THE MAORI AS ARTIST

Te Ao Hou, June 1960, Page 1

THE MAORI AS ARTIST This issue of Te Ao Hou is largely given over to recent activities of members of the Maori race in the arts, not, it will be noted, in their traditional fields of arts and crafts, dancing and ceremonial, but those arts performed in the European tradition, in one of which, classical ballet, a Maori theme has been used for the first time this year. There is also an important article on the work of the celebrated painter, Albert Namatjira, who became fashionable in Australia some years before his recent death. In the last ten years, the theatre in New Zealand has surged with activity. A recent survey disclosed that only the Soviet Union rivals, per head of population, the volume of theatrical activity in New Zealand, though this has been of necessity, almost wholly of amateur status. We have three professional touring companies, of which the New Zealand Players is the largest and reaches the greatest number of people. All these organisations, both amateur and professional have perforce, in their first decades of existence in a newly settled country, given most of their energies to the reproduction of established European and American commercial successes, with, in the more adventurous groups, some attempts at classical drama. But it has for long been clear that theatrical activity in New Zealand could never wholly justify or sustain itself until New Zealanders began writing, designing, dancing, on themes thrown up from their own way of life, and as there are two races in New Zealand, inevitably a vital drama must involve both of them. A start has been made with a play like “The Pohutukawa Tree”, which showed to many millions on BBC television something of the relations between Maori and Pakeha, and the Wellington City Ballet in their recent season, offered a full-scale ballet in two acts by Miss Leigh Brewer, which recounted an ancient legend in the style and tradition of classical ballet. These activities, which we expect to increase greatly in the next few years are vital to the cultural development of both races, and as the article within by Richard Campion reveals, considerable artists are already with us. There are, however, some difficulties in arousing the interest and participation of Maoris in theatrical activities in the European tradition, even if these involve the Maori people directly. The peculiar kind of concentration involved in Europeanstyle acting stems from the strongly individualistic tradition of Western Europe, alien in many respects to the Maori ideals of community service and performance in a community cause. The sense of it being personal display, the feeling of working alone, sometimes does not appeal to Maoris whose services may be solicited for a play on a Maori theme. The powerful sense of drama that one can observe on ceremonial occasions among the Maori people can often, it seems, take place only in contexts familiar to them from tribal associations. Yet enough good actors have already been produced by the Maori race—Inia te Wiata is one example, Hira Tauwhare another—to suggest that in the future they will lose this reluctance, and work freely in the kind of dramatic literature now being written for them.