KEY POINTS:
Auckland Festival director David Malacari is having a volcanic moment. Pondering the lineup for next March's AK07 Festival, announced at a function at St Matthew-in-the-City last night, Malacari - originally from Adelaide - is cheerfully likening the festival to our geology.
"When I first came to Auckland I felt acutely that the crust upon which we stand seems to be very thin," he says, looking rather mischievous. "There are volcanic cones everywhere, pent-up volcanic energy under the ground, fissures that open up in the ground, a fissure that might appear then disappear, never to be seen again or create a great landmark that's around forever.
"It could be seen as a metaphor for artistic energy - some of it stays forever. To me, that's what a programme is about, capturing some of those moments."
Moving on from volcanoes, Malacari turns to lawns. Tidy lawns, hopefully without any fissures. The whole of the Britomart area, at the rear of the railway complex, will be grassed over for the fortnight-long festival and dubbed Red Square as "an ironic twist on the Soviet Red Square which wasn't a place for a lot of fun".
Red Square will house two performing venues - the Britomart Pavilion transformed into the AK07 Festival Club, with a bar and nightly shows where the public, performers and sponsors can mingle; and the SpiegelTent, the 1930s Belgian mirrored tent which is now in Australian ownership. The tent will host shows such as La Cirque, a burlesque-cabaret-trapeze act which has an R18 rating, alongside musical acts like Nathan Haines, the Topp Twins, Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Goldenhorse.
Fingers crossed, Auckland's fickle weather will hold out as the Red Square will also host an open-air garden bar.
Malacari says there is no theme to the festival - it's all about "availability, cost and logistics" - but for the first time, there will be the potential to go to three shows a night, including early evening fine-music shows.
AK07 will spread across the central city in venues as large as the Aotea Centre and the Civic to more intimate venues like Galatos, St-Matthew-in-the-City and Devonport's Victoria Theatre.
AK05, which Malacari took over after the departure of founding artistic director Simon Prast, was a hybrid lineup. This one is all Malacari's. Here's what he's come up with.
AN EXPLOSIVE OPENING
A Little More Light: The festival opens in the Domain on March 10, rain or shine, with France's Groupe F showing what the pros can do with fire, as opposed to our halfwit Guy Fawkes amateurs. Groupe F lit up the skies for the World Cup in France and the Olympics in Athens, so this will be something to really wow the family.
THEATRE
Max Black: German-Swiss experimental theatre - think mad scientist - devised by director-composer Heiner Goebbels, starring Andre Wilms as a man in constant debate with logic. Whatever that means.
10 Days on Earth: Canadian Ronnie Burkett is a puppeteer extraordinaire, relating the tale of a middle-aged disabled man who lives with his mother, who dies. Darrel thinks she is just asleep, so carries on alone for 10 days. Moving.
Penumbra: The most ambitious of the New Zealand lineup. Director Christian Penny and his cast weave through three generations as lived through 40 characters.
Head: Surreal award-winner commissioned for Bats in Wellington last year, featuring a self-important 4m head that cannot move but doesn't realise he is a "no body".
Ensemble Project: Silo Theatre double-pronged "bootcamp" for new generation of actors, with Oliver Driver directing Hand Made, "a matrix of urban poetry" and Michael Hurst directing an Excavated Classic, as yet unknown.
Hatch: Writer Geoff Chapple's first play, an Auckland Theatre Company production, about Joseph Hatch, the man who rendered down three million penguins. Stars Stuart Devenie.
The Homecoming: One of Harold Pinter's greatest plays, about Max, a retired butcher who is master of his domain until his son brings home a missus. Lisa Chappell and Michael Lawrence star.
Strange Resting Places: A Taki Rua production set at Monte Cassino in 1944, about a young Maori soldier and an Italian hiding from the Germans. It will be staged at Auckland Museum.
Wild Dogs Under My Skirt: Tusiata Avia's solo show about what it means to be a Samoan woman in New Zealand - and Saudi Arabia.
