Why doesn't the South Island get the comedy festival?
I've lived in Ōtautahi for two and a half years now, and I can tell you one thing for free: this city bloody loves a laugh. For example, I once saw a man in a curly blue clown wig driving a Suzuki Swift around and around the roundabout in St Martins. I've seen, on multiple occasions, a parody bumper sticker of Jim's Mowing that simply reads Jim's Pubic Trims. I've seen a chihuahua on Cashel Street wearing a straw hat and a tutu. All strong signifiers of a crack-up city.
I've also been in extremely packed and buzzing rooms to see tonnes of stand up comedy, be it a shambolic work in progress show at Little Andromeda, experimental goings-on at Dark Room and Space Academy or a sold out night at James Hay with prodigal sons like Chris Parker and Guy Montgomery. Good Times Comedy Club has heaps on every week, and improv institution Scared Scriptless has just moved to its new home at the swanky Court Theatre in town.
Why then, is Christchurch currently being plagued by posters for New Zealand International Comedy Festival shows in Wellington? Why are there just a handful of offerings daring to cross the Cook Strait to the South Island at all? And is Christchurch being overlooked as the next big comedy city?
James Mustapic is one of those few brave comedians bringing his show south over the festival, and he explains his working simply: 'I like doing shows there, I get pretty good crowds, and I've got nothing else to do.' Coming down relatively often to visit his family in Christchurch, Mustapic started gigging here in 2019. He will often bring his work in progress shows to test out at Little Andromeda, before jumping on a line-up show across town at Good Times.
'Even if they don't have the biggest rooms, the audiences are always really nice,' he says. 'Sometimes in Auckland they just won't laugh unless there's a big audience, so I really enjoy it.' Mustapic also mentions Little Andromeda's All You Can Eat offering, in which people buy a $60 ticket to see as many shows as they like in a month. 'I think that really encourages people to get out and see lots of different things that they might not usually want to go see,' he says.
Michael Bell runs Little Andromeda Theatre, which has been open on the Terrace since 2020 and programmes a mix of theatre and stand-up. 'I think stand up comedy is well attended in general in Christchurch,' he says. 'We've got really good venues that look after artists and make it an easy place to come and try out new material. So many of New Zealand's famous comedians are also from Christchurch, so we'll see them come home and try things out.'
Because of these work in progress shows, Bell says Christchurch is already hosting an unofficial comedy festival of sorts. 'It's just that we get it a month or two early,' he laughs. 'That's why I'm not as up in arms about it, because I literally see the North Island comedy festival at Little Andromeda every year.'
Pip Taylor, the owner of Good Times Comedy Club is slightly more emphatic about the absence of the comedy festival in the south. 'They say it is our national comedy festival, but it is really just a North Island comedy festival,' she says. 'We're the second biggest city in this country, so hopefully they'll come to the party soon.' Having been involved with the comedy club since it opened in 2020, Taylor echoes that things are 'thriving' in the local comedy scene.
By way of example, she mentions a headline-grabbing mishap with her paperwork earlier this year that could have been disastrous. 'So I was a day late in getting my liquor license renewed, and I lost it for 25 days. But while I bled money over the bar, the audience was still turning up for comedy,' she says. 'I think that is such a strong indicator of how people feel about comedy here in Christchurch – they're still showing up for it, even when they can't get drunk.'
This stone cold sober love for comedy not gone unnoticed by Lauren Whitney, director of The New Zealand International Comedy Festival. While Christchurch has previously been used as an occasional satellite location for the odd touring act or gala over the years, she says that there are plans to explore a closer relationship with the city, and soon. 'It's not about a lack of interest in Christchurch, it is really just about capacity and resource at this stage.'
Whitney explains that the core funding for the festival comes from commercial sponsors like Best Foods Mayonnaise, and the rest is from Auckland and Wellington city councils (funding from Creative New Zealand is inconsistent, and they didn't get any this year). 'Because we're not getting long term consistent funding, it's very hard for us to future plan, because generally, by the time we finish a festival, we're then going out and seeking funding all over again,' she says.
