If I were honest, I’d admit I haven’t been out to much theatre for about 5 years.
It’s all become so painfully puritanically woke in NZ and if I want to be lectured on 4th wave feminist non-binary activism I’d join Bluesky.
My daughter had spent months training for Kapa Haka and then more weeks on a Haka Theatre performance called Autaia which happened on Wednesday night, 7pm at the Aotea Centre.
Like a dutiful Dad, I enthusiastically agreed to come and support her performance but was less enthusiastic when I realised she was first up, that the entire event was 3 and a half hours long and she wanted to watch all the performances!
So there I was coming to peace with 3 and a half hours of Haka Theatre and pushing down my base line cynicism when I noticed the rest of the crowd.
It was young, brown and joyful.
The energy in the air as the Centre filled all the way up was electric.
Over 2000 young Māori and Pacifica with whanau excitedly filling the Aotea Centre with a passionate spirit that was contagious.
The moment the lights went down, the roar of anticipation and support was surprising and beautiful.
Any cynicism I had going into the evening melted away as I watched spell bound at the next 3 and a half hours of glorious sedition, militancy and pure celebration.
Haka Theatre is Kapa Haka + Glee + MTV + a Molotov cocktail.
From the start where the NZ Police were portrayed as racist Thugs for beating and hunting over stayer Pacific Island students during the Dawn Raids…
…to the Treaty being burnt in the background as the point that Māori never ceded sovereignty is replayed over and over and over again to the cheering audience.
There is one performance where a quote from a student who was punished at school for speaking Māori melts into an image of a huge white noose hanging in a tree while an entire stage of students symbolically lift white ribbons around their throats and hang themselves.
Sweet Che Fucking Guevara!
Every time the Māori sovereignty flag was raised on stage by one of the teams, the crowd roared their support!
When the Polynesian Panthers appear on stage, the kids bring the house down.
They understand and are excited by the politics, this isn’t earnest theatre kids performing symbolism in a vacant vacuum, the kids watching know the references and are celebrating them!
Then there is a moment that makes me sit up in open mouthed surprise.
During one of the performances, Seymour, Winston and Luxon come up in the background…
…and when they did, all hell broke lose.
The gasp of shock from the combined audience that these hated figures would suddenly appear in huge form in front of them was startling, and then that gasp of oxygen ignited with a fury and outrage that exploded from the lungs of over 2000 as they roared in naked rage at the three of them.
It was like that moment in 1984 when they all start yelling at Goldstein…
…it was glorious.
I’ve never seen 3 and half hours of wondrous sedition like this before.
Based on the outright righteous fury of the performers, we’re going to have to give Māori their own Parliament folks.
The manner in which the predominantly Māori crowd yelled support and celebration at the performers made me wonder what possible version of white people performing to white peers would we perform ourselves to elicit this level of passionate support?
A song about selling each other houses and calling that wealth? A mime play about not being able to afford your usual Bali Holiday and walking the Milford Track instead? Or what about a dance number where we sell basic bitch milk powder to China while polluting our rivers?
Those white cultural stories of dairy exporting, first world problems and property speculation just don’t seem to be the toe tappers one would hope.
The whole Autaia performance was in Te Reo and I don’t speak a lick of the Reo so I can’t tell you directly what all the performers were saying, but the entry level vibe was, ‘We ain’t going to put up with redneck cracker settler telling us what’s what no more’.
I compare the passion and political compass of that night to the anti-Māori, anti-Treaty race baiting by this hard right Government and I can tell you all right now, the future is brown and young and the next generation are not so culturally insecure to think Māori pride makes us smaller.
There is no fucking way the next generation will accept Māori being second class citizens in their own country.
The race baiting from ACT, National, NZF, Hobson’s Pledge and Taxpayers Union will not win, can not win and the next generation won’t let them win.
Autaia was powerful, funny, militant, seditious, raucous, passionate, clever and angry.
I loved every magical minute.
I need to get out to more theatre.
5 Stars
Interested in your perception that a Maori parliament is required and how this would operate.
1– What constitutional power will this parliament have?
2- Will it be able to overrule the New Zealand crown legislature?
2– Is the legislative law making made by the Maori parliament able to be imposed on non Maori?
3– To enforce Maori parliament laws will a separate Maori police force and justice system be required?
4– Will non Maori have separate seats in the Maori parliament so as to reflect their potential exclusion in the law making process (Sort of Maori seats in reverse)?
Perhaps it could be explained to the rest of New Zealand how this parliament will run alongside the crown? For if it is tokenism only it will be a major setback to Maori future growth. Is this Maori parliament a real deal for young Maori or just an activist pipe dream?
I have been to many young peoples concerts and gatherings and the enthusiasm is as infectious as the young Maori people showed at the concert you atttended. Would it not be grand if ALL that energy can be gardenered for the greater good.
You will find that Bomber doesn’t really think through the ramifications of a lot of the things he says. The rhetoric is what makes TDB fun.
So its was a huge hate whitey indoctrination event then. Brainwashing the next generation of useless fucks who will take no responsibility for their own bad decisions in life! Wonderful
jESUS YOU JUST DESCRIBED THE GENERATIONS OF THE LAST 50 YEARS.
Can’t see it happening until the browning of aotearoa JT predicts but at that point would a maori upper house be necessary?
Now you can see why the whitey righty dont want the under 20s voting .
Yes Gordon. Don’t forget the birth rate of Maori/Pacifika is higher than the whitey righty as well . Whitey too busy getting agitated and stressed to bred.
Yeah Maori and pacifica are 4-5 siblings to pakehas 0 -2 per family.
No rational person wants brainwashed teens dictating how taxes are spent. Young people are intellectually rigid, overly confident and lacking in wisdom.
You are being sarcastic of course. Hahahaha.
another scared supremist
20% of New Zealander’s identify as Maaori or Part Maaori so I can see why the Whitey Righty Parties do not want the Voting Age reduced.
I see the gross intellectual chasms of the right and left in equal measure. They invent reality and look for followers. The morning reality is that everything needs to be paid for and the Crown has no cash except tax payers who had nothing to do with its treaty breaches. Thanks to previous governments including Ardern‘s the Uk Crown off the hook,
Just more racist bullshit.
James Brown. Yep. The Education Dept’s leaping on the globalist anti-colonialism bandwagon, just as they have with transgender ideology. All of our children deserve more than divisive cherry-picked narratives.
Great piece Martyn.
One point though. One of your go-to insults is to use the term ‘basic bitch’. In the article you mention ‘basic bitch milk powder’.
I find it a bit jarring and yes, even a bit sexist really. Maybe think about retiring it, eh?
Cheers
How unfortunate for the fantasists then, that Maori knowingly ceded sovereignty.
Or New Zealand could have a war about it if that’s what they’re wanting?
Yes an “awesome history warts and all” and the history being made today for better or worse.
“During one of the performances, Seymour, Winston and Luxon come up in the background…The gasp of shock from the combined audience that these hated figures would suddenly appear in huge form in front of them was startling, and then that gasp of oxygen ignited with a fury and outrage that exploded from the lungs of over 2000 as they roared in naked rage at the three of them.”
These hated figures now leading the country two out of the three are maori.
Treaty, eh! whenua, gave them that, e, wai e,waiti, iwi., our.
Who the fuck owns the water, fuck ,te treaty, waitangi says who.
I won’t quibble with the review, but who exactly is “going to have to give Māori their own Parliament”? The Crown? If Maori want to restore their own instruments of government they will do so without the permission or assistance of the Crown, and those restored institutions will look nothing like a “Parliament” on the Westminster model.
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