Maori theatre production goes to school

Tu Tangata, Issue 25, 1 August 1985, Page 24

Maori theatre production goes to school

Not all Maoris coming to Australia succeed but those that do make their mark, seem to have a determination and outlook not found in New Zealand. From the familiar field of entertainment to small businesses, Maoris are cutting it in a very competitive society.

One of the more unusual entrepreneurs is Terangi Huata, who along with partner, Mark Rewi, heads Takitimu Productions. The field they cover is stage and theatre production. Terangi talked with Tu Tangata about how he got started.

“I was at prep school in Hamilton and they did Gilbert and Sullivan operas each year and that’s how I got first interested. I carried on at Te Aute College, producing school plays and when the music teacher left, I was asked to run the music for the school.

“From there one of the Te Aute Trust Board members asked me if I wanted to go to India for a conference where they were producing an Asian musical show called, Song of Asia. I said I’d go if I could get training.

“One of the directors of the Williams Trust Board, Mr Athol Williams said they could assist if I could raise half my air fares. Anyway I wrote to friends and school teachers I knew and got the half that way and so got to India.

“The Te Aute Board gave me a scholarship which was extended for three years which enabled me to study. The group I worked with was called Moral Rearmament, the head of which was the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi. I was welcomed as a representative of the Maori people (which I wasn’t) and made the assistant director of the show.

“Despite me saying I didn’t have the experience, he insisted, and so with help I learnt from the front rather than on the ground. This particular show had a cast of sixty, from fourteen different countries, and trained for three months before the show moved throughout India. It was produced in different languages and then travelled throughout Asia. It was the last show to go to South Vietnam, as it was then, it toured Laos, and was presented in the languages of those countries.” TT What type of show was it? “It was an ideological play that showed how through suffering, as Asia is known for, hope could come of men listening to their inner voice, their conscience, God. “While in India I worked with Hindi medium plays. Although I can’t speak Hindi I was cast as the typical landowner, because of my size. I was in India for three years, never got ‘Dehli belly’ as most tourists do. I then went for

formal training at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts. “The show I was with played the West End for two months and then toured Europe. I then was invited to go to work on Indian reservations in Canada working with cultural groups, helping them with dance withut commercialising them. So everything was done by suggestion. I worked with the Treaty Seven Indians in Alberta, Canada. “After that I returned to New Zea-

land but couldn’t find a job, the New Zealand Drama School said I was too over-qualified for the position advertised. I went to Downstage, Wellington but they didn’t quite believe my experience, so I came to Australia. I’ve been here five years and it’s only in the last three years have I been able to work in theatre production full-time.

“A friend of mine from Te Aute College, Mark Rewi had toured Japan with a number of Polynesian groups doing cabarets and nightclubs and he had a few unfortunate experiences with promoters. I rang him one day in New Zealand to come over and look at what I was doing. Our ideals were much the same, so we went into partnership, with Mark handling the dancers and myself doing administration and producing the programme.

“Our first venue was in Canberra before fifteen thousand people as a support act. We got together a group for this and it went well. We then approached a theatre-restaurant in

Sydney, called Beachcomber Island, that was looking for a show. We auditioned and got the job for a contract period of one year. “We wanted to put on a show that had a high cultural content and at the same time was commercial. People in the business told us, ‘Anything cultural is bad news, the public want to see scenes that are done fast and furious, no-one wants a lecture on the significance of the dance.’ “We felt if it was presented right you could produce a good show. We found after trying this, people would come up and say, ‘We didn’t know why those people danced like that, or what those actions meant’.

“We found we fitted into a niche in the market and could pay these talented performers a living wage. We employ thirty people full-time and have four different programmes at the present, two of these are in Sydney and two are out of town.”

TT Who are these people you are employing ?

“Some are people who were on PEP schemes back in New Zealand or unemployed. We needed a guitarist, so we got Patrick Tahuparae from Hastings and Paora Terangi who joined our education programme. We’ve inherited other people from Polynesian groups, we’ve found that it’s best to train people from the start.

