Creative Coromandel is launching a series of regional Mix and Mingles, starting at the Monkey House in Whitianga next Wednesday. Join us and meet some of the vibrant creatives and audiences, including Molly & Kaspur, who make our region a hotspot for the arts.
Molly and Kaspur curate everything at the Monkey House, from the performers to the original poster work adorning the walls. They spoke to Creative Coromandel about the renovated venue, the top talent they attract and the creative community that thrives in Whitianga.
Let’s start simple: why the Monkey House, why now?
The Monkey House has a long history. Molly starts to tell us, “Noel Hewlett has had the space for 30 years, and his vision was very much about making sure there was a space in the community for arts and performing arts.” Kaspur says three words we don’t catch through his chuckles. Molly explains, “Noel’s quite the performer himself. He’s often known to wear a Purple People Eater costume! When we’ve got performers, he’s up there singing and dancing away. So, you know, he has really created and fostered that atmosphere.”
Molly and Kaspur came on the scene last year, two days prior to the lockdown in August. They put on a comedy show with their friend Alan McElroy. Molly deadpans, “I learned a lesson that night. Don’t book stuff on when the All Blacks are playing! I think they were going to take my New Zealand passport away.” They still got 45 people and put on a great show with a great atmosphere.
After that, Noel asked if they would like to put on some events prior to the building being sold. They jumped at the chance and then we went into lockdown. But what that meant for them, is that as we were coming out of lockdown, they were able to pivot with different types of shows. Molly and Kaspur want to make sure that they bring something different to Whitianga, however, they were sort of hamstrung by the fact that the building was due to be sold and then exit on the first of December.
“We thought look, we just want to have a great time and bring lots of performers. Also, for us being a bit lazy, we could bring the acts to us!”, says Molly. Kaspur counters with, “Lazy? Twelve to 16-hour days. Yeah.”
The building didn’t get sold and Noel said we could have it for a couple of months, then he went to Dunedin. Kaspur said, “Let’s make some changes. Let’s just go crazy and just change a lot of things here. So, we repainted everything, put in lighting and tech, sound, ripped out old carpets, old nails, sofas, dusted the place, you know. We also got original artwork in from somebody that we know from San Francisco; original poster art and other artworks.
Tell us about some of the Monkey House shows
We’re thrilled at the variety of acts that we’ve been able to book from Annie Gong with her digital accordion to the great Gray Bartlett, top calibre comedians and burlesque shows, that absolutely wow and amaze the audiences.” However, Molly jokes, “I’m still vacuuming up sequins and feathers – if you haven’t gone, it’s wild! Always a great show put on by the Rock and Roll Circus. Last Saturday, we had Kiki Kisses, who is New Zealand’s premier burlesque performer. We’re trying to provide that production value to the artists.
We’ve got our pal, Cori from ‘What we do in the Shadows’, who also helped us considerably. We were shocked, as a lot of the world were, seeing images from Ukraine. Noel’s daughter works for ChildFund and has been in Ukraine for 20 years. We felt ineffective so I reached out to Cori who is a pal that I’ve met a few times. Who’s in a film that I know we can get the licencing for? He got on board. Then, Jemaine Clement DM’d me asking whether he could retweet the fundraiser we organised. Kaspur says, “She came running out, she was like, Jemaine DM’d me, Jemaine DM’d me!!!”
That meant they got huge support from the community for the Ukraine fundraiser. Molly says, “And that’s what we fundamentally love about Whitianga, it’s about collaboration. We do a hospo night on Mondays, things like that. We believe that there’s enough of the pie to go around. We’re not in competition, we’re in collaboration.
There’s lots of people that have come to the Coromandel and have changed their work life balance. Maybe they’ve got a side hustle that they want to promote, but they just don’t know who’s a great social media person who’s, you know, who can they reach out to? So, we want to, you know, have that real live collaboration going on. Next Saturday, for example, just to change it up, we’ve got three gorgeous showgirls, three gorgeous dancers coming from Auckland to perform. We’ll switch it out. In June, we’ve got this gorgeous trio who sing very much with the Hollywood glamour. One of them used to do dance lessons right here at The Monkey House. It’s a great provenance story, when this young girl of six or seven years to use that learned dancing here on one side of the venue is going to perform with her gorgeous, gorgeous trio. They sound flawless and fantastic!”