There's also the issue of timing. The schedule creep of comedy festivals in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane overlapping with New Zealand has meant that availability of talent is becoming an issue as it is. 'Currently we have about 650 performances across three and a half weeks in Auckland and Wellington, and so scheduling another city on top of that would produce some logistical challenges,' she says. 'Nothing we can't work out, of course.'
So while I might be whinging down here in the south for the moment, scavenging for errant laughs wherever I can find them (Jim's Pubic Trims), Whitney assures me that momentum is building. 'The dream is to grow Christchurch as a market, not only for the work that we're doing, but also for the wider ecosystem so that comedians can perform with or without us,' she says. 'The long term aim is definitely to do more and more and bring stuff consistently.'
In the meantime, South Islanders can check out a smattering of comedy festival shows here
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The Spinoff
2 days ago
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‘Fallen between the cracks': The mystery of New Zealand's lost emo anthem
Alex Casey goes in search of 'Crawl' by Atlas, the beloved mid-2000s emo anthem that's 'fallen between the cracks'. It's some time in 2007 and Britomart is swarming with gloomy loiterers, their sullen faces hidden behind swooping side fringes, black eyeliner and snakebite piercings. The black jeans are so tight that they can't possibly require that many studded belts, not to mention the stacks of leather chokers limiting the flow of oxygen to the brain. Perhaps this is why the crowd soon collapses into a state of mass unconsciousness, Nokia 3315s strewn far and wide, as two brave survivors unleash a battle cry to help them claw through the morose milieu. 'I won't fall between the cracks, yeah / Just leave some space for me to learn to crawl' 'Crawl' by Atlas was the biggest New Zealand single of 2007, clinging to number one in the charts for seven weeks and eventually becoming the sixth biggest song of the year (between 'Bartender' by T-Pain ft. Akon and 'Because of You' by Ne-Yo). Nearly two decades later, the YouTube comments beneath the music video are littered with happy memories. 'I am Korean and when I was in NZ in 2007 I could hear this song everywhere,' shares one commenter. 'This was a banger in my childhood, never even knew it was a kiwi song,' adds another. But through the nostalgic haze, there's also a sense of bubbling rage from hundreds upon hundreds of New Zealanders who can't find 'Crawl' on any music streaming platforms. 'It is a crime that this song was number 1 on C4 tv for soooo long and its not even on spotty [Spotify]' someone wrote just last year, garnering 320 likes in support. 'Sucks that spotify doesn't have this song grrr' has 520 likes, and was written eight years ago. Even the relatively fresh '2025 and still waiting for this track to drop on Spotify!' has already got 77 likes. One such aggrieved New Zealander is Justine Sachs, a self-described 'Crawl' superfan. 'It's just the perfect song,' she says. Not only does Sachs enjoy the 'crazy belter' chorus and the harmonies from Beth Campbell – 'Evanescence couldn't. Hayley from Paramore couldn't' – she also resonated with the social message as a moody teen. 'It's all about people falling between the cracks, being kept down by the man. It's like the system is coming down on all of us, and all we need is space to learn to crawl,' she pauses. 'Not even walk, man, just crawl.' The timing was pertinent too. 'This was the height of My Chemical Romance after The Black Parade and Fall Out Boy, but we also had this wave of local bands like Goodnight Nurse, Elemeno P, Goodshirt and Atlas. It felt really special to have our own local version of it.' Watching the music video every afternoon on C4 also helped canonise 'Crawl'. 'Britomart was such an important spot for me and my friends. When you're 13, there are not a lot of places you can go to be contemplative and flick your emo fringe around, so we felt really seen.' But seasons change, fringes grow out, and eventually the world moved on. The futuristic fountain of Britomart, home to 'Crawl' and also 'We Gon' Ride' was removed to extend the station, and Sachs similarly turned her back on her roots. 'I tried to suppress my emo background and pretend it all never happened,' she says. That was until about a decade later, at Shadows Bar in the University of Auckland, when a few words from 'Crawl' crept back into her mind. Nobody else remembered it, insisting she was thinking of 'Crawling' by Linkin Park. Sachs took to Spotify but couldn't find any evidence of the song, and spent some time wondering if she had made it up. 'For a while I couldn't even remember it enough to find any evidence of it, but I also knew deep down that a part of me was missing,' she says. After getting into another heated discussion about 'Crawl' at a party, she went home and finally found the music video on YouTube. 'It was a real renaissance moment for me – I even made a playlist of New Zealand pop punk and emo, but I was so sad because I couldn't add 'Crawl'.' Now, 'a few times a year', Sachs is forced to load up YouTube to play 'Crawl' at parties and other assorted social situations, complete with pre-roll ads. 'It's not ideal at all, and it's actually a disservice to a very important song,' she says. 