Culture 101

RNZ Radio

Perlina Lau hosts a weekly show about creativity and culture in Aotearoa.

  1. −4 d

    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.

    14 min

  2. −4 d

    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.

    16 min

  3. −4 d

    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.

    21 min

  4. −4 d

    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.

    12 min

  5. −4 d

    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.

    6 min

  6. 21 juni

    Hariata and Tamati Moriarty on adapting Waenga as a radio drama

    Siblings Hariata and Tamati Moriarty developed Waenga through workshops with senior Maori students at Wellington high schools, building the play around the recurring theme of young people wanting to understand a political world that often feels deliberately confusing. The show played to sold-out audiences at last year's Kia Mau Festival and has since grown into a theatre marae production directed by their father, Jim Moriarty. They've now adapted it for radio, and join Culture 101 to discuss the process ahead of its debut on RNZ National.

    16 min

  7. 21 juni

    Ellie Harwood on why gaming still has a toxic problem for women

    Ellie Harwood co-hosts Extremely Casual Gamers, a podcast she started with friends Chris Key and Guy Mansell in 2023 to normalise gaming and strip away its stigma. She's also part of Viva La Dirt League, the Auckland-based YouTube sketch comedy group built around gaming that has millions of followers internationally yet remains little-known at home. Harwood talks about stepping away from gaming as a teenager because it felt coded male, the toxicity that still greets women's voices in online lobbies, and why getting more women into game development could change the kinds of games that get made.

    13 min

  8. 21 juni

    Brett Haylock brings Cheeky Cabaret to Auckland, born from a 30-year-empty cinema

    Brett Haylock co-created La Clique, the cabaret show that sold out within three days of opening in Edinburgh more than twenty years ago and went on to win Olivier Awards and play the West End, Broadway and Paris. While touring, he stumbled across an abandoned picture house in Brunswick Heads, on the New South Wales coast, that had sat empty for 30 years. He bought it on instinct, and it's now home to Cheeky Cabaret, a circus and burlesque show so popular it sometimes sells more tickets than the town's entire population. He brings a "best of" lineup to the Auckland Live Cabaret Festival, the show's first stop outside Australia.

    10 min
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Om

Perlina Lau hosts a weekly show about creativity and culture in Aotearoa.

Information

  • Kanal
    RNZ Radio
  • Skapad av
    RNZ
  • Aktiva år
    2023 - 2026
  • Avsnitt
    889
  • Åldersgräns
    Barnvänligt
  • Copyright
    © (C) Radio New Zealand 2026
  • Programmets webbplats
    Culture 101

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