Critical response
Specific learning outcomes Students will: • discuss and evaluate key ideas in this play. • make critical judgements about the performance of acting roles and the use of technologies in the production. [These learning outcomes relate to the Communication and Interpreting in Drama (CI) and Understanding Drama in Context (UC) strands in The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum.]
Contemporary Māori theatre Haruru Mai, Purapurawhetu, Woman Far Walking, Nga Tangata Toa, and Waiora are all contemporary New Zealand works with a Māori or bicultural focus.
Contemporary Māori theatre has been growing since the 1960s. Nurtured by organisations such as Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School and Playmarket, as well as established practitioners such as Rowley Habib and Don Selwyn, Māori playwrights and actors began working together to present Māori stories and images on stage.
Hone Kouka, Briar Grace-Smith, and other Māori playwrights are making a major contribution to theatre with plays such as Waiora and Purapurawhetu.
Taki Rua are the leading producers of Māori theatre. Taki Rua's core work is: • producing, touring, and promoting theatre works in both Te Reo Māori and English • developing the Māori theatre workforce by providing professional development opportunities to emerging Māori theatre directors, playwrights, and performers.
Taki Rua aims to produce indigenous and new New Zealand theatre and present it to the widest possible Māori and tau iwi audience. As new local Māori and Pasifika works begin to make their mark on the local theatre scene, companies like ATC are beginning to see the need to support this kind of work. They are becoming more willing to overcome the risks associated with putting on new work in order for these stories to get a voice.
It is important for ATC to encourage people to come to the theatre. Māori and Pacific Island people are not used to coming to theatres. ATC has a large Pākehā audience. With a play like The Bellbird, Pākehā people sometimes need to be motivated to see stories about other cultures and have wider exposure to different types of theatre.
It’s important for the public to know that everyone can understand it and that everyone can get something from the story. Bellbird: Critical response, page 1
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Critical response: classroom activities
Classroom activities have been developed specifically for:
Working on with a class prior to viewing the play
Working with a class after viewing the play
Associated activities using resource material generated by the play
Preparation before seeing the play
Before you go to the play, think about how you feel about some of the issues you will meet in the play.
In groups of three or four, choose one of the following sentences:
• Marrying someone who is from a different ethnic group to you is … • Family is more important than your own personal happiness … • You have to live with the consequences of your actions … • Nothing should get in the way of true love …
On a large piece of paper brainstorm ways of responding to/ finishing the sentences.
Consider possible scenarios, characters, and settings that could be developed to illustrate your feelings about the sentences. Use the following contexts:
• A very conservative, wealthy family. • Someone who has been disowned by his or her family. • A country where there is a strict religious dictatorship. • A time of war. • People who have been forced to leave their homes.
Improvise a scene to share with the class. Consider how the context influenced the ideas and situations that were portrayed.
Compare your feelings about these ideas with the focus in the play. How are they different? How are they the same?
Journal reflection
• What were the ideas that you wanted to portray in your scene? • Where was the scene set and what did the setting show? • How did you use role to show your ideas? • How did your characters behave in the situation you chose for them?
Bellbird: Critical response, page 2
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Critical discussion on use of elements, techniques, and technologies
Head up large pieces of paper in the following way
Technology Acting techniques
What did The actors were really skilful – lighting when they used – sound – their voices – costumes – their faces – props – gestures make me think about? – movement at this moment:
Contrast Tension
I noticed that the following In the play moments of tension contrasts of occurred when:
movement/ stillness light/ dark sound/ silence These moments were highlighted by (lights, action, were used to convey the use of space, following ideas: sound …)
Lay the pages out on the floor of your drama room.
Move around the room to each piece of paper recording ideas you remember from the play.
As a class, discuss the way drama elements, techniques, and stage technologies were used to tell the story. Discuss how effective you think these were.
As the teacher you might like to: • focus this discussion on one or two areas in depth • divide the class into groups to discuss and report back as experts on that aspect of the production.
