Te Radar Restrospectacle Photo: supplied
When a comedian approaches Comedy Festival season, you expect the trial of a new show - and all the challenges that represents.
But this year, comedian and journalist Te Radar isn't just preparing to perform his latest - Cookbookery!, a delve into vintage Kiwi cookbooks - he will be reimagining four other “docu-comedies” he’s created over 30 years in the business.
Retrospectacle in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland from 21-25 May will feature five different shows over five consecutive nights.
Included are his early days as "a failed war correspondent" in East Timor, bizarre local stories that history tried to forget, a trek through Antarctica, and Intoxicana, which he describes as a trip "into New Zealand’s befuddling history of drugs and alcohol".
Te Radar joins Culture 101 to play fast favourites, sharing his love of recent Aotearoa culture.
He has just finished reading Bug Week by Airini Beautrais ("like being punched right in the unexpecteds") and in art, rates the creative play spaces of Mike Hewson for the way they value the importance of play.
Photo: Youtube / Screenshot
A current favourite local band are Voom, which he saw again at the recent 95bfm fundraiser (on national tour shortly) and in the Auckland Arts Festival, he loved Tainui Tukiwaho’s play The Sun and the Wind.
As for food? “A beetroot curry at a place in Ashburton that symbolises the stunning quality of regional food.”
Aside from the comedy and speeches, Te Radar has won two Qantas Media awards for his New Zealand Herald columns and has made a handful of television documentary series and countless appearances looking at 'the week that was' on RNZ's Nine to Noon.
