Unfortunately, the performance needed more polish if one was to overlook the conservatism of the programming.

Modern theatre frequently brings together disparate cultures to create vivid and dramatic storytelling and it's certainly true with Auckland's Matariki Festival programme.

If you missed out on the chance to visit Auckland's Pop-Up Globe Theatre, here are a few must-see getaways to get your Shakespeare fix.

The Auckland Art Gallery is showing a small exhibition of lithographs by Honore Daumier that acts as a lively adjunct to the current Auckland Festival of Photography.

The Matariki Festival is gearing up once more, beginning with the unveiling of this year's line-up.

The handbrake is set to be pulled on the Real Art Roadshow which has visited schools around NZ for 10 years - unless someone new grabs the wheel.

From rampaging dinosaurs and Maori myths to Shakespeare and social issues, our best writers for children and young adults tell stories about them all.

In book publishing, there is James Patterson - and basically everyone else.

New Zealand artist Maurice Bennett crafted unique portraits of celebrities from pieces of toast.

COMMENT: I'm going to selectively quote from a Pablo Neruda poem titled To Wash a Child.

Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America includes art from the late 1960s to the present created by artists from eight different countries.

Local photographer Julia Glover has experienced the excitement of Africa without leaving town.

Creative New Zealand spent $650,000 to ensure the country is well-represented.

What is it like to live, as many of us in the Southern Hemisphere do, with our eyes forever on a different part of the world?

Cash and cauliflowers collided at last night's avant garde launch of a new annual appeal for the Auckland Art Gallery.

It goes to show, as Hare says, the audience - the way it reacts and responds and its current concerns - shapes theatre.

In a sense, it all began with a question from a small boy: "If we're going to catch the bus into Auckland Library, please can we go to the art gallery, too?"

Auckland Art Fair will show the best in contemporary art from New Zealand and the wider Pacific.

The winners of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards aren't the only local authors toasting success.

He cuts scrub to make ends meet and used to pretend to be looking at porn to hide his love of poetry from army mates.

The Auckland Writers Festival, under way at civic centre venues this week, is a testament to the continued value of the written word.

Decades of hard work for Stephen Daisley, a former shearer, farmer and soldier turned author, have paid off.

It might more commonly be called the City of Sails, but to sociologist and historian Scott Hamilton Auckland is "a city of text", with multiple stories waiting to be told.

Auckland pianist Ben Fernandez and drummer Stephen Thomas have been roped in for the one-off performance.

Playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director Sir David Hare is taking a few days off in New Zealand.

They say all good things must come to an end and this year, the Auckland Writers Festival farewells one of its regular fixtures.