“We try to present the best of the Polynesian cultural heritage, but that doesn’t mean we have the best dancers, performers or musicians, but they are people who are compatible to our aims. We’re more interested in having people who want to promote their culture and enjoy doing it, rather than experts. It

seems to work because in the three year’s we’ve been operating, no-one has left of their own accord. We’ve extended ourselves and of the thirty who work for us, eight are from Heritage Park in Auckland, which laid off fifteen Maori performers.”

TT Having just watched your show at the Beachcomber, what is your mix between commercial and cultural dance?

“The Beachcomber Island is the largest theatre-restaurant in Sydney and is very popular, usually you have to book two months ahead to get in on a Saturday night. But it’s a very commercial venue, set up to make money. People come along to see their version of the South Sea Islands and in that light we have to perform.

“We’ve been glad that the management, with a lot of discussion, have come round to our way of thinking, to present what is culturally correct. But it’s difficult competing with people eating, drinking, waitresses moving around and as the evening draws on, people getting more boisterous.

“We insist that all our people have a professional attitude to what they're doing, and our programme hasn’t suffered because of it. We’re now into our third contract for that company which will take us to May, 1986.”

TT Who are the dancers we saw tonight?

“There is one woman from Hamilton, Sheyne Ferguson, a very musical family. Her mother tutors in music at L.D.S. College in Hamilton. Sheyne plays drums, guitar, bass guitar, violin, clarinet and trumpet, and does Polynesian dancing and sings.

“A married couple, James Ferris and his Hawaiian wife Chanise also dance. He worked with the Polynesian Cultural Centre in Hawaii and also with the Te Vana show. His wife went to a hula school called the Ha’lau o Maki, a traditional dance school, the same one Dame Te Ata’s daughter Toomai went to.

“We have a boy from Western Samoa, Viliamu Siatanga who has worked in Hawaii and Japan. There’s also a boy from Tahiti called Tupou Tetuera who worked for the Club Med chain in New Caledonia, he plays and makes the ukelele. He specialises in playing the toere, the wooden tahitian drum. He’s been with us one year.’’

TT You said before you have educational shows, what are these?

“Here in New South Wales there are one hundred groups performing in schools, from kindergarten to secondary. Before you can perform you must

audition in front of a panel that consists of a representative of the Parent Teachers’ Association, a community clergyman, a rep of the Headmaster’s Association and also someone from the Education Department. Some school children are also present.

“They give you a grading based on the educational benefit your programme has. If you’re approved they give you written approval, they also set the charge per child to come and see your programme and the age group allowed to come to your programme.

“They look for educational content and also for professional entertainment. We auditioned two years ago with a Polynesia cultural package. All previous ten groups which had auditioned had been turned down.

“Our programme centres round the islands of Polynesia, which we try to portray through songs, dance and narration, a little glimpse into the way these people live. The programme goes for one hour and fifteen minutes.

“Prior to going to a school we send out a four page sheet giving a background to Polynesia, reference books that can help teachers to do background work. So when we go we are just an extension of what they have been learning in the class, and when we leave the school we leave other work sheets and a cassette tape of songs behind. Something like one and a half thousand Australian school-children have learnt ‘ah. ee. ii. 00, uu.’

“The Polynesian programme has give people, and it’s been so popular that we’ve had to put two groups on the road doing the same programme. One is under contract to the Victorian Arts Council for three months.

“We have another programme touring schools called Te Kupenga a Rongo, the network of the god of peace, the arts. This is transported on a forty foot trailer, it weighs eighteen tons and we move it onto a school playground and set up a partly carved meeting house with tukutuku panels and it takes two days to construct the house which is surrounded with pallisades.

