Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Charlton, Leader of Australian Right Whale Research Program, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University

For decades, southern right whales have been celebrated as one of conservation’s success stories.

Once driven to the brink of extinction by commercial whaling, southern right whales slowly returned to Australian coastlines through the late 20th century. Their recovery reflected the power of international protection, marine sanctuaries and long-term science working together.

But our new research shows this success story is changing. We drew on more than 30 years of continuous shore-based monitoring of southern right whales in the Great Australian Bight, from within the Yalata Indigenous Protected Area in South Australia. We found clear evidence whales are having calves less often, with the average calving interval increasing for 3 to 4 years. This means the number of calves being born has slowed over the past decade.

This decline appears closely linked to climate-driven changes in the Southern Ocean — similar patterns are now being observed across the southern hemisphere.

More than 3 decades of photos

Our study analysed photo-identification data collected by researchers between 1991 and 2024 from a major calving area in the Great Australian Bight. Each whale is identified using its unique pattern of callosities — the hard patches of skin on its head that remain throughout its life.

This allows individual whales to be tracked across decades, providing rare insight into long-term population dynamics and how these change over time. Photo-identification is a globally accepted method used for whale population assessments. By tracking known individuals over time, researchers can directly measure their reproductive histories.

Long-term datasets like this are rare — and that is precisely what makes them so powerful. The Australian Right Whale Research Program at Flinders University is one of the longest continuous photo-identification studies of any whale species in the world. It has used the same methods over decades. In the context of climate change, where impacts often emerge slowly and unevenly, this long-term evidence is essential.

What we found

Since around 2015, female southern right whales have not given birth as often. These extended calving intervals mean fewer calves are being born overall, and this reduces population growth over time.

For a long-lived species that reproduces slowly, this matters. Small changes in reproductive rates impacts population growth. The slowdown in reproduction signals a shift away from the recovery seen in previous decades.

A signal from the south

The cause of this change is not immediately visible from Australia’s coastline. Southern right whales spend much of their lives feeding thousands of kilometres away in the Southern Ocean, where they rely on the cold, nutrient-rich waters created by Antarctic sea ice. These waters support krill and prey that are crucial for whales to build up the energy reserves they need for pregnancy and lactation.

Over the past decade, the ocean has warmed, the ice is melting and there have been dramatic shifts in food availability weather patterns. Our analysis shows longer calving intervals coincide with these environmental changes, suggesting the impacts of climate change on conditions in the Southern Ocean are linked to whales having fewer calves.

A global pattern emerges

Importantly, this is not just an Australian story.

Similar trends are being reported in southern right whale populations off South America and South Africa, where researchers have documented reduced calving rates, whales in poor condition and environmental changes.

Southern right whales are a sentinel species: animals whose health reflects broader changes in their environment. Our findings signal deeper disruption in ocean systems that also support fisheries, affect how the climate is regulated and influence marine plants, animals and other species.

Southern right whales are long-lived, reproduce slowly, and rely on energy-rich feeding grounds. This makes them particularly vulnerable to climate-driven changes in prey.

What needs to change?

Protecting the Southern Ocean and its increasingly vulnerable natural ecosystems demands urgent collective climate action. This must bridge disciplines, industries, governments and interconnected regions.

This action should include the expansion of sanctuaries across the migratory ranges of threatened species. It should also limit threats, such as whales being struck by ships, getting entangled in ropes and being exposed to noise pollution.

The future of southern right whales is likely to be closely tied to the management of krill harvesting and addressing climate change.

We need to listen — and act — while there is still time.

The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of research collaborators and all of the people involved in the long-term research program that make this work possible.

The Australian Right Whale Research Study receives funding from the Minderoo Foundation and in kind support from many organisations and volunteers.

– ref. Southern right whales are having babies less often, but why? – https://theconversation.com/southern-right-whales-are-having-babies-less-often-but-why-275442

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/12/southern-right-whales-are-having-babies-less-often-but-why-275442/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Angus Taylor has all the on-paper qualifications to be opposition leader. But there are big questions over how well he could do the job, when a miracle worker is needed to lift the struggling Liberal Party from its existential crisis.

