The first four playwrights chosen for the first Kōanga Festival at Te Pou Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau, in 2014. From left: Jason Te Mete, Maraea Rakuraku, Aroha Awarau, Te Rauhiringa Brown. (Photo: Bob Scott)
This month, Te Pou Theatre, the home of Māori theatre in Auckland, has been celebrating 10 years of Kōanga Festival — an annual event that has encouraged and developed many Māori and Indigenous playwrights since it was first launched in 2014. Aroha Awarau was at the first Kōanga.
As a playwright who has written and produced three plays, and had two plays created and “birthed” during the Kōanga Festival, the support I received from Te Pou as a Māori writer came at the perfect time.
Ten years ago, I was a relatively new playwright who was already becoming disheartened with the theatre industry, especially within mainstream theatre organisations.
I was continually challenged about whether my plays could be considered Māori theatre when they were about non-Māori situations like Hollywood actresses (Luncheon), police shootings (Officer 27), and the gay panic defence (Provocation).
A non-Māori theatre company director even told me that, if I wanted to see my plays produced, I should “stick to writing about Māori stuff”.
“It’s obvious that you don’t know what you’re writing about,” he said, as he criticised my writing about Hollywood.
His words haunted me. I wondered if Steven Spielberg got this feedback when he submitted the script for ET, because I’m sure he didn’t know what it was like to be a stranded alien on earth. Yet he still felt compelled to tell an engaging story about a scared and lonely alien. All storytellers should be free to use their imagination and create stories from their hearts.
But then I took part in the first Kōanga Festival at Te Pou Theatre. My play Provocation was one of four plays by Māori writers chosen to be workshopped and developed over a week-long playwrighting workshop.
During the week, in an environment steeped in tikanga and kaupapa Māori, the team at Te Pou supported the four of us to create our work. For the first time, I felt that I belonged to a theatre whānau.
The cast and support team for the Provocation workshop at Te Pou in 2014, From left: Joe Dekkers-Reihana, Jennifer Te Atamira Ward-Lealand, Bruce Phillips, Aroha Awarau, Gary Henderson, Esme Myers, Bruce Hopkins. (Supplied)
This pleasant experience gave me the motivation and desire to continue to write for theatre. Most importantly, Kōanga helped answer a question that has plagued me throughout my entire theatre career: “Can stories still be considered a Māori play if the writer is Māori but the subject matter, characters and setting are not?”
Absolutely. For me, there’s no question.
One of the criteria for the Kōanga playwrighting workshop is that writers must whakapapa Māori. Whatever is written during the workshop and presented on the Te Pou stage at the end of the week is Māori theatre.
This refusal to put our stories and writers in a box gives us the confidence and freedom to explore other worlds and experiences, which will only strengthen our Māori and Indigenous stories. When Taika Waititi accepted his Academy Award for writing Jojo Rabbit, a film set during the Holocaust in World War Two, he made sure to encourage Māori and Indigenous rangatahi in front of billions of TV and online viewers, pushing home the importance of sharing and telling our stories.
This month, Te Pou Theatre has been celebrating 10 years of the Kōanga Festival, as it continues to embrace Māori and Indigenous storytelling, and encourage and develop new voices.
Kōanga is programmed during the Māori harvesting time when seeds are planted for the next season — and this year it’s jam-packed with new Māori plays and a celebration of whānau and kaumātua. There’s even Māori opera and a cross-cultural exchange between First Nations writers from Australia. Festival director and Te Pou co-founder Amber Curren describes Kōanga as “the beating heart of the Māori performing arts landscape”.
For me, the legacy of the Kōanga Festival is its unwavering support for Māori storytelling by creating a safe space and wraparound support during their annual playwrighting workshops.
Each year, four Māori playwrights are chosen to develop and workshop their new work, with the luxury of working with professional actors, a director and a dramaturg (a flash theatre term for a mentor), and where everyone gets paid for their time and work.
The week-long process ends with a public reading, a very rough first-time performance in front of an audience. For the playwright, that first public reading is critical because it’s the very first time you hear your words come to life, and you can see how the audience reacts and responds to your story.
It also gives playwrights the extra motivation needed to want to see their work come to full fruition, and builds the momentum for the play to have a full production season in a theatre.
Cast of the production of Provocation: Joe Dekkers-Reihana, Hori Ahipene, Paul Barrett.
Kōanga Festival has supported nearly 50 Māori playwrights, and 10 plays have been fully produced after the workshops, including Jason Te Mete’s Little Black Bitch, Ani-Piki Tuari and the Tuari siblings’ Whakapaupakihi, Poata Alvie McKree’s The Handlers, and my very own play, Provocation, which had a week-long season at the Herald Theatre, a small theatre attached to Tāmaki Makaurau’s Aotea Centre.
This year, that legacy has continued. The selected four Māori playwrights come from a mixture of experiences and perspectives. Award-winning and renowned playwright Tawhi Thomas workshopped his play Haere, exploring the relationship dynamics between Māori and Pākehā. Dr Tui Matelau has written Wet, a play set in the world of erotic online fiction. Turene Huiarau Jones has penned a horror story called Ātaahua Store, and Rainton Oneroa has written his first play, called Marmite and Honey, inspired by his experience of attending tangi.
Kōanga Festival has indeed been the beating heart of Māori theatre and the support of new Indigenous voices. I hope that this legacy continues for many years to come, so our diverse and unique stories on the stage can continue to be developed and told.
The Kōanga Festival will run until September 28 at Te Pou Theatre, Corban Estate, Henderson.
Aroha Awarau (Ngāti Maru/Ngāti Porou, Niue, Sāmoa) is a writer and storyteller with a career as a journalist, playwright and filmmaker. Aroha has worked as an award-winning journalist for National Geographic, the Listener, Women’s Day, and is a former producer for Māori Television’s Native Affairs. He’s also written several multi-award-winning plays, including Luncheon, Officer 27 and Provocation. His acclaimed short films Home and Disrupt have been screened in Aotearoa and at festivals worldwide.
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