“The house stays for one or two weeks at a time and through that exhibition we try to show how Maoris lived and what they still carry on today. We try to show the visual arts as a living culture, so when the school-children come to the exhibition, about two to three hundred each session for one hour fifteen minutes, they’ve given a Maori welcome. They’ve been prepared beforehand for this by the advance material. A leader of the children

replys, they sing a wai, usually ‘Waltzing Matilda' or ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ and then the ten artists, craftsmen, dancers and actors who man the exhibition, greet the children wdio move into the meeting house.

“The significance of the meeting house is explained. After this the children are broken up into six or seven workshops and for a half hour, one workshop learns the haka, one the tititorea, stick games, one the ti rakau, the single long stick, another learns the poi, one learns how to weave a headband and for older children they have discussion groups. At the end of the half hour all the children join in together and show each other what they have learned.

“They explain to their friends how the tititorea keeps the wrists supple and aids hand co-ordination, and although in former times it prepared warriors for combat, nowadays it can be used for sports such as cricket or rugby. This is being done with Australian children who haven’t a clue about the Maori way of life until they’ve met us. Their immediate reaction is to laugh at each other but we encourage them to applaude instead.

“At the end we ask the children if they enjoyed themselves, and then we ask the teachers if they think the children can continue to learn in school time. If they say yes, we say that the ones who learnt the poi can pass it on to others who learnt the action song and vice versa.

“The group that runs the exhibition then do a short programme of poi, haka and action song, which ends the programme. We stress with the children that Aotearoa is one of their closest neighbours in the Pacific and that we have popped over to say hello.”

TT What effect does such a show have to put New Zealand and especially Maoris in a good light?

“We were in a small town called Ningan, about 500 kilometres from Sydney and there was a Maori family living out there. He told me later that his daughter came home one day with a note saying a Maori village was coming. He tried to convince his daughter that there was no Maori meeting house in Ningan. Anyway his daughter came home singing a Maori song and started hunting around for his Maori records and put them on. He later said his children were born in Australia and had shown no interest in Maori things. He said it made him very proud and so he came along to the exhibition with his wife.

“In Ningan we were invited into the homes of the community. It’s been like that in every town the exhibition has been in, it’s touched the children, which in turn has touched the parents. “One amazing thing was that the exhibition has been in the areas where there was the trouble with the Maori shearers. In Woolgate and Burke last year there was trouble, but we had a great reaction from families, especially in those areas. I think that the thing that causes racial conflict is misunderstanding and people not knowing much about each other.

“This exhibition allows children to ask questions and find out.”

TT How difficult is the exhibition to mount?

“It cost five thousand dollars a week to keep it on the road. Ninety to ninety five percent comes from each child, and the other five to ten percent comes from grants from the Australian Education Department, the Australian Arts Council and New Zealand Foreign Affairs.

“The Te Kupenga exhibition started in January this year and will tour for four years at six months at a time. My partner Mark and I have put $75,000 into it.

“The New Zealand High Commissioner thanked us for what we were doing for New Zealand. We’ve had great support from the Aboriginal community, Aboriginal Hostels Limited have made available all their hostels right across Australia for our people to say at a very nominal price. They’ve invited us to aboriginal settlements to have a cultural exchange with their people, up in Mornington Island in Queensland particularly.”

TT What results could your programmes have for the native people, the Aboriginals of Australia?

“I think white Australians will realise that just as we are the native people of their neighbour Aotearoa, the Aboriginals are the natives of Australia with different but important cultural benefits.” TT What other plans have you? ‘‘From the work I’ve done with native peoples around the world, I’ve seen indigenous peoples support each other in preserving our cultures. That’s why this year we are touring a North American Indian dance group in Australia and New Zealand, specifically schools, in September and October. The cost of their travel is being met by their arts council, the Alberta Culture. They said it’s quite unusual for another native group to be touring. We’d also like to bring Te Kupenga to New Zealand. To those who say ‘why bring a meeting house when there are many already in New Zealand’, I’d say, many New Zealand school-children would not have been in a meeting house and had them explained to them.”