http://www.thebiglittlecity.co.nz
go on. have a look. I dare you, the big little other. the big little majority and the big little minority. they’re all behind the big little lie.
Of course it makes one think of Big Chief Little Feather. It makes one think of the TV show, That’s fairly Interesting and its so-old-fashioned self-deprecating self-deprecation. The irony that its irony was ironic.
I love this city. It’s a wasteland. It’s Sydney’s depressed and old-before-its-time but young-and-doesn’t-look-it and phobic (gynophobic, homophobic and heterosexist!) lead-tongued and actually-preferring-shit, passive-aggressive neighbour-who’d-like-to-think-of-her-sexless-self-as-related-by-blood-when-it’s-lithium-that-flows-in-her-dark-dark-veins.
Premature, it is. But as I’m old now, and as Brazil has fucoffee now, I’ve thought to re-brand myself the big little taylor – a theatre guy. I’ve spent nothing on this project so far but what has gone on cellphone calls and worry. I’ve worried about kiwitheatre company’s production of The Cape. And answered the one review in the one newspaper you get in this city, with an argument which is not ad hominem. (See earlier post, not a who’s Huse.)
I’ve concerned myself with this big little case of critical malfeasance because the show was not big little enough to warrant Shannon Huse, to warrant being damned.
You see out of this big little thing you get the horrific synthesis: average. Average becomes an escape route. And the really funny thing about it is that average is the escape route used by the mainstream. Who, I’d say, are those who contrive to pass through the big/little gate. Die, you worms and tall poppies! Let the luke inherit the warm it’s-all-good, pee-smelly.
Big little has that “knowing” bullshit going on of premature challenges to status and authority. That “level-playing field” bullshit. Which is the biggest load of pushable-around pigshit, of manipulable clicheed fuckheadery.
To support my personal rebrand Q Theatre comes along. The exemplary big little project. Because compromised from the get-go, way back, by go-getters who decide Council – Auckland City Council – can help.
Red tape and so much of it that the bandaged corpse of this idea is turning pink with age. If only it were that other kind of dollarific pink and gay that used to get things done. Not the naff gay.
Councils can help. At a price. The price being a strange big little silence. Well, it’s the usual kind of silence. And there’s no mystery to it. It’s a Secret Service kind of silence. A The Lives of Others kind of silence. Still, so long after 1984, Eastern Bloc-ish.
I recall, way back then, hearing about the New Theatre Initiative and raising Justin Lewis, via e-mail, from his bath at Indian Ink. I asked him for the big little lowdown on tricks and plans. I remember the big little surprise of being informed that before he could give me any info I’d have to subscribe. Pay money. That’s what I said. Pay money? For such a big little thing as word on what up?
Then Mike Mizrahi helped design/organise the unapologetically big party to rebrand New Theatre Initiative as Q Theatre. It didn’t need to apologise because in the big scheme of things it meant little to nothing. (And, to repeat, not for comic effect, but post-comedically: If only Q meant a Queue for Queers, Queens, or the French Equivalent, some assy sassy-ness, not this big little continuo.) The Q rebrand was not so much a rebranding as a retarding. I wonder if my own will fair so dull, so far so… solfeggio!
Mayor Banks, I declared to Q unbidden this week past, may cut funding, now, after nearly a decade. But think on this: A silver-lining to this cloud of Banks! You have raised $5 m. … No. We haven’t. It’s with ASB. … You have access to $5 m. to buy a building. Claim your inheritance. Escape from beholdenness to Council … No. We’d have to convince trustees if we were to change venue. …
And so long ago you could have bought a carpark. And then worried about how to make it a theatre.
The big little plans of men who are mice.
My personal rebrand has not gone well. Mayor banks gave Q $200 K, saying, the big littleness of the man, after that, beg. Short leash, I’d say. Council love you actorly types.
I hear Auckland’s architectural heritage getting destroyed because it’s not big or little or knowing and big-little. Tossers sitting on their fences, those favourite big-little blockades of the big little league, the in barbarians. Q or New Theatre Initiative or however you want to call it could have saved several existing buildings already. What do they want? More and new big little architectural mistakes.
And there’s kiwitheatre battling the void around the big little word of the one paper the one reviewer the one, the void opened up by that one …
