Loose Canons is a series in which we invite artists we love to share five things that have informed their work. Meet the rest of our Loose Canons here.

Choreographer and performance director Malia Johnston is one of the founders of Movement Of The Human (MOTH). Malia has been working in the performance industry since 2000. She was awarded Director of the Year at the Wellington Theatre Awards 2018...

Vanessa Crofskey on compulsive grooming, beauty and survival.

I watch my mum from the upstairs window as she bends over a patch of dirt and upturns the earth. She works late nights as a software developer, so these hours in the garden are hers. Determinedly, she pushes her knees into the concrete and pulls a weed out from the soil bed. An hour later, she is still scouring the earth, bundles of...

Roger Hall is the most successful playwright in New Zealand, but it looks like he's scared of everyone below retirement age. What's worse is that it might just be our fault... and not in the ways you think. Adam Goodall digs into the mistakes that Aotearoa playwrights – especially the young ones – keep making when they write stories about old age for the stage, and what needs to change to get them right....