It offers a platform to tautoko (support) wahine Māori in their creativie and entrepreneurial endeavours. In 2018, Ataria set up the social enterprise Awa Wahine.

The essayist, poet, social entrepreneur and editor at The Pantograph Punch is constantly looking for new ways to encourage Māori - particularly wahine Māori - to publish their work. The Young Writers Festival starts on the 28th of October in Dunedin.Ģ:06 The Laugh Track - Mikaela Rose RüeggĪtaria Sharman knows how tough it is to make a living as a writer. They're part of a performance about fluidity, gender, the body and how to write about it. Playwright Dan Goodwin, meanwhile, will look at writing mental health and disability theatre. He'll also take part in a discussion about climate change. Lynn Freeman talks to two of the guest speakers: National Slam Poetry Champion Jordan Hamel's workshop is called 'How to Speak Words and Influence People'. It's a genre-busting festival programme, full of events that explore the limitations society places on our bodies, and how literature can help overcome them. And that's certainly what the participating poets, playwrights, novellists, essayists and performance artists plan to do. The theme for the seventh New Zealand Young Writers Festival, set to take place in Dunedin at the end of the month, is 'Collapsing the Conventional'. There have never been so many outlets for young writers wanting to share their work with their friends and indeed the world.īut there's nothing like a festival to allow them to get together, talk about their work and throw around all kinds of ideas. Lynn Freeman asks Rob Sitch if he feels an added responsibility to make people laugh in these uncertain times.īoth Utopia and Frontline are playing on Netflix.ġ2:45 The stories behind Te Papa's Portraits But he and his colleagues are flat out, including working on the popular current affairs game show they created, Have You Been Paying Attention, With Working Dog based in locked-down Melbourne, you'd think Rob would be easy to pin down for an interview. In Rob's latest series Utopia, he plays Tony, head of the fictional Nation Building Authority that's responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects, despite the best efforts of the Prime Minister and his cronies. Working Dog Productions is the name of his hugely successful production company, but Rob is still best known for playing idiot TV presenter Mike Moore in the Nineties hit series Frontline, that also featured Kiwi star Bruno Lawrence.

Rob Sitch - Australian actor, writer, director and bloody legend whose CV includes satirical TV shows Frontline and Hollow Men, as well as one of that country's best loved films, The Castle.

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