Tainui uprising

He taught a mate to dance in a beer ad and portrayed Billy T James on television, but actor-playwright Tainui Tukiwaho's heart is in the creative possibilities of theatre and three new shows he has on the go.

- LINDA HERRICK

Imagine Aotearoa in days of yore, when the land was cloaked in lush native forest and the song of the tūī welcomed Māori treading lightly upon a carpet of leaves. The tūī’s voice rang pure and clear, chiming with the flutes played by the patupaiarehe (fairy folk) frolicking among the trees.

When new voices arrived, the tūī, an adept mimic, began to change its tune.

This dream world, about to be swept aside by colonisation, is portrayed in a new Māori cirque du reo work, Te Tangi a te Tūī (The Song of the Tūī), which will be performed in te reo as part of the Auckland Arts Festival in March.

A woman, Aotahi, and her son Piri hold the centre of the story, which follows the pair through a decade as they try to evade a rigid ancestral curse. When Piri reaches his teens, he decides to take control of his future.

Te Tangi a te Tūī, created by Amber Curreen and Tainui Tukiwaho, is a co-production with the Te Rēhia and Te Pou Theatre groups and veteran Auckland cirque company Dust Palace. It’s led by Eve Gordon, Tukiwaho’s old school friend from Rotorua.

Te Tangi ran for a season in Vancouver’s York Theatre last October where it was praised as “unbelievably athletic” and “beautiful, insightful and timely”.

“The story of the curse that has to be lifted is sitting on the surface,” says Tukiwaho (Te Arawa, Tūhoe), who was recently awarded the 2023 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award of $10,000.

Te Tangi’s message is optimistic. “What we are trying to do is show that intergenerational trauma can be dealt with. Piri teaches his mother that we don’t have to be a slave to the trauma that our tūpuna [ancestors] had to endure.”