Taylor’s political story so far is regarded by many observers and not a few colleagues as one of unfulfilled promise.

If he wins the leadership, he would take over with the party at its lowest, considered to have no prospect of victory at the 2028 election. The first realistic chance for Taylor, now 59, of becoming prime minister would be 2031 – a very long time to survive as opposition leader in this poll-driven era.

Taylor is a Rhodes scholar, with strong qualifications in economics, and an impressive business career behind him, which include having been a director at Port Jackson Partners, a business consultancy firm.

Rod Sims, also a Port Jackson director at the time (and later head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) describes Taylor as “extremely intelligent. He was very, very good at what he did, advising boards of some of the largest companies on corporate strategy”.

Few would doubt Taylor, when elected for the NSW regional seat of Hume in 2013, had his eyes on the ultimate prize, a view reinforced by glowing publicity at the time.

Over the years, however, several personal controversies dogged him, ranging from questions over alleged illegal clearing of protected grassland by a company in which his family had a financial interest (he denied any wrongdoing) to the use of a mysterious and misleading document (which he could never explain) to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.

In his maiden speech, condemning political correctness, he made an inaccurate claim about living in the same corridor at Oxford University as feminist writer Naomi Wolf, later to be embarrassed when she said she wasn’t at the university at the time. When in trouble he never seemed able to find his way out of it cleanly.

Taylor’s frontbench experience includes serving as minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction in the Morrison government and as shadow treasurer in Peter Dutton’s opposition.

His time in the latter post wasn’t happy. He struggled against Treasurer Jim Chalmers. According to Niki Savva in her book Earthquake, Dutton thought Taylor a “terrible retail politician who produced policies that could not be sold or explained to the public”.

Taylor wanted the opposition to respond to the government’s 2025 budget tax cuts with an alternative tax policy. But Dutton rejected that, and the opposition went into the election (disastrously) giving the government a big break on the tax issue.

Former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello told The Australian’s Troy Bramston, “At the last election, [the Liberals] got themselves into a position where they were proposing to increase income taxes, run bigger deficits, no real plan to reduce debt”.

Regardless, Taylor as leader would be most comfortable talking about the evils of debt and deficit. But today’s voters no longer care so much about those, and want government to do more, not less.

One economist who has observed Taylor over the years describes him as “very smart and a very good economist”, not a hardline dry but with a market approach of the Howard-Costello era. “He’s in the right party – if it were the party of 20 years ago”. But things have changed.

“I’d be stunned if the times suited Angus Taylor,” this source says. “Would we see the Angus Taylor of his convictions, or Angus Taylor pushed around by the populism of the moment? How would he battle One Nation? That’s hard to do from the viewpoint of market economics.”

In economics Taylor is in the Liberal mainstream, but on climate policy he’s been something of a weather vane.

In his business career he was very alive to the climate change issue and a supporter of renewables. But years later, he was against Malcolm Turnbull’s attempt to bring in a National Energy Guarantee (the NEG), a plan to reduce emissions while ensuring the reliability of the grid. Under Scott Morrison he advocated the net zero by 2050 target. In opposition he was one of those opposing it, walking shoulder to shoulder with Andrew Hastie and other conservatives into the party meeting ahead of the dumping of the Liberal commitment to the target.

Turnbull says pointedly, “Angus’ views on energy were more enlightened when he was working for Rod Sims [at Port Jackson] and supported an economy wide carbon price”.

One of Taylor’s strongest supporters is former MP Craig Laundy, who was a close ally of Turnbull.

Laundy entered parliament at the same time as Taylor, and they’ve kept in touch in recent years. When Laundy had ministerial responsibility for deregulation and Taylor oversaw digital policy. Laundy found him “very good to work with”.

Laundy rejects the perception of some that Taylor has a “born to rule” attitude. “It’s harsh and unfair. He was always a very good communicator and I think [if he is leader] he will surprise many on the upside of how he will connect with the community across the board,” Laundy says.

In his personality Taylor is self-confident but reserved. One source notes a certain vulnerability – a nervousness before a speech, afterwards wondering how it went.

Many disagree with Laundy’s assessment that Taylor communicates well, and even fans see a need for improvement. A former parliamentary colleague says, “Like a lot of really bright guys, Angus can sometimes get into over-analysis of things”.

