Students of St Peter's Maori College, Northcote, Auckland, in “Skin-Deep”, a Maori comic opera by Paraata Reti, His Majesty's Theatre, Auckland, 1959. (HILL-THOMAS, AUCKLAND, PHOTOGRAPH) itself. We pretend to be other people so much that we forget what we ourselves are really like. The wonder is not that theatre becomes sickly and tired at times, but that this does not happen more often. A Maori drama which is seen on our stages as an ordinary part of theatre will help to bring the tears and laughter of real life onto our stages. That is why theatre is symbolised with two masks, one happy, one sad. That is what theatre is really about, the happiness and sadness of life, the whole of life from sorrow to joy, the whole of life as we ourselves know and understand it. The life we live in New Zealand and the communities in which we dwell are not pakeha alone. The heart and soul of New Zealand does not belong to the pakeha alone. Our life as a nation is both Maori and pakeha, and anything less than this is not true of New Zealand and never will be. A theatre which speaks with a pakeha tongue and says only what the pakeha wants to say, which shows only what the pakeha can see through pakeha eyes, is not truly a New Zealand theatre. It might think it is, or it might pretend to be, but it is not. There will never be a New Zealand theatre which can stand shoulder to shoulder with the theatres of the outside world unless the struggles and the hopes and the failures and the triumphs of the Maori people, together with those of the pakeha, become a part of New Zealand life on our stages. Only when Maori and pakeha stand together can we see what New Zealand life means. Only then can we hope to understand it—and ourselves. This small beginning in forming a Maori drama group in Wanganui is no more than a start. But it is a start on the right footing. To give audiences an experience of a traditional Maori play is to take those audiences into another experience of the human spirit. This will, I am certain, cause a demand for more plays of a like character. There will be an established group to fill that demand in Wanganui! Will such a small seed grow into a mighty kauri? I do not know. But this I do know; theatre will survive television, it will survive its own follies and weaknesses, and it will grow into a force which will play a large part in the life of our nation. Theatre will do this because it believes in itself and because it is not afraid of difficulties. One of the miracles of modern civilisation is the survival of live theatre; another miracle is the leaping into life of the Maori people, a race which many thought to be dying out. There, then, is the link between the two; both refusing to die, and both proudly flourishing. I believe in the future of the Maori race and in the future of live theatre. And I believe the two will come together for the betterment of our nation as a whole.