'I'm really trying my best to support artists – I don't even have Spotify and use Apple Music now – but I don't want to get YouTube Premium just for this one song.' Asked if she has a message for Atlas, Sachs is clear: 'I want to know why their song isn't on streaming services, and I also just want to know if they are OK.' Ben Campbell, founding member of Atlas, is OK. He's busy, in fact, running a restaurant in Akaroa, and doesn't have quite as much time as I do to dwell in the minutiae of 2007. But after a few days of phone tag, he is more than happy to return to the origins of Atlas. The band formed in the mid-2000s after Campbell had left Zed, and was working in Las Vegas with his sister Beth on a Robert Lamm live DVD. Sean Cunningham, the gravelly-voiced Kentucky boy who would soon be crawling dramatically through Britomart, was hired to be their driver. 'We got along really well, and one night Sean came back to the hotel room, we got the guitars out, and we had this amazing two-hour session where we wrote three songs,' says Campbell. They decided then and there to start a band together – working name Tall Poppies – and brought Sean back to Christchurch to keep making demos. While they stayed independent by setting up their own label structure, the band eventually signed with Warner Music to help with the production and distribution of their first (and only) album, Reasons For Voyaging. As for 'Crawl', Campbell remembers writing it in a flurry in their flat in Addington. They didn't know initially that it would be their big hit, but Campbell recalls a moment where the whole band were standing in an elevator together and they realised the melody of the song was going through all of their heads simultaneously. 'That's when I thought, OK, there's something really catchy here,' he says. The song was released in March 2007, entering the charts at number nine and shooting straight to number one, where it would stay for nearly two months. 'That first week that it charted at number one, we just absolutely lost it,' says Campbell. 'Each week we'd sit there at that same spot at Andy's flat [Andy Lynch, guitarist for Zed and Atlas] and refresh it. We just could not believe that it would keep coming back at number one. It almost became a joke, it was just amazing.' Next came the music video, which was shot in a single day outside Britomart train station. 'It felt like such a big budget production for us, because all of a sudden, here we were in Auckland's CBD with full film crews, run sheets, actors,' says Campbell. 'It was a huge level up for us, although I still remember there is that scene with a couple of Japanese school girls with wigs on. At the time I remember thinking, oh those wigs look pretty cheesy, but they must look alright on film. And now every time I watch it, I still go, nope, those wigs just look cheesy.' Cheesy wigs aside, Campbell says 'Crawl' was still a highlight of his career. 'Zed actually never had a number one single, so for me and Andy, that was a huge thing to tick off – it just happened to be on a different project,' he laughs. Although their next single 'Magic 8' peaked at number 27 in the charts, Atlas rode the momentum of 'Crawl' into tours with Silverchair and Stereophonics, before getting stuck into their second album. 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'So Sean ended up staying in the States, we moved back from Auckland to Christchurch, the quakes hit just a few months later, and that was the end of Atlas.' Campbell stayed involved in the local music scene after the quakes, helping put on live shows on portable stages around the city, before eventually moving into hospitality. Spotify arrived in New Zealand in 2012, Apple Music in 2015, and members of the band have periodically noticed that Atlas's back catalogue is nowhere to be found on any of the digital streamers. 'I believe it's because the licensing agreement with Warners expired and no one took ownership of the digital onboarding,' says Campbell. 'Spotify didn't exist when Crawl was released, so it has effectively fallen between the cracks.' Making things even more difficult is the fact that nobody knows where the original masters are for the album. 'Andy's going to have a search through his barn and see if there's a dusty old Atlas box somewhere,' Campbell laughs. In the meantime, they have a high quality ripped version of the CD waiting in the wings to be uploaded, but nobody knows quite how to proceed. 'Everything in the industry has changed completely from when I was in it,' says Campbell. 'I don't even know what the process is for setting up an Atlas Spotify account.' Warner Music are yet to respond to The Spinoff's inquiries about 'Crawl', but Campbell is hopeful they can bring the smash hit of 2007 to streaming platforms soon. 'It's actually been really motivating for us, because it was a really sad ending for Atlas. We had to just give up the dream and move on, so it's cool to know that people want to hear it.' Cunningham, whose voice has since recovered, even returned to Christchurch earlier this year and performed an acoustic version of 'Crawl'. Time for an Atlas reunion, perhaps? 'Now, wouldn't that be fun,' says Campbell. As for reformed emo Sachs, news of a 'Crawl' comeback couldn't come sooner. 'Look, we're back in an economic depression, and people are feeling just as emo as they were in 2007,' she says.
