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MediaAugust 26, 2018

Why Rose Matafeo winning best show at the Edinburgh Fringe is such a huge deal

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Last night Rose Matafeo won the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, one of the most prestigious awards for comedians anywhere. Here’s why that matters.

First up: What’s the Edinburgh Fringe Festival?

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the biggest fringe festival in the world. With well over three thousand shows, there’s nothing that’s even comparable anywhere else. For a month, around 50,000 performers, tourists and other arty-type people whom you would probably avoid at your local cafe pack into the usually sleepy city of Edinburgh. There’s theatre, comedy, experimental art, performance art… if you can think of a concept for a show, chances are there’ll be three of that same show in Edinburgh. Two of them will be the worst possible version of that idea.

And who’s Rose Matafeo?

If you’re reading The Spinoff, you know who Rose Matafeo is.

But in case you’ve ended up here by mistake, Matafeo is one of New Zealand’s biggest and best comedians. She’s already won the Billy T Award and the Fred Award for best NZ Comedy Festival show, and since moving to the other side of the world she’s won near-universal rave reviews. This award, for her latest show, Horndog, is just the Millennium Star in her comedy award crown jewels.

So what’s this latest award?

As the name ‘Best Comedy’ might suggest, it’s the award that goes to the best comedy show of the entire Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as judged by a panel of experts who know more about comedy than you do.

The award, formerly known as the Perrier Award, has been running since 1981, and the winners have included names you might recognise like Steve Coogan, Dylan Moran, Demetri Martin, Daniel Kitson, Bridget Christie, Jenny Eclair, Theatre de Complicite (if you’re a wanker).

Last year’s award was shared between John Robins for his show, The Darkness of John Robins and Hannah Gadsby for Nanette. You know, that special that is genuinely amazing and everybody who has seen it has told you it’s amazing and if you haven’t seen it by now you probably won’t ever because of how hyped it’s been? That one.

But why is it such a big deal?

If you missed the first answer, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is absolutely mammoth. I went over there as a punter in 2016, saw about 52 shows in two weeks, and broke myself. Imagine Queen Street, or Lambton Quay, or whatever your equivalent main street is. Now imagine that street is full of people frantically trying to get somewhere. Okay, now imagine there’s literally dozens of people handing out flyers on that street, attempting to persuade you to see a show you’ve never heard of and don’t want to see, and they’re handing out those flyers with a desperation that you’d usually see in the line for the women’s bathroom, because if you don’t take their flyer and don’t see their show, they’re going to have to sell all their stuff to live. And on top of all that, often the person handing out that flyer has to go perform in a venue that very same day in the show they spent all their money on, and then get straight back to hustling.

I love it so much, and will never perform there. But I digress. My point is, it’s huge.

It’s a festival that chews up literally thousands of shows, and only the absolute best ones rise to the top. You can be one of the most famous comedians in the entire world and not even make a dent there. There are literally, not figuratively, not metaphorically, close to a thousand stand-up shows in this festival. The best comedians in the world are there, and they’re not bringing their workshop material or their new five minutes – they’re bringing their best stuff.

That’s why it’s a big deal.

So what does this mean for Rose Matafeo?

She’s £10,000 richer.

Is that all?

No, but that’s a bloody good place to start.

It’s the most prestigious comedy award in the world, or at least the most prestigious competitive one. It puts Matafeo on the radar of a lot of people, and that’s hugely exciting for a New Zealand comedian. The likelihood of her exploding on an international scale – we’re talking Netflix specials, parts in big TV shows and movies – is less a possibility now and more an inevitability. And as inevitability goes, you could do a lot worse.

To have one of our own – and while it’s important for us to claim Matafeo as one of our one, it’s also important to realise that she’s honed her craft overseas and has been consistently working and upping her game every year – win this award is huge. It’s big for New Zealand comedy, and bigger for Matafeo.

And best of all, she fucking deserves it.

Cool! I’ll get going now-

Hang on!

In the interest of realising New Zealanders winning big at Edinburgh Fringe, I have to give a shoutout to both Last Tapes Theatre Company’s Valerie (created by Robin Kelly, Cherie Moore and Tom Broome) and Zanetti Productions’ The Basement Tapes (created by Stella Reid, Jane Yonge, Thomas Lambert and Oliver Morse). Both of them are award-winning theatre shows which you may or may not have heard of, depending on your opinion on the statement ‘theatre is for nerds’. Both walk away from the festival with Fringe First awards (essentially an award recognizing outstanding new writing) and The Basement Tapes also has a shiny Best Performance Award from The Stage.

Take everything I said about comedy shows in the Fringe, apply it to theatre, and the same is true. These are big deals, and very cool.

Keep going!
The current state of the NZ media Royal Rumble (illustration: Tina Tiller)
The current state of the NZ media Royal Rumble (illustration: Tina Tiller)

MediaAugust 26, 2018

The best of The Spinoff this week

The current state of the NZ media Royal Rumble (illustration: Tina Tiller)
The current state of the NZ media Royal Rumble (illustration: Tina Tiller)

Bringing you the best weekly reading from your friendly local website.

Duncan Greive: The real ratings of NZ’s news sites shows some have a big problem

“For 20 straight days we didn’t crest 60,000 pageviews – our marker for a good day – even once. It had come from nowhere: between the start of June and July 3rd we had 10 days over 60,000, and a pair just shy of 100,000. Our simultaneous on-site number sat in the 200s for hours on end, and pieces we had been certain would become huge hits seemed to start trending down far faster and harder than we had anticipated.

