56
TAKING THE
MIC
Sherilee Kahui on how Maranga Mai creates space for indigenous women's voices.
At eight years old, I informed my parents that I wanted to be a clown when I grew up. My dad told me to stop being silly, so I resolved instead to become an actor. After performing in plays all through childhood and into high school, I made the intrepid haerenga all the way from Te Awakairangi to Te Herenga Waka... that is to say, I moved from the Hutt to Town. My university experience had a decidedly Pākehā flavour, with the exception of performing a small role in my third year as part of a chorus of manu in Whatungarongaro by Roma Potiki (Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri and Ngati Rangitihi) and He Ara Hou - in which my former tutor Dr Nicola Hyland (Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi and Ngāti Hauiti) played a major role. Without Dr Hyland looking out for me and giving me a second chance in my first year, I wouldn’t have been able to pursue my undergraduate Theatre degree. How many other young wāhine Māori fell through the cracks because no one saw and thought to catch them?
As I started making my own work after graduating, I felt like there wasn’t room to bring my taha Māori into the creative process. I was never connected in with any other Māori practitioners and the few Māori theatre pieces I saw didn’t excite me. Most of what I encountered felt cynical – Māori storytelling dressed up as Western theatre to be palatable enough to be programmed at Circa or Downstage. I was young; I craved the raw, the furious, the risky! I read about what had come out in the 90s and I felt like I was too late – all of that had already happened and now those punk AF Māori artists were gone or had been assimilated by the establishment. In reality there was exciting stuff happening at the time, but my disconnection meant that I wasn’t attuned to the zeitgeist of indigenous art. My theatre diet had been heavily curated while studying, confined to what was prescribed by the programme, and later dictated by what I could get cheap or free tickets to.