Bellbird: Critical response, page 3
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Reading reviews
Read the reviews at the end of this section of Purpurawhetu, Haruru Mai, Woman Far Walking, and Te Maunga.
Fill in the table below.
What the play What the reviewer What the reviewer was about liked didn’t like Purapurawhetu Briar Grace-Smith
Haruru Mai Briar Grace-Smith
Woman Far Walking Witi Ihimaera
Te Maunga Albert Belz
How do your feelings about this play compare with those about The Bellbird?
Bellbird: Critical response, page 4
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Writing a review
Below is a suggested format and set of questions to consider when writing a review of a performance.
• Discuss the questions as a class, making notes in your journal.
• Write a critical review of the production.
• Ensure that you give specific details to illustrate your points.
Introduction Who, what, where, when? Facts about the production including the title, playwright, director, and the name of the theatre where the performance was held.
The play Background to the writer and the genre. Give a short summary of the story. What did the play make you think about or what issues did it deal with?
The acting Discuss how well the actors played their roles, how credible they were, whether any actor stood out for you and why. Mention specific details such as voice, movement, gesture.
The design Comment on how well you think the costumes, live and recorded sound, lighting, set complemented the play. Give specific examples of effects and what you thought of them. Avoid statements like “The lights were great.”
Conclusion Give your overall impression of the success of the production and its impact. Recommend the sort of audience that would enjoy the performance.
Bellbird: Critical response, page 5
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Bibliography
King, Michael (1983). Māori: A photographic and social history. Wellington: Heinemann.
Northcott, Dianne & Ofner, Sheryl (1994). Colonialism, Rangatiratanga and the Pursuit of Mana: Māori and Pākehā Relations in Nineteenth Century New Zealand. Auckland: White Ribbon Promotions Ltd.
And the River Runs Through It http://www.waikatomuseum.org.nz/river/river.html
Papers Past http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/
Timeframes – National Library of New Zealand http://timeframes1.natlib.govt.nz/
Review – Haruru Mai, Maidment Theatre By Susan Budd Source: NZ Herald, February 19, 2001
The strength of Brair Grace-Smith’s writing lies in its unique blend of the domestic comedy of human relationships and the framework in which they are held. The mundane and the spiritual coexist in powerful but uneasy tension.
Haruru Mai’s tale of the love between a tortured young woman, Paloma, and Silas, a hollow man old enough to be her father, is set in the small northland town of Pukerata.
Their lives are shadowed by events in the Italian theatre of the second World War, where Paloma’s father, Moana died. Flashbacks reveal the dark secret of his death in which Silas was complicit.
Symbols of war, beautifully realised in John Verryt’s brooding set, pervade the domestic setting of Silas’ house.
Paloma known as Mars and Tu, the Maori god of war, is embodies in Moana’s shade that looms over the stage.
Humour and humanity lie in pearl, a guardian of cultural taonga, as opposed to Silas, a Pakeha/Maori who, in loosing his Maori identity, is half a man,
For Silas, Taku, the young man he employs as a gardener, is a surrogate Moana, but he proves too frail to carry the warrior’s spirit.
The Play’s central problem is that the ideas overwhelm the characters. Paloma’s motivations are inexplicable. Her love for Silas is told but not shown.
Bellbird: Critical response, page 6
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
It is impossible to understand why she should deliberately taunt Taku into Violence, then tear her clothes and cry rape to precipitate further bloodshed. Her only function is to act as a vessel for retribution, exacting her vengeance on Silas.
All the characters are similarly depersonalised in Simon Prast’s production, which in its efforts to present a tragic epic moves with awful, show solemnity through a ponderous first act unleavened by any change of pace or lightness of touch.
Because the characters exist only as spectres, the explosive events of the short second act comprise sound and fury with little emotional resonance. The clothing Maori Battalion haka seems imposed.