Certainly if he were opposition leader, how well he could communicate with women would be crucial. His views on quotas mean he would likely start with a handicap in the eyes of many women.

He said last year:“We absolutely need more women in the party at every level, whether it’s members of our branches, whether it’s on our executives, whether indeed it is as members of parliament, and I think there’s a huge job for us, [but] I have never been a supporter of quotas”.

One prominent Liberal woman outside the parliamentary party, who likes Taylor personally, says he is a “caricature of a Liberal male – males who have managed to progressively alienate women from the Liberal party”.

Another muses:“He’s very handsome, well read, tall and a good farmer – but entirely lacking in charisma. How can that be possible?”

As leader Taylor would have to reach out across the party in a way he has never needed to before. “Retail politics” can be as important within a party – especially a fractured one – as with the electorate.

As the most senior member of the conservative faction, Taylor saw himself as the logical opposition leader after the 2025 election. In a serious misjudgement, he encouraged the defection from the Nationals of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as his potential deputy. Taylor lost to Ley (25-29); Price then did not put up her hand.

He assumed Ley would fail, although he did not want to bring on a challenge this soon. But when the pushy Hastie started to force the issue, Taylor was clear: it was his turn next.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Who is Angus Taylor and could he cut it as opposition leader? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-angus-taylor-and-could-he-cut-it-as-opposition-leader-275400

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/12/who-is-angus-taylor-and-could-he-cut-it-as-opposition-leader-275400/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Leadership aspirant Angus Taylor resigned from the shadow cabinet on Wednesday night, but when the Liberal Party will vote on the leadership remained up in the air.

After a day of high tension in the party, Taylor went to Ley’s office to quit at about 7:15pm. But in the meeting he did not actually call for a spill or explicitly declare he was challenging.

Taylor, 59, from the right of the party, told the media later: “I don’t believe Sussan Ley is in a position to be able to lead the party as it needs to be led from here.

“The situation right now is devastating for Australians and for that reason we need to urgently restore confidence in the Liberal Party. That means we need strong leadership, clear direction and a relentless and courageous focus on our values.”

The party’s position under Ley had deteriorated to a point where it was weaker than at any time since it was formed in 1944, Taylor said.

He said he would “continue to serve the Liberal Party and to work towards getting it to where it needs to be if it is to have the strength to make a contribution to this great nation, the kind of contribution that it has traditionally made”.

Asked how he would be different from Ley, Taylor said: “You’ll hear more from me and others, I’m sure, in the coming days about that.”

A party meeting and vote on the leadership is expected in the next two days, although exactly how things will unfold is uncertain, with the power to determine the meeting’s timing in Ley’s hands.

Senior Taylor supporters will come out publicly, with more resignations from the frontbench expected.

On Wednesday the numbers were considered close.

Over recent days, Ley has played a cat and mouse tactical game with her opponents, to make their challenge as difficult to launch as possible.

Taylor on Wednesday delayed the timing of his resignation, attempting to ensure the party meeting would be Friday, rather than earlier, giving him maximum time to canvass for votes and to guarantee all his supporters were in place. This is a week of Senate estimates, which has meant not all Liberal senators have been in Canberra.

As Taylor starts his formal canvassing for support, Ley and her backers were considering her next moves.

Taylor will need a motion to “spill” the leadership carried before there is a vote on the leadership. There are 51 members of the Liberal parliamentary party – 28 members of the House of Representatives and 23 senators.

Taylor has brought to a head weeks of intense – and remarkably open – manoeuvring by Ley’s party critics. But the undermining of her has been going on since she became leader in a vote after the election, when she beat Taylor by 29 to 25.

Ley’s position has been progressively weakened by dreadful polls.

The latest is a YouGov poll for Sky News that asked who was the best person to lead the Liberals to have the best chance at the next election. The poll showed starkly that people are not impressed by any of the senior Liberals, with a huge “don’t know” figure of 60%.

Ley was on 10%, Taylor 8%, Andrew Hastie 15%, Tim Wilson 3%, Ted O’Brien 2%, and Melissa McIntosh 2%.