The Spinoff
01-08-2025
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The perils of picking the perfect plane movie
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The Spinoff
11-07-2025
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Have luxury cinemas gone too far?
In the age of boutique cinema experiences, Alex Casey pines for simpler times. My enduring memory of watching Alien: Romulus at the cinema is not of the creepy AI Ian Holm, nor of the hallway of facehuggers, but something much more chilling. In the opening scenes we drifted into the blackness of space in pindrop silence, but my eye was instead drawn to the woman in the row in front of me, on a frenzied hunt for the perfect crisscut fry. She tilted her small personalised reading lamp (why?) towards the carton and ferreted about for what felt like 10 minutes, holding contenders up to the light like a diamond inspector counting carats. I wish this was the only time that luxurious cinema add-ons have hugely impinged on the moviegoing experience. Ask me anything about Tenet and I won't recall a moment of the plot (Robert Pattinson… backwards?) but I will tell you about how the entire cinema was there on the same GrabOne voucher that entitled them to a free cocktail, pizza and dessert during the film. The aisles were busier than Piccadilly Circus, with every moment of quiet in the film stolen by a poor cinema attendant hissing 'Negroni for Janet, NEGRONI for JANET' into the abyss. Other times, the toll of luxury has been less about the distraction from the film and more about the gentle humiliation of the filmgoer. Last year at the film festival, I ordered myself a humble cup of peppermint tea to enjoy during the flick. Little did I know that I was signing myself up for enough jangling crockery and silverware – tray, cup saucer, teapot, strainer, spoon, napkin – to host a solo jumble sale when I finally found my seat in the dark. Did I spill hot tea on everyone in my row? Yes! And then did I spill hot tea all over myself? Yes!! Of course, cinemas must do whatever they can to make some extra coin these days. With enormous rent and huge distributor fees, the candy bar is where they really make their money. But I am also a dumbass who is prone to novelty and excess, and if you kindly offer me a chocolate fish to go with yet another cursed cup of tea during 28 Years Later I will say yes – even if it means that said chocolate fish will also quietly melt during the trailers against the side of the cup, soon transferring chocolate smears onto my fingers and eventually my entire face and body in the darkness. Maybe this new world of luxury, where a cinema also doubles a cafe and a restaurant and a hotel, is emblematic of a society where we are constantly trying to optimise everything in our lives, to the point where we rinse it of any enjoyment at all. Why have a nice dinner before the movie that you can actually see, when you could eat a bad dinner during the movie that you can't even see a little bit? Why watch a movie under the blankets in your grotty bed at home, when you could watch a movie under the blankets in a grotty bed… in public? With the New Zealand International Film Festival on the horizon, this is as much a reminder to myself as it is for anyone else: just because you have spent roughly $900 million to leave the house and see a film, it doesn't mean you need to act like you are the primary guest on a Below Deck Mediterranean charter. You don't need to feast on confit duck bao buns, banoffee sundaes and three cheese platters to have a good time at the movies. Nor do you need to max out on mod cons like a reading lamp, a daybed and a blanket.
