Māori Theatre in Not-Quite-Post-Colonial Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This chapter looks at the ways Māori theatre negotiates with the history of colonisation and the idea(l) of a post-colonial, bicultural Aotearoa New Zealand. It examines two plays by the Māori playwright/director Hone Kouka: Nga Tangata Toa (“The Warrior People,” 1994) and Waiora: Te Ūkaipō—The Homeland (1997), which, weaving elements of Māori protocol through Ibsen-inspired dramaturgies, were produced at a critical juncture in New Zealand theatre history. They set the stage for an indigenous genre of performance that reflects the ongoing tensions of a not-quite-post-colonial nation. At their best, instead of “decolonising the stage,” these plays perform anti-colonial acts in staging the continuing impact of the colonial encounter, and, in so doing, engage their communities performatively without being at all utopian. The social order they represent remains uneasy, the present nation’s historical injustices as-yet unreconciled, still a work unevenly in progress.

I understood that Māori theatre can only be a hybrid, as in traditional Māori society the concept of a ‘theatre’ was foreign. I also realised that, because our theatre had to be a hybrid, I should understand and hold firm to my traditions and Māori point of view. Otherwise, the theatre I created would become purely generic.

—Hone Kouka (2007: 241)