The Characters most firmly one with Maoritanga succeed best: Tanea Heke in a gusty performance and Antonio Te Maioha as Moana. Taika Cohen’s mercurial Taku needs more weight; Nancy Brunning’s Paloma is sullen rather than tragic and there is no sexual tension in her relationship with George Henare’s Silas.
A good play lies buried beneath the portentous staging, but it is still struggling to find life.
Bellbird: Critical response, page 7
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Te Maunga at the Herald Theatre By Susan Budd Source: The New Zealand Herald, 11 May 2001
HERALD THEATRE – Two brothers, separated in childhood, meet again on the eve of the new millennium to travel from Auckland to Ruatoria for their father’s tangi. In this first play, Albert Belz explores the relationship between the men who represent the paths that Maori may take.
John now an adman with a flash German car and blond English girl in tow, left the family farm with his mother, spurning his whakapapa for consumerism. Blair Strang portrays the smooth superficiality of hollow man with sensitivity.
Piripi – a magnetic performance from Taugaroa Emile stayed with his father and works as a traditional carver. He carries the burden of bitterness for what he feels was desertion by his mother when he was only 7 years of age.
The story of what happened the night their mother left is gradually revealed in short scenes that interweave with and illuminate their characters and lives.
The tale of young Piripi writes of a brave captain and his battle with terrifying taniwha is ultimately seen as an account of both his fears and love of his father, of his beliefs in his whanau and the force of will that kept him to his chosen path.
The mother, played with extraordinary stillness by Rema Smith, is a hovering spirit that moves from tortured alienation to serene disappearance.
Nathaniel Lee’s production and John Parker’s stark, raked set dominated be a huge canvas representation of Mt Hikurangi, strongly emphasise the symbolism and mythic qualities of the play.
This is something to the detriment to the detriment of its humanity, particularly as the audience furthest from the stage struggles to pierce the gloom of Vera Thomas’ lighting.
But the strength of Emile’s performance in the resolution of Te Maunga carries such an emotional charge that only the hardest heart would fail to be moved.
Bellbird: Critical response, page 8
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird
Performance: Woman Far Walking By Susan Budd Source: The New Zealand Herald, 5 June, 2000
Woman Far Looking is a stunning piece of theatre in which text, performance and design are beautifully integrated. Winter Witi Ihimaera blends the personal and the political in the chronicle of one woman’s life that spans the history of our country.
Tiri Mahana was born on February 6, 1840, and is named for the Tiriti that she bitterly describes as a fraud. In a powerful opening speech, she relates the coming of the Pakeha, “hairy goblins,” and laments her status as a freak and aberration who has outlived all she loves. She rails and wails, comedy and tragedy alternating in a fantastic aria.
Tiri is two woman: the ancient, bent with the weight of history, and a quirky elf, the child who lives still and questions any memory, all that seems solidly rooted in time.
Rachel House is superb as the old woman, strong despite her years of suffering, her face a tragic mask that yet splits into a wide grin, her voice resonant and expensive.
Rima Te Wiata is mercurial, placing her darts deftly to sting the old woman into admission of the truths underlying the solidity of historical fact.
She is the child Tiri desperately longing for her mother while working as cook and firekeeper to weavers in as isolated valley, a minstrel husband a staunch young woman protesting against the 1981 Springbok tour. And she plays them with fierce intensity, integrity and wit.
The actors are perfectly attuned, playing together with rare sensitivity and power.
Despite Ihimaera’s powerfully metaphorical writing, the strengths of the performances and directors Cathy Downes’ fluidly choreographed scenes, the first act is bogged down in battles of the New Zealand Wars. I wanted more magic, less realism. But in the second act the play takes wing, plunging through 20th –century catastrophes: the First World War and the epidemic that followed it, French nuclear tests, the despoliation of Tin’s valley to mine ironsand for Japan.
Why, after all that, would she want a birthday telegram from the Queen?
Bellbird: Critical response, page 9
Accessed from The Arts/Ngā Toi materials, www.tki.org/r/arts/drama/bellbird