It breeds a kind of neurotic angst – always an occupational hazard in this industry – in editors and journalists. A paranoid second-guessing of what might be the cause. Have we lost our edge? Has all the negative coverage of our TV show (a note on that at the bottom of this story) impacted the site? Are people just sick of us now?

‘I bet it picked up about 10 days ago,’ he added. ‘Facebook eh,’ he said, shaking his head. And he was right, it had. I felt the relief of a problem shared and halved wash over me. The answer was what it always is: Zuckerberg had tweaked his algorithm again.”

Hayden Donnell: How NZ news livestreams became overwhelmed by anti-1080 activists

“Yesterday the government announced new wheel clamping regulations. As it often does, the Herald posted live video of the press conference on Facebook. It was pretty standard political fare: Phil Twyford and Kris Faafoi said “cowboy clampers” roughly 300 times as they explained their half-hearted new rules. In the comments, though, a different story was playing out. Virtually no-one there cared about cowboy clampers or even Phil Twyford. Comment after comment flooded in, all variations on the same plea. Each carried some version of the words “ban 1080”.

Where was the flood coming from?”

Calum Henderson: We found the genius behind the 1 News Tonight weather music

Fascinated by the surprising and often inspired music curation on TVNZ 1’s evening news bulletin, Calum Henderson goes in search of the person responsible – Greg Boyed, who sadly passed away earlier this week in Switzerland.

Matthew Motta, Steven Sylvester and Timothy Callaghan: Why vaccine opponents think they know more than medical experts

The growing “anti-vax” movement here and abroad has seen parents refuse to give their children mandatory school vaccinationsgrowing numbers of celebrities questioning vaccine safety, and even pet owners refusing to vaccinate their dogs – forcing the British Veterinary Association to issue a statement in April that dogs cannot develop autism.

Given the consistent message from the scientific community about the safety of vaccines, and evidence of vaccine success as seen through the eradication of diseases, why has the skepticism about vaccines continued?

Toby Manhire: TOP is not dead after all, and Simon Bridges is pretty damn happy about that

“RIP, TOP. Thanks for the memories. Except – what’s that noise coming from the coffin? Could it be Gareth Morgan, bellowing injustice, railing against those ‘flakes and groupies’. Was it Sean Plunket, attempting to reclaim the word cunt for political communications practitioners? Inch closer, and, no, it’s someone else: it’s Geoff Simmons, announcing he’s taking over as leader, making cerebral observations about the electoral prospects for a party appealing to a non-property-owning generation.

The same Geoff Simmons, formerly TOP deputy leader, who a month ago was writing in the Spinoff that it was ‘sad and surreal to watch TOP’s demise’. There he was this morning on the radio (from Italy, naturally) heralding the resurrection. The Opportunities Party would be contesting the 2020 election, after all. This party has almost as many lives as a cat.

The rebirth will be welcomed, of course, by those who cleaved to TOP’s ‘evidence based’ platform last year.'”

Drone footage of the Five Star Beef feedlot.

Don Rowe: Why you should give a damn about feedlots

“Earlier this week both SAFE and Fish and Game called on government to ban feedlots, calling it an Americanisation of the farming process. I’m with the hippies – feedlots are ethically and ecologically unconscionable, and incongruous with the way we market one of our biggest export earners to the world.

Operational since 1991, ANZCO’s Five Star Beef is New Zealand’s only large-scale commercial feedlot. Its product, Wakanui Beef, is ‘grain finished’, the company says on its website, in ‘an idyllic, stress-free environment’, where cattle are ‘refreshed by breezes off the Pacific Ocean’.

Let’s unpack that, because, as minister for agriculture Damien O’Connor said this week, ‘the image of pastoral farming is the one New Zealand promotes’ – and feedlots don’t look anything like pastoral, stress-free or idyllic.”

Jane Patterson: If Simon Bridges wasn’t already sweating, he will be now

“If National Party leader Simon Bridges wasn’t already sweating he will be now, with a second leak, possibly from within his own caucus.

First there was a leak to Newshub about his travel expenses; now there’s been a second leak from someone concerned the inquiry into the first leak is still going ahead.

An anonymous source has contacted RNZ to reveal both Bridges and the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, received a text from an unidentified member of the National Party caucus, claiming to be the source of the original leak.

Based on information given to RNZ, the text from the unnamed MP last week went on to say they were in a vulnerable emotional state and if they were named and shamed that could tip them over the edge.

That would seem to verify the widely held belief the original leak did in fact come from one of Bridges’ own MPs.”

The ‘We’re Not Going Out Of Business Sale’

Jihee Junn: Crocs are dead, long live the Crocs store

When I visited the Crocs store days after the news broke, I didn’t quite know what to expect. The company said it would be shutting some of its retail stores – would little old New Zealand’s be one of them? In fact, would it even be open? Would I be allowed in? And if so, would there be a clearance sale with 70% off all marked prices?

The reality, however, was quite the opposite, with the store offering up to 30% off in its ‘We’re Not Going Out Of Business’ sale instead.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ the shop assistant tells me. ‘Crocs is a multimillion dollar business and we’re simply changing our supply by using third-party manufacturers. There’s been a lot of stuff in the media about how we’re going out of business, but the media in New Zealand doesn’t understand how business works.’

Alex Braae: Spill! Spill! Spill? Is Malcolm Turnbull about to get rolled as Australian PM?

Spoiler: yes.

But wait there's more!