Tell us about Molly and Kaspur
“Well, as you can tell, we’re not very shy!” say Molly.
Kaspur explains, “We met in New York, in a rock and roll bar. Molly was dating a well-known rock and roller.”
Molly says, “My ex, we’ve got a piece of artwork from my ex, who unfortunately recently passed away. He was the guitarist in Marilyn Manson. Him and Brian created the concept, and he reimagined the guitar riff of Sweet Dreams. That song is played everywhere you go. I helped organise his tours.
Kaspur has had more of the large-scale events experience. “I’ve worked with Jared Leto for 30 Seconds to Mars. I did a video called Hurricane. I’ve done hosting for well-known people and up and coming artists. I come from mostly a promoting background and artist care – hosting artists, bands. I love music. I love writing and acting and film. So, I suppose that’s, that’s more my background.
Some of those artist connections are simply people that I’ve met through my cousin. My cousin is a working musician, his wife organises massive festivals throughout New Zealand, Australia, Canada download. She was doing Download and Unify. So, I wanted to come to New Zealand, to move from New York.”
Molly says, “I kept getting elbowed, like, I wanna move there! Do you wanna move there? Kaspur is like a writer. He’s a storyteller. He’s very engaging. He’s got stories of all these great life experiences. He’d been saying to me for some time that he could do comedy, he likes comedy. So sure, we could give it a shot. Then we became friends with a comedian in Wellington and saw some of his fringe performances.
Kaspur says, “Because of my great girlfriend, it was sold to me that I would go to a seminar to learn about the tricks of comedy and, you know, be immersed in the comedy world, learn a few things, and then they would get you up on stage. I did not realise because of the way they were spinning it was, guess what you’re doing tonight? So, I went to this “tutorial”. I thought it was going to be in front of, like, ten people. They’d sold tickets to it! It was a full house of 100 people. A real show.
After that, we went around to see open mic nights. One of our good friends was at Nivara Lounge, in Hamilton. It’s a great, great place. Great guy. Great person. He’s got lots of original music that happens there. And he’s also been a great sounding board for us. And similarly, we’ll send acts to him, and he’ll send acts our way. So yeah, we’re very much about collaborating and making sure that everyone does well, and everyone has a great time.”
Molly says, “Kaspur and I came from London and New York. And that’s what we’re creating here. Everyone wants to have fun. We’ve been able to meet lots of fantastic people, and people that have given us support in insane ways, like, you know, local artists and fabulous musicians like Stu Pedley.
We were trying to set up a show. It’s just Kaspur and I at the venue. We’re doing the social media, we’re cleaning the bathrooms, we’re setting the bar, we’re booking the acts, we’re doing all that sort of stuff. And then on this Friday, I was like, oh, my, gosh, the act had forgotten their speaker stands. So, I just put a call out to Stu, ‘do you have any speaker stands lying around?’ He was down on his bicycle and brings them to us in person!
We’ve met a lot of great people in the community. Yvette Audain has been a huge supporter and she’s going to be playing at the Creative Coromandel Mix and Mingle next week. She’s been a huge supporter of our events and comes along to them as well. We’re really starting to meet a lot of great people. We know that a lot of these artists may be performing in other venues. And that’s fabulous. That’s great for them. What we want them to do here is play their original stuff. We want to hear original music. In June, we’re going to have some open mic nights and jam nights.
What’s next for Molly & Kaspur?
We’re currently operating until the 30th of June in The Monkey House. We certainly won’t stop doing events even if we don’t have a bricks and mortar venue. Our production company is Beat Fairy Productions. We will be doing pop up events throughout the region. So, if you are an original artist if you’re a school punk band, let us know – we can do an underage show on a Sunday afternoon so you can play your punk music, that’s what we want – to help people create so, reach out.
