Last weekend, I nipped down to my oul’ hometoon and ran into this:
Cuba Street closed to traffic, its footpaths and road filthy with pedestrians, all of it sprinkled with light rain showers and a very family-friendly vibe: a street festival called Cuba Dupa. Nice. I walked past the crowded foodstalls with their mouthwatering aromas and found sanctuary in the cool and quiet Clark’s Cafe (where they still have cheesecake cup cakes, very nice indeedy).
Once fed, watered and rested, I hop-skip-and-jumped over the unimaginatively named City to Sea Bridge to Circa Theatre where Kingswood won the 2015 Adam Award for Best Play by a Pasifika Playwright. I guess I’ll be revisiting that script sooner than planned.
While at the Adam Awards, I rubbed shoulders with:
- Hone Kouka, co-winner of the 2015 Adam Award for Best New Zealand Play for Bless the Child, as well as winner of Best Play by a Maori Playwright;
- runner-up Dean Parker with Polo (though I do prefer his initial title, Fear and Misery in the Third Term);
- Michelanne Forster, winner of Best Play by a Woman Playwright for The Gift of Tongues;
- author of the highly commended, Significance, Tom McCrory;
- the always luminous Miria George;
- the boundlessly talented Moana Ete;
- Wellington man-about-town Jonathon Hendry;
- the irrepressible KC Kelly;
- David O’Donnell, fresh from directing Victor Rodger’s incendiary My Name is Gary Cooper in Hawaii;
- and the Playmarket gang of Murray Lynch, Stuart Hoar, Salesi Leota, and Claire O’Loughlin.
That’s me: an utterly shameless name-dropper.
