Sam Brooks brings three forgotten queer plays back to life at Basement Theatre

Sam Brooks brings three forgotten queer plays back to life at Basement Theatre

Sam Brooks curates Firing the Cannon, a Basement Theatre series of free play readings drawing on New Zealand's theatrical history. This year's season leaned into a queer theme almost by accident: Robert Lord's Joyful and Triumphant, Renée's Setting the Table, and Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu's The Black, a play about depression that takes the form of a stalking horse. Brooks talks about why reviving work that doesn't get performed often matters, and what it's like watching actors bring entirely new interpretations to text that's never been heard out loud before.

Freya Daly Sadgrove's poetry becomes fresh new TV show, Head Girl

Freya Daly Sadgrove's poetry collection Head Girl, raw, confessional and filled with swearing, has been adapted into a new TV drama on Three, following three estranged friends navigating their twenties in Wellington. Freya was involved in early writers' room sessions but largely watched from the sidelines as her own work was reshaped by other people's hands. She describes the experience as bizarrely healing, like feeling empathy for a past version of herself. She joins Culture 101 to talk about the four-year journey from page to screen, and why she thinks Wellington deserves billing as the show's fourth character.

Mark Mitchinson on playing Macbeth as a broken, PTSD-riddled soldier

Mark Mitchinson takes the title role in Auckland Theatre Company's Macbeth, opposite Sara Wiseman as Lady Macbeth, in a production reimagined in bombed-out underground tunnels above a war zone.

Jess Willis on secret gig sensation Sofar Sounds in Tāmaki Makaurau

Sofar Sounds started in a London living room in 2009 as a way to bring intimacy back to live music, and has since hosted acts including Billie Eilish and Leon Bridges around the world. Jess Willis has relaunched it in Auckland this year, booking everything from community halls to art galleries, with audiences finding out the location only 48 hours out and the lineup not until they walk in the door. She joins Culture 101 ahead of the latest show in a season that's already drawing crowds.

Flash Fiction 2026 Winner Kim Martins reads her award-winning story

Kim Martins has won this year's National Flash Fiction Day adult competition with a story that began life at 2000 words before being cut right back to fit the 300-word limit. The Other Jim draws on a real conversation Kim once had with her father about Apollo 13, reconstructed through memory and woven together with the more recent Artemis II mission. She joins Culture 101 to read the story and talk about the art of knowing what to leave out.