TWO MAORI ACTRESSES by RICHARD CAMPION former artistic director and founder of the New Zealand Players Theatre Trust Anew play lay on my desk. It was The Pohutukawa Tree by Bruce Mason, and as always with a new production, I was thinking over the difficulties that had to be solved. There was no difficulty in the play as a play: here was drama, humour, clash of character and tension. An ageing chieftainess, proud descendant of a tribe that had moved before the encroaching pakeha, strove to bring up her son and daughter as worthy of their ancestors and in the light of the Christian religion she had fervently embraced. The inevitable happens. The boy, who she wants to become a preacher, falls before cheap pakeha culture—cowboy films, comics and the welcoming pub. The lonely girl becomes the mistress of a grocer's son from the Waikato with a smooth tongue, an itch to travel and an eye for innocent beauty. When the girl becomes pregnant and the young man refuses to marry her because of what his Mum will say, the Maori boy Johnny goes berserk, feels betrayed by the pakeha religion, and wrecks the local church. He is sent to a reformatory for three months. Queenie, the girl, is packed off to her tribe on the East Coast and finds herself welcomed there, but the mother's world has collapsed around her. She throws off her assumed religion and wills herself to die. Her friendly pakeha neighbours do their best to distract her, the local clergyman pleads with her. Dressed in the cloak of her ancestors, she gives her last speech of defiance: “I choose, if it must be, the way of pride. I will go proud down to my death, for that is all I have left. I will not be humbled: I will die true to my past. No, not even for Him will I weaken; I will not carve up my life, slice by slice, from the whale. I will go to the gods of my people. That is my choice. That is my victory.” It was obvious that such scenes demanded acting of the highest calibre. Did anybody know of any Maori actresses? The answer was always a slow smile and a shake of the head. This meant two things: the first, to be frank, could be put into these words: “Do you think you could ever get Maori girls to study a part, learn a lot of lines, and give up nearly all leisure hours for a good six or seven weeks' rehearsal?” The second was simply that they had no experience. How could they have? There were no parts written for them. Yet I felt that the opposite could be true. Maori people often have beautiful voices, richer, fuller, with vowels better enunciated, and a tradition of eloquence on the marae, a heritage of dancing and singing from the cradle and an opportunity to rub off the usual shyness of the beginner in innumerable tribal entertainments and concert parties. So in went an advertisement, calling for “All Maori actors and actresses” and the author and I waited to see who would turn up at the audition. We were not disappointed. Three Maori actresses came to the audition, and one face stood out at once. There was nobility in the brow, candour and fire in the eye and a nose that summoned memories of the early paintings of proud and fierce chiefs. There was strength and breeding in this face. When I asked her name, I expected a deep rich voice. “Hira Tauwhare” she said, but the tone did not match the handsome figure. Otherwise everything was perfect: excellent diction, training in ballet, training for opera. A burst of laughter came from the other end of the room. Two laughing eyes caught my own. Auditions are usually solemn affairs with everybody tense—it was like laughter in church. “Who are you?” I asked. “Mary Nimmo.” The voice was soft and low though there were traces of the