Mother/Whaea/Tama/Son: A Lethal Set production written in collaboration with the actors, about the relationships between mothers and sons.
MUSIC
A Throw of Dice: This is a big one. English DJ, composer and film-scorer Nitin Sawhney brings his seven-piece band here to play along with the Auckland Philharmonia at the Civic as an accompaniment to the 1929 silent film, A Throw of Dice, recently restored by the British Film Institute. The AP will be in the pit; Sawhney and co will be on stage, and the music moves from being a conventional orchestral film score to a fully fledged piece of Indian music.
Mahler's Second Symphony - The Resurrection: "This is going to blow the roof off the Town Hall", is Malacari's bold assertion. Performed at the start of the festival, this marks the NZSO's 60th anniversary celebrations, with extra players from the AP, the National Youth Orchestra, choirs and singers Helen Medlyn and Patricia Wright.
Fire-wind-water: At the book-end of AK07, the Auckland Philharmonia performs three Pacific Rim works - Rangitoto, by Gareth Farr; From Me Flows What You Call Time, by Toru Takemitsu; and Harmonielehre, by John Adams. Adams' colleague Giancarlo Guerrero will conduct.
Tuwhare: Never seen in Auckland before, a much-loved setting of some of Hone Tuwhare's finest poems to music, performed by some of the greats - Brazier, McGlashan, Tocker, Te Kupu and more.
Tea Music: Zen-like Korean production incorporating dance, the tea ceremony and music. The perfect de-stresser.
The Australian Art Orchestra: Three concerts by a jazz orchestra Malacari describes as "very out there, very intense". Ruby's Story features Ruby Hunter and Archie Roach in a "suite" of songs considered so moving the work has been invited to Paris' Festival d'Ete next year. They also perform in Passion: Adaptations of JS Bach's St Matthew Passion, a five-piece work Malacari describes thus: "You wouldn't go to this to hear Bach."
And then the AAO turns to master of Maori instruments Richard Nunns for The Hollow Air, a work devised by composer Phillip Slater and sound designer Greg White. Aussies tackling nose flutes? Interesting ...
Music At Twilight: Nightly hour of early-evening music in St Matthew-in-the-City, with performers from here and across the Tasman.
Instructions for Modern Living: Scarfies maestro Duncan Sarkies teams up with composer Nic McGowan in a modern update of Eleanor Rigby a la Laurie Anderson.
S3D (ear & eye): Seven sonic "designers" from around the world in a three-day collaboration.
DANCE
Amata: Black Grace's lineup of 12 female dancers in a new Neil Ieremia work about material possessions as tools to numb the pain of "past traumas and indiscretions".
Tempest: Lemi Ponifasio and Mau "inflect towards" Shakespeare's drama. It will be strange, puzzling, intense and beautiful.
Dark Tourists and Terrain: Two works by contemporary New Zealand dancers Rifleman Productions.
Les 4 Saisons: France's contemporary dance company Ballet Preljocaj bring new life to Vivaldi's work, so deadened by elevator musak and Nigel Kennedy. They will dance to a recording by the Venice Baroque Orchestra, led by Andrea Marcon with soloist Giuliano Carmignola. Fresh for eyes and ears.
FESTIVAL CLUB
Eddie Perfect Says Drink Pepsi Bitch: Aussie wit who has been a big hit at the Edinburgh Fringe during the last couple of years. He doesn't like globalisation, Cirque Du Soleil, Oprah, Ikea or, quite possibly, Pepsi. Dark. Spot-on.
Spaghetti Western Orchestra: More Aussies - purveyors of the music of Ennio Morricone. Start practising your whistling for the opening chords of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
But this is just the tip of the musical iceberg. Or volcano. There are dozens of local musos booked for the club and surrounds as well. All ready to blow ...
Lowdown
* What: Auckland Festival AK07
* Where & when: Various venues March 9 to 25
* Info: Programmes out now or aucklandfestival.co.nz
