FESTA’s Canterbury Tales: Better living through puppetry

Of weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow

I know enough, at eventide and morrow.
The Merchant, The Canterbury Tales

In a figurative sense, shoulders play an important role in our lives, with most of us at one point or another providing a shoulder on which to cry, or to lean. In more than one instance I have shouldered the blame and the burden, not to mention given out my fair share of cold shoulders and, on rare occasions, I have been known to put my shoulder to the grind.

It is only recently that I have taken on the role of a literal shoulder, which I will be doing this Labour Weekend as part of FESTA, the Festival of Transitional Architecture, which runs from 25th-28th October. FESTA is entering into its second year of making life in earthquake-damaged Christchurch exciting and vibrant by showcasing a wide variety of creative projects, with last year’s launch attracting 30,000 people back into the heart of a broken city still finding its bearings.

2012’s LUXCITY wowed residents and visitors alike with its wondrous light installations, and the centrepiece for 2013 also looks set to set many jaws agape in amazement. In an appropriately-appropriated re-telling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, an epicly-sized representation of The Merchant, who will be controlled by nine puppeteers, flanked by a handful of less-epic-but-still-very-impressive friars, will lead an eye-popping procession through the city, beginning at the Bridge of Remembrance and finishing in the Square. And yours truly will be playing the role of The Merchant’s right shoulder, lest you thought my introduction was mere padding.

The details are far too delicious to divulge, but in my rehearsal with the Free Theatre team I have been getting to grips with the fine art of replicating lust, resignation, and frustration via the medium of a bamboo pole attached to a billowy shoulder, which ranks high in the list of sentences I never imagined I’d type.

The Canterbury Tales procession will be in full swing on the evenings of Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th October from 8:30pm onwards. We entreat you all to don your best carnival costumes, bring a tambourine or some maracas, and join in the festivities to help us cast off the recent years of weeping, wailing, and other sorrow.

In the meantime, please enjoy the following:

• Relieve last year’s FESTA with this gallery of LUXCITY images
• Read this interview with Barnaby Bennett, chair of FESTA
• Watch this Campbell Live report on The Canterbury Tales
• Read this article about this FESTA 2013
• Check out more info on FESTA at their website
• Like the FESTA Facebook page
• Follow the FESTA Twitter feed

The swoonsome art of New Zealand books

I am a fangirl for Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.  And I love when Central Library Peterborough plays host to one of their exhibitions. What could be more fab than library + art?

New Zealand Illustrated: Pictorial Books from the Victorian Age is the next one off the blocks. It takes place from 29 October to 2 December. I was lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes peek as curator Peter Vangioni let me put the gloves on and have a look at some of the library taonga. Here are some photos.

I’ve never been so close to the famed A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1873) by Walter Buller. The colour, the texture, the detail – all exquisite. The feathers glowed iridescent.

Emily Harris’ New Zealand Flowers was a beauty too. I loved her plain descriptions. Further exploration revealed a lovely set of images Emily Cumming Harris on DigitalNZ.

Kiwi as.

Read some Art Gallery blog posts on the upcoming exhibition:

• Horsing around
• What’s in a title page?
• Buller’s Birds

Biography and Memoir: picks from our October newsletter

Some picks from our October Biography and Memoir newsletter:

Subscribe to our newsletters and get our latest titles and best picks straight from your inbox.

For more great biographies and memoirs, check out our lists of winners of  the Costa Biography Award.

Kapa haka in Christchurch

The next two Saturdays are kapa haka competition time in Otautahi.

• Ngā Whakataetae Kapa Haka Kura Tuarua ki Waitaha (Canterbury Secondary Schools’ Kapahaka Competition) Saturday 26 October 2013
• Te Waipounamu Māori Cultural Council Competitions Saturday 2 November 2013

Find out more about kapa haka.

Kapa Haka group, Glendale School, Wainuiomata – Photograph taken by Ross Giblin. Further negatives of the Evening Post newspaper. Ref: EP/1995/0752/14A-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23072394

Hilltop Hotel: 1902

Hilltop Hotel at Hilltop, Banks Peninsula ca. 1886

The Hilltop history: The building above burned down in April 1931 and a new Hilltop was built afterwards.

Search Digital NZ for Hilltop Hotel photos and articles.

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We have digitised a rather splendid 1902 publication Tourists’ guide to Canterbury.