Newspoll, published Sunday, had the Liberals on 15%, and the Nationals on 3%, with Ley’s net satisfaction at minus 39%.

While Hastie is leading in the YouGov poll he is not running in the leadership contest. He announced he would not be a leadership candidate after a recent meeting of key right faction power brokers made it clear he would not have the numbers and should step back.

Ley’s critics argue she has not projected what she or the Liberal party stand for, as well as criticising some specific missteps she has made.

Ley has the support of the moderates, who have smaller numbers than the right.

More fundamentally, the rifts over leadership reflect the wider battle over the party’s identity and future direction.

Many Liberals are spooked by the surging One Nation vote, which was 27% in the latest Newspoll.

Taylor was energy minister in the Morrison government, and shadow treasurer last term, a role in which he struggled to mount successful attacks on the treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

The logistics of triggering the challenge were somewhat complicated for the Taylor camp on Wednesday afternoon by the fact Ley and other senior shadow ministers were tied up for a time with a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Once again in question time, Labor targeted Taylor.

Chalmers said he had been “born with a silver foot in his mouth”.

“In every portfolio that he’s held he’s failed badly and he’s failed upwards,” Chalmers said. “The worse he performs the more entitled he feels to a promotion.

“At every stage of his life he wants everything handed to him on a silver platter,” Chalmers said. “Just when we thought that they couldn’t go any lower on the economic credibility, the member for Hume says ‘hold my chardonnay’.”

Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said on Wednesday night, “I will be backing a move for a change of leadership, […] when it comes to the top job I will be backing Angus in.

“I’ve felt no sense of inspiration or idea of direction, or how we are supposed to work together in a unified way,” she said.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: Angus Taylor quits frontbench, declaring Sussan Ley can’t lead Liberal Party ‘as it needs to be led’ – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-angus-taylor-quits-frontbench-declaring-sussan-ley-cant-lead-liberal-party-as-it-needs-to-be-led-275398

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/11/view-from-the-hill-angus-taylor-quits-frontbench-declaring-sussan-ley-cant-lead-liberal-party-as-it-needs-to-be-led-275398/

By Pip Hinman in Gadigal Country/Sydney

NSW Premier Chris Minns is sounding even more defensive after videos of NSW police violence towards peaceful protesters in Australia went viral — including attacks on Muslims praying in Sydney’s Town Hall Square after the rally on Monday.

His “primary concern”, he told ABC TV, was to prevent the gathered protesters opposing war criminal Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit from finding out that Herzog was in the city — around the corner, at the International Convention Centre at Darling Harbour.

“We can reveal this morning that we had 700 Jewish mourners in the city at the same time, and at the same location, and police had to keep them separate from protesters; if those police lines were breached, it would have been far, far worse,” Minns said.

The fact that Herzog was nearby was hardly a secret. Everyone knew, given the number of barricades and no-go zones that had been established over the previous few days.

We also knew Herzog was in Bondi and no public protest had been planned for that.

Minns’ comments were dishonest and cruel justifications for police violence.

Town Hall Square, the assembly point, was already starting to fill by 4.30pm, an hour before the protest was due to start. By 5.30pm, it was jam packed, including with many Jewish Australians and Arab Australians.

First Nations speakers
The programme included First Nations speakers, former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, NSW Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and Labor MP Sarah Kaine (who was heckled because of federal and state Labor governments’ support for genocidal Israel).

The speeches focused on Herzog, why we oppose closer relations with Israel and Minns’ draconian new anti-protest laws, which give police new powers.

The atmosphere at the beginning was peaceful — except for the 3000 police that surrounded Town Hall Square, including snipers, and stretched across CBD blocks.

The police “kettled” the rally — a tactic designed to intimidate and make it easier to unleash force. Without warning, they started to tear-gas people who were kettled — and therefore with no escape route.

Older and young people alike were crushed by the police kettling and pushing, leaving some in agony unable to breathe and others on the ground covered in blood.

Minns justified this approach, saying “most protesters had dispersed . . .  but a small number didn’t”.

That is not true.

Repeatedly tear-gassed
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were trying to disperse when the tear-gas order was given. People were tear-gassed repeatedly, when they were already on the ground. I, along with hundreds of others, was gassed with no escape route to move away.

