KEY POINTS:
Arts festival. That phrase is so Wellington. They've been having an arts festival every two years for yonks, and it seems to work because it's a tiny city full of politicians and public servants who like to be seen at the theat-ah.
Wellington goes all funny during its arts festivals. They have "arts ambassadors" wandering the streets being positively annoying. They have outdoor concerts at lunchtimes. They have performance artists abseiling off buildings. But, ha ha, they still have lousy weather and all those bloody politicians.
I went to an arts festival once in Wellington. I felt a bit out of place because I didn't wear a pounamu koru or Birkenstock sandals. Anyway, I went to a "bold and daring" staging of a Shakespeare play where the genders were reversed with nudity thrown in. The Opera House's seats were covered in smelly old leather. Hour one dragged by. Hour two felt like death. Hour three, time stopped, and the sound of numb bums squirming on leather almost drowned out the dialogue. When I got back outside, I felt like punching out those actors.
Here in Auckland, we do things differently. Until six years ago, we didn't even have an arts festival. Then Auckland City Council, led by then-Mayor John Banks, decided we could have a festival too and act all grown-up. They set up a board which didn't know much if anything about arts festivals, and appointed a strange Aussie guy called Renato to lead the creative team. Renato spent a lot of time yawning and reading the paper during meetings. He spent a sizeable chunk of the budget, then vamoosed back to Oz.
And so the first Auckland Festival, AK03, started when it was already behind, financially. It was kind of fun, in a ragged way - it rained every single day, and it lost thousands. There were big management problems behind the scenes and the whole thing nearly fell apart. Which is so Auckland. We like to go to the brink, live on the edge, be dangerous.
Two years later AK05 limped in, battered yet defiant, with another change in leadership - yet another Aussie brought in to sort things out. This one genuinely seemed to want to make it work but he's got a style we're not used to in this city. David Malacari, AK07 festival director and chief executive, could be almost too efficient.
I mean, look at him. Against incredible odds, he brought AK05 in on budget. For AK07, he's given the festival a physical centre, and got that barren mess behind the Britomart grassed over so it looks like a park instead of a huge expanse of concrete. He's got a bar set up there, and a whopping great tent, and called it Red Square.
But wait. This is Auckland, and there are some things he can't control. Say you're in town for one of the AK07 events, like Penumbra at SkyCity Theatre, and you want to wander down to Red Square to have a post-thesp drink. You probably need that drink or five if you've been to Penumbra, "contemporary storytelling at its best" which weighs in at three hours 50 minutes. Three hours 50 minutes ...
So you're parched, possibly going mad. You walk down to Queen St, most of which is covered with street-work barricades sheltering giant holes, piles of rubble, huge roots from murdered trees, and demolition machinery. As you plough your way along the footpath, past the Ground Zero ghost of the Jean Batten building, you choke on the dust swirling off that site, then jump back in fright as a group of youths with yellow plastic bags stuck up their nostrils shout at you. In a doorway, a large fellow slumped on the ground demands money for food. Yeah right. The Link buses belch black fumes, and the street is clogged with revving cars going nowhere.
Some people might think that is hell, but we're tough in Auckland. We're going to get out there and go to things like dance and Korean tea music and Kanak roots music. Just as well they haven't scheduled outdoor lunchtime concerts though. We'd never hear anything over the jackhammers.
