City’s showstopper
Arts fest ticket records tumble
Although the beloved Founders Theatre is coming down this year, the Hamilton arts scene is still kicking, and the 2024 Hamilton Arts Festival, which starts today, is here to prove it.
With record ticket sales, multiple sold-out shows, and 30% of ticket sales coming from outside the Waikato region, this year’s festival looks set to give Hamilton a refreshed reputation for vibrant and show-stopping entertainment.
“Feedback we’ve received from our colleagues in Auckland, Hawke’s Bay, Tauranga, and Taranaki is that all the other festivals are taking a hit because people are struggling at the moment,” said festival director Geoff Turkington.
“But our festival is very eclectic in that it’s extremely accessible, and our price point is cheaper than you’ll find anywhere else in New Zealand.”
Turkington described the event as “New Zealand’s largest, quirkiest, and most magical representation of the arts”, and with 47 events featuring 1200 artists over 10 days, he may be right.
The lineup is diverse, and you’d be hardpressed to find a form of art that isn’t represented in the programme. There’s dance, theatre, cabaret, all different forms of music, comedy, and even a murder mystery.
Some familiar faces will be seen. Bic Runga is the headliner, and festival-goers may also recognise Billy T Award-winning comedian Paul Ego and Dai Henwood causing laughter at Garden Giggles.
There’s a number of one-person acts this year, or as Turkington called them, “pocket rocket acts”. One of these is Stephen Papps, who, in his play Social Animal, will portray 13 different characters, three of them dogs.
“The main character is based on an exaggerated version of me, he’s even called Stephen Papps,” he said “I’m also playing a couple of different women which is a challenge because I don’t want to slip into stereotypes or generalisations.”
Papps said he knew already that he can mimic dogs, as he’s sometimes just done it on the street.
“I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of walking down the street and a vicious dog starts up and gives you a fright. So what I would do is, once I got over the shock, I would tend to mimic that dog. Because I tend to mimic people and things. Which I have done since I was a kid,” he said.
The play is about an “insecure man-child [who] suddenly realises he’s becoming completely irrelevant”. It explores the power of companionship between a man, a woman, and a rescue greyhound called Gus.
“It makes me feel a bit nuts when I’m trying to learn it all. My mind gets overwhelmed sometimes, and I think how the hell am I going to get all of this to work and make it seem effortless.”
On the music side of the festival, there’s Jazmine Mary, who writes folk music that is anything but conventional and consists of “whatever the song needs”.
“And if that calls for standing on the other side of the studio and screaming then that’s what I’m going to do,” Mary said.
Mary, who goes by they/ them pronouns, is originally from Australia, and they said moving to New Zealand strongly affected the way they write music.
“I think there’s a permission here to make quite honest, and maybe even sad music,” they said.
Mary plays keys and guitar, and they also have a band behind them. There’s a violin, a synthesiser, and a saxophone.
“The violin and the saxophone aren’t something you see together a lot and it’s quite lovely.”
Mary didn’t study music, and they’re glad they didn’t.
“I think I’ve just always had really wonderful people around me that encouraged my music. I feel lucky that I didn’t study, because the way I make music is just inspired by people around me.”
Another highly unconventional musical act is Penni Feather’s “Deaf Defying Cunning Stunt”. Feather is nearly completely deaf, but that isn’t stopping her from putting on a cabaret show at this year’s festival. When she first lost most of her hearing, she felt like giving up.
“Or rather, I felt like everything had given me up. I thought the life I’d had in theatre and music was over; certainly things were never going to be the same. But stubbornness kicked in and I was determined to get to a point where I could play again,” she said.
Her show for the festival will consist of songs from David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Kate Bush and many more. There are challenges that come with being a hearing-impaired singer, but she overcomes them. “The actual singing's okay in terms of tone and pitch - with my remaining hearing and singer's muscle memory, I seem to do all right. And in some ways maybe better - I have to listen so hard to songs now when I’m learning them that I think I pick up more nuance now,” Feather said.
“The downside of always having to be actively listening though, rather than just letting sound come at you, is the brain fatigue. That's something to strategise around.
“People do tend to look at me funny when I say I’m a deaf musician, so the show’s a bit of an answer to that!”
The festival runs until March 3.