Minns has repeatedly implied that protesters wanted to wreak havoc with Jewish mourners — without a shred of evidence.

No speaker asked the large crowd to do this; at no stage was violence suggested.

Anti-Herzog protesters may not agree with those welcoming Herzog, but our protest was against war criminal Herzog, the genocidal state he represents and Minns’ anti-freedom of speech and assembly laws.

If Minns and PM Anthony Albanese truly had Jewish Australians in mind after the Bondi terrorist attack, they would know that Jews are not one homogenous whole in their political views on Israel.

Yet the governments decided to go with the Zionists’ demands to invite Herzog and align themselves to the genocidal state of Israel.

Among the 30,000 people who felt they had to come to this protest were anti-Zionist Jewish Australians, who say Minns and Albanese do not speak for them.

Set up to be ‘tinderbox’
Minns said the “circumstances were a tinderbox”. That’s only because he, calculatedly, set it up to be.

His actions provoked hate and division and further tore apart social cohesion. How else do you explain police attacking a group of Muslims praying? He would not stand for Jews or Christians being attacked in the same way.

Minns’ ridiculous appeal to look beyond the viral social media clips of police violence and “bind up the wounds” shows he has completely lost the plot.

Minns should resign. He is not fit for the job and needs to be held to account.

Pip Hinman is a long-time anti-war activist and member of the Socialist Alliance. This article was first published by Green-Left and is republished here with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/11/nsw-premier-minns-police-attack-muslims-in-prayer-peaceful-gaza-protesters/

RNZ Pacific

The United States has designated two high-profile public office holders from Palau and the Marshall Islands for “significant corruption”, the US Department of State says.

Palau’s Senate president Hokkons Baules has been designated “for his involvement in significant corruption on behalf of China-based actors,” while the former mayor of the Kili/Bikini/Ejit community in the Marshall Islands Anderson Jibas has been designated “for his involvement in significant corruption and misappropriation of US provided funds during his time in public office”, the department said in a news release.

The designations render Baules, Jibas, and their immediate family members ineligible for entry into the US.

According to the State Department, Baules abused his public position by accepting bribes in exchange for providing advocacy and support for government, business, and criminal interests from China.

“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected US interests in Palau.”

Baules has dismissed the allegations, telling news media last April he was the target of a smear campaign aimed at ruining his name.

The department said Jibas abused his public position “by orchestrating and financially benefiting from multiple misappropriation schemes involving theft, misuse, and abuse of funds from the US-provided Bikini Resettlement Trust”.

Stolen funds
It added Jibas’ actions resulted in most of the funds being stolen from the Kili/Bikini/Ejit people who are survivors and descendants of survivors of nuclear bomb testing in the 1940s and 1950s.

“The theft, misuse, and abuse of the US-provided money for the fund wasted US taxpayer money and contributed to a loss of jobs, food insecurity, migration to the United States, and lack of reliable electricity for the Kili/Bikini/Ejit people.

“The lack of accountability for Jibas’ acts of corruption has eroded public trust in the government of the Marshall Islands, creating an opportunity for malign foreign influence from China and others.”

US laws allow the government to name foreign nationals and their close family if there is strong evidence they were involved in serious corruption or human rights violations.

The designations come at a time of intense strategic competition between the US and China over influence in the Pacific.

Both Palau and the Marshall Islands have Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with the US, which grant the US exclusive military access in exchange for economic aid.

“The United States will continue to promote accountability for those who abuse public power for personal gain and steal from our citizens to enrich themselves. These designations reaffirm the United States’ commitment to countering global corruption affecting US interests,” the State Department said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/11/us-designates-two-micronesian-leaders-over-corruption-allegations/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Joyce Banks, Lecturer in Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast

Master clown and French theatre guru Philippe Gaulier has passed away aged 82, but his influence will live on around the world – particularly in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The performance style inspired by Gaulier can be traced throughout New Zealand theatre since the 1970s, often centring around Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School.

Nola Millar, the first director of Toi Whakaari in 1970, said École Jacques Lecoq – where Gaulier trained and taught, before starting his own school – was one of the best theatre schools she had ever seen.

