RNZ: Saturday Morning

Historian and academic James Belich has a large body of work, focusing particularly on the New Zealand Wars and Maori and Pakeha relations. His book The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (1980), won the international Trevor Reed Memorial Prize for historical scholarship. In 2006 he was made an Officer of New Zealand Order of Merit. Professor Belich is currently Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History Balliol College, Oxford. He will be giving a lecture at the University of Auckland on March 21 called "The Black Death and European Expansion", which argues the plague pandemic beginning on the 1340s fuelled wider European control and influence across the globe. He first made the argument in a recent book, The Prospect of Global History (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Poet, performer and game-maker Harry Josephine Giles grew up on Orkney, Scotland, and now lives in Edinburgh where they founded spoken words platform Inky Fingers, co-directs the quarterly performance art platform Anatomy, and is part of the collective behind the Forest Café, Edinburgh's open access arts space. Giles says much of their work is about political protest and activism - they say "my work is about what it feels like to live under capitalism, and how to survive and resist in a violent world". Giles also uses social media and blogging to build public discussion around their projects, with performances happening simultaneously online and offline. They appear this weekend at the NZ Festival Writers & Readers. Giles' tour of New Zealand is organised by LitCrawl Wellington. A complete list of their dates can be found here: http://www.pirateandqueen.co.nz/harry-giles.html

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is well underway, with two expeditions completed and one in progress. At this trip's half-way mark, the expedition ship JOIDES Resolution called in at Lyttelton this week and GNS Science and Victoria University hosted an event featuring Professor James Kennett as keynote speaker. Prof Kennett is a New Zealand scientist who has spent most of his career in the US and led many of the pioneering scientific drilling expeditions to the Southern ocean, leading to our current understanding of the evolution of the Antarctic ice sheets and their role in modulating Earth's climate and ocean currents.

Londoner Lydia Syson is an award-winning author of historical and political fiction for young adults. After an early career as a BBC World Service Radio producer, she turned from the spoken to the written word, and developed an enduring obsession with history, including her family history: Syson's anarchist great-great-grandmother moved in Communard circles in late 19th century London, leading to the book Liberty's Fire. Her latest book, called Mr Peacock's Possessions, is based on the life of her relatives - an English family who sailed out in the 1800s to Sunday Island - now Raoul Island. Syson has just returned from her first visit to Raoul Island, during a trip to the Kermadecs with this year's Sir Peter Blake expedition. Mr Peacock's Possessions will be available for sale in New Zealand bookstores from May 28.

An article from the LA Times best describes the story behind Jonathon Young's Betroffenheit: "The German word Betroffenheit has no single equivalent in English. But we can understand it all right - it describes the emotional condition that Canadian actor and theater director Jonathan Young experienced after his young daughter, niece and nephew died in 2009 in an accidental fire. Shocked, wordless, traumatized. Stuck in a looping, neverending hell. That was his Betroffenheit." Young made the dance-threatre show with choreographer Crystal Pite and dancers from her Vancouver-based company, Kidd Pivot. Last year, Betroffenheit won the Olivier award for best new dance production.

Kim catches up with NZ Festival artistic director Shelagh Magadza about how the 2018 festival - her last - is shaping up.

Feminist Zoe Coombs Marr is described as one of Australia's weirdest and wildest comedians. In her award-winning show, Trigger Warning, she becomes her alter-ego, Dave, a sexist, second-rate stand-up with a neck beard made from strands of Coombs Marr's own hair. She talks to Kim about what it takes to beat the real Daves, get gigs, and win over audiences.

From a sell-out debut at London's National Theatre, Barber Shop Chronicles takes the audience to barber shops of Africa and London where men tackle life's big topics - fatherhood, friendship and football. Kim talks to two members of the Barber Shop cast - Sule Rimi and Kwami Odoom.

Drums strike themselves, piano keys don't need fingers to make music - the instruments play themselves in the show Mechanical Ballet. Jim Murphy is one of the creators of the autonomous instruments. He has a PhD for his interdisciplinary studies at Victoria University School of Music and School of Engineering and Computer Science, and he is currently teaching at both schools. Michael Norris is a composer, software programmer and music theorist who teaches at New Zealand School of Music and is editor of Wai-te-ata Music Press and Co-Director of Stroma New Music Ensemble.

In this hour, Kim talks to four NZ-based guests appearing at the NZ Festival Writers and Readers events next weekend: Rajorshi Chakraborti, who has just published The Man Who Would Not See; visual artist, performing artist and poet Anahera Gildea (Ngati Raukawa-ki-te-tonga, Ngai te Rangi, Ngati Toa Rangatira, Te Ati Awa, Kai Tahu) whose poem about Meri Mangakahia, one of the Maori wahine toa who was important in her work for women's rights, is featured as part of the celebration of New Zealand writing in the February 2018 issue of Poetry; award-winning graphic designer, hand lettering artist and concrete poet, Sarah Maxey, whose work has featured in publications around the world, including the New York Times and many literary books; and writer and trade unionist Morgan Godfery - Te Pahipoto (Ngati Awa), Lalomanu (Samoa) who is the editor of the 2016 BWB Text The Interregnum and who wrote about his Kawerau childhood in the second volume of the Journal of Urgent Writing.

Nina Tonga is an art historian and Curator Pacific Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongowera. She joins Kim to talk about the exhibition, Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, opening this month at Te Papa's new art gallery, Toi Art. Working collaboratively across fashion, performance, music and film, the Pacific Sisters collective includes artists Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Ani O'Neill, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Niwhai Tupaea, Henzart Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall, and Jaunnie "Ilolahia.

What makes a house a home? During Geoff Sobelle's show, Home, a house appears and the audience watches as generations of residents move in and live their lives. We witness them as they experience love and laundry, parties and pain, work and wonder. Award-winning Sobelle is described as an actor and a magician. He says his role in making theatre is to challenge the way the audience sees the world, and that comedy is "the highest order of art".

A selection of listener thoughts from this mornings show.

Angus Trumble is the judge of this year's Adam Portraiture Award, the winner of which will be announced in the coming week. Trumble is the director of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. He studied fine arts and history, and has held a number of roles including curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut. He's written a number of books including A Brief History of the Smile (2003) and The Finger: A Handbook (2010) and is a regular contributor to the likes of The Times Literary Supplement and the Paris Review. Trumble was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2015.

Australian Ursula Dubosarsky writes for children and young adults. She is the winner of nine Premier's Literary Awards and the Children's Book Council of the Year Award. She has also been nominated, for the sixth time, for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2018), the world's largest children's literature award administered by the Swedish Arts Council. Her most recent book is The Blue Cat and Dubosarsky is in Aotearoa in March for Writers and Readers at the NZ Festival.