Acting Agency in Aotearoa New Zealand: Hone Kouka's and Briar Grace-Smith's Debut Plays

Māori culture has a rich oral tradition which includes the recitation of whakapapa (genealogy), karakia (incantations), whakataukī (sayings) and kōrero (narratives), the singing of waiata (sung poetry), and the performance of haka (action songs). Despite the presence of numerous “performative behaviours”, in Richard Schechner’s terms, theatre in the Western sense is alien to the indigenous population of Aotearoa New Zealand. After the 1980s, however, there has been a flowering of this art form among Māori artists. Theatre has proved a congenial medium for combining customary knowledge/rituals and present narratives, myth and realism, artistic creativity and political denunciation. The result is a hybrid genre, developed according to the cultural needs and purposes of Māori practitioners and audience. My article will focus on the debut plays of two Māori award-winning contemporary playwrights, Hone Kouka and Briar Grace-Smith, whose works succeed in finding a balance between conformity to traditional frameworks and Western dramatic conventions as well as posing important social and political issues, and can be legitimately considered as typical examples of Māori theatre today.