

Brett Graham has been a prominent figure in contemporary Maori art since the 1990s, with work shown at the Venice Biennale and in collections around the world. His latest work, Doorway Into Night, is a large, near-entirely black Whare Mate at Gow Langsford Gallery in Onehunga, shrouded in dyed cabbage leaves and accompanied by a text from Ngahuia te Awekotuku and an original soundscape. Perlina ca...

Taumarunui-based artist Tyrone Te Waa's latest work draws on the mattress room of the wharenui at his marae, a space associated with play, sleep and hosting visitors. The resulting exhibition, Dreaming from Afar, features stretched cotton across four single mattresses, painted and incorporating sculpture, and is showing at Gus Fisher Gallery in central Auckland until May 2. Te Waa, who received an...

Canadian-Serbian actress Nina Kiri is best known for playing Alma in The Handmaid's Tale, but her latest role leads Undertone, an A24 horror film built almost entirely on sound design. She plays the co-host of a paranormal podcast who receives disturbing recordings from a pregnant couple, while caring for her comatose mother in a single house setting. Made for $500,000, the film has grossed $20 mi...

Silo Theatre's new production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge features a mainly Pasifika cast and is playing at Q Theatre in Auckland until May 3. Miller's 1956 play follows a Brooklyn dockworker whose obsession and jealousy unravel his family and ultimately destroy him. Beulah Koale, who plays lead Eddie Carbone, joins Culture 101 to discuss honouring the text without making it Samoan,...

Donna Hay's cookbooks have been a fixture in New Zealand homes since the 1990s. Now the Australian food stylist and author has a new series on Disney+, Donna Hay Coastal Celebrations, filmed against the backdrop of Sydney Harbour and focused on hosting with what you already have. She joins Culture 101 to share tips for seasonal shopping, her surprisingly relaxed views on air fryers, and why she th...

The Global Book Crawl runs until next Sunday, connecting independent bookstores across 73 cities worldwide through a shared passport readers get stamped at each store they visit. Canterbury is joining for the first time this year, with ten stores taking part from Kaiapoi to Timaru. Jared Raines from The Great Kiwi Bookstore in Kaiapoi, and Canterbury spokesperson for the crawl, joins Culture 101 t...

Ant Sang broke through in the early 2000s as head designer of bro'Town and has since become one of New Zealand's most respected graphic artists, with award-winning novels and character designs published around the world. His work has featured at the Auckland Art Gallery and in Rip It Up and the Listener. He joins Culture 101 live for Fast Favourites, and to talk about his new animated kung-fu shor...

& Juliet is a jukebox musical built around the back catalogue of Swedish songwriter Max Martin, the most successful chart producer in Billboard Hot 100 history. A Broadway and West End hit with three Olivier Awards and nine Tony nominations, the show reimagines what happens if Juliet decides she's done with Romeo and writes her own story. It opened in Auckland this week and runs at the Civic until...

For 30 years, Depot Devonport has been a home for artists, makers and audiences on Auckland's North Shore, nurturing local talent and connecting communities through art. Anna Thomas visits the space to speak with Director Amy Saunders, studio engineer Nate Selway and artists including Fiona Mackay about what three decades of a community arts hub looks like.

Film critic Dan Slevin reviews three new releases: Undertone, a Canadian supernatural horror film in which a paranormal podcast host receives mysterious recordings that push her toward fear and paranoia; You, Me & Tuscany, a romantic comedy starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page; and Solo Mio, a comedy about a jilted groom who continues his honeymoon alone through Italy, made by a filmmaking col...

It's Music Therapy Week, and Chris O'Connor is a registered music therapist at the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre in Auckland whose career has taken him from jazz studies and ethnomusicology to touring the world with Don McGlashan, Neil Finn and The Phoenix Foundation. He joins Culture 101 to talk about how music functions as therapy and what drew him to the field.

Creative New Zealand has released two landmark strategies. Tu Mai Ra, Toi Aotearoa sets a new course for the arts through to 2040, marking the agency's first 15-year strategy, while the Toi Ora Strategy will guide support for nga toi Maori to 2030. Chief Executive Gretchen La Roche joins Culture 101 to discuss what both strategies mean for artists and the wider arts sector.

Dr Sue Watson has written publicly about her adoption journey, and now she is taking that story to the stage. Working with writer and director Renee Lyon, Watson is currently in rehearsal for a theatrical adaptation of her memoir, in which she will also act. She joins Culture 101 to discuss the process of turning personal history into performance, the lines that come easily and the ones that take...

Sarah Adams has spent years researching and compiling a book on the first 100 years of Queen Anne Chocolate, tracing the brand from its origins through to its revival in the late 1990s. She joins Culture 101 to talk about her grandfather Ernest Adams' influence on her life, being among the first female baking apprentices, a 50-year-old box of chocolates unearthed during her research, and how the b...

British actress Natascha McElhone has worked alongside Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey and George Clooney, and spent seven seasons on Californication opposite David Duchovny. Her latest role is Cordelia Holmes, mother to a young Sherlock, in Amazon Prime's new series Young Sherlock, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin. She joins Culture 101 to discuss the show, her Kiwi...

Theatreview turned 20 this week, having gone live on 2 April 2006. Founded by John Smythe, the site now holds nearly 15,000 reviews and remains the only platform offering comprehensive nationwide coverage of professional theatre in Aotearoa. Smythe, whose own theatre career stretches back to the 1960s, joins Culture 101 to reflect on two decades of reviewing, the funding challenges facing the site...

Angela Bloomfield first appeared as Rachel McKenna in 1993 and became one of Shortland Street's most recognisable characters, known for ambition, chaos and a long-running will-they-won't-they with Dr Chris Warner. She left the role in 2016 and spent years acting, directing and working in real estate before returning to Ferndale this year as Rachel. She joins Culture 101 for Fast Favourites to shar...