The influence of Gaulier is significant: several of his graduates went on to teach at Toi Whakaari, including Tom McCrory (Head of Movement, 1998–2013), Christian Penny (Director, 2011–18) and award-winning director Nina Nawalowalo.

In 2002, Nawalowalo and McCrory co-founded The Conch, a theatre company focused on Pasifika stories using visual and physical theatre forms. McCory said Gaulier’s style builds resilience and independence and has been so popular in Aotearoa because “New Zealanders are inventive by necessity”.

Training the clown

Gaulier was trained by Jacques Lecoq (1921–99) at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, founded in 1956. Lecoq’s training focused on using masks, mime and clown. Many of his students went on to develop their own styles and training schools, and Gaulier would become one of the most well-known graduates.

After being his student, Gaulier taught with Lecoq in the 1970s before opening his own school in London in 1991, which relocated to France in 2002.

Here he created a block module style of teaching that was incredibly accessible to international actors.

Like Lecoq, Gaulier also focused on clown, bouffon, neutral mask and melodrama. But his first focus was teaching Le Jeu (the game), complicité and encouraging actors to play. Complicité in this context is best understood as the tangible sense of the performers all being complicit, or colluding, in order to present a show to the audience.

Theatre director, actor and academic David O’Donnell writes in Acting in Aotearoa:

The emphasis on complicité teaches the actor to be completely connected with other actors onstage. The training works against self-indulgence because it requires that the actor be fully engaged with the audience response, that they earn audience engagement and sustain that for every moment of the performance. The work rigorously develops the imagination, the control of rhythm and teaches the actor to become more relaxed onstage.

Playing games in New Zealand

Gaulier’s list of students includes a vast array of famous actors and a surprisingly large number of New Zealanders. New Zealand Theatre company Theatre Action (1971–77) was founded by several Lecoq graduates solidifying the French Clown influence in New Zealand early on.

There are several theatre companies in New Zealand that still consistently use Gaulier’s methods and style, especially Le Jeu and playing games.

In 1991 Samantha Scott founded Maidment Youth Theatre, later renamed Massive Theatre Company. There is a huge community of actors surrounding Massive, many graduates of both Toi Whakaari and Gaulier, including Miriama McDowell, Madeline Sami and Kura Forrester.

Scott went back and studied with Gaulier again in 2012–14 and would often sit beside Gaulier and observe him as a teacher.

Scott recalls Gaulier asking her, “Why do you think so many New Zealanders come over to the school?” She told him that it’s because so many actors have worked with Gaulier graduates and want to experience it for themselves.

Scott said, “I think fundamentally he really likes New Zealanders, he likes our gutsiness”.

A key Gaulier concept Massive Theatre Company emphasises is the complicité between actors, the joy and pleasure of playing and performing to an audience. It is the foundation of their ensemble-based company.

A Slightly Isolated Dog, a theatre company formed in 2005, extends this Gaulier idea of complicité to their audience.

Director Leo Gene Peters has not trained with Gaulier, but was taught by and often collaborates with those who have. Jonathan Price, a core member of the devising company, studied with Gaulier in 2016.

Since 2015, A Slightly Isolated Dog have been creating performance works inspired by classic stories where they take on the personas of a French theatre troupe. Their shows Don Juan, Jekyll & Hyde and The Trojan War see the actors take on these larger-than-life French clowns, easing the audience into the games as they tell these famous stories with the audience.

Theatre works like this invite everyone into the spirit of complicité, the atmosphere of fun where we can all play, and a place where, Gaulier wrote, “in the grip of pleasure and freedom, everyone is beautiful”.

Hannah Joyce Banks interviewed Nina Nawalowalo for her PhD in 2016, and worked with A Slightly Isolated Dog as an actor in 2009 and 2011.

– ref. ‘New Zealanders are inventive by necessity’: how the master clown Philippe Gaulier shaped NZ theatre – https://theconversation.com/new-zealanders-are-inventive-by-necessity-how-the-master-clown-philippe-gaulier-shaped-nz-theatre-275664

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/11/new-zealanders-are-inventive-by-necessity-how-the-master-clown-philippe-gaulier-shaped-nz-theatre-275664/