Dad jokes: Heta Dawson with daughters Courtney (left) and Irā at his underground comedy club Poppys in Manurewa. Photo / Michael Craig
Family meals around the dinner table were an audition ground for the Dawson whānau, producing two stand-up comedians and a playwright. Now, Irā, the youngest of five siblings, is about to make her debut as a dancer with Black Grace.
It‘s 10 months since Heta Dawson opened South Auckland’s hottest new venue, Poppys, an underground Māori and Pasifika comedy club in the double garage of his Manurewa home.
Next week he’s launching a series of “Brown Friday” sessions, keeping the line-up under wraps until a couple of days before the acts go live.
The club puts on kai after the gigs, which often sell out, but here’s an insider tip: score an invite to one of the Dawson family’s Sunday get-togethers and you’ll get a comedy show around the table for free.
“Everyone is the main character in our family,” says Courtney, the eldest and most famous of the five Dawson kids – so far. “We’ve always been performers, so it‘s very noisy and it‘s very fun.”
A regular on shows like 7 Days and Paddy Gower Has Issues, Courtney made the finals of Celebrity Treasure Island in 2023 and won Best Female Comedian at the NZ Comedy Guild Awards the same year.
A love for the creative arts runs strongly through the family. One of Courtney’s sisters, Riah, writes and produces plays, while Irā Tāhana – the baby of the whānau – has just moved back home after spending two years in Sydney on a dance scholarship.
The 20-year-old, who wants to pursue a career in Europe, makes her debut with Black Grace next week in a new show Rage Rage by Company B, a showcase for emerging dancers.
Irā’s bubbly self-confidence is something she learned at the dinner table, where being the youngest meant fighting to hold your own space as the sparks flew.
“Courtney was always the best storyteller,” she says. “I was always the loudest. One time we were talking and she’s like, ‘Are you looking at yourself in the window?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, why do you think this is my chair?’”
Heta (Ngāti Kurī, Ngāti Amaru) met his wife, Marianne, in the 1980s when they were teenagers at Manurewa High School.
A corporate tech geek by day, he began doing stand-up comedy on the side in 2017. The following year, he talked Courtney into joining him for a fundraising gig at their local football club, where she roasted him mercilessly. “She kicked the living beheebs out of me.”
Father and daughter later toured together as a comedy duo, Half and Hāwhe, a reference to Courtney’s hāwhe (half-caste) roots. Marianne, who has just completed her social work degree, is Pākehā – and the queen of one-liners, according to Courtney. “She’s probably the most outrageous of us all.”
Both Heta and Marianne make cameo appearances in Courtney’s latest show Don’t, a three-part series on TVNZ+ that has host Bubbah teaming up with a comedian for three themed episodes: Don’t buy a house, don’t have kids, don’t get married.
“I’m on the house one, and it‘s basically me and Bubbah investigating alternative ways of having a house,” says Courtney. “Mum and Dad are both in it and they’re 100% the most crack-up.”
Irā, too, has been drawn like a moth to the limelight since her first dance classes at the age of 4. In 2020, she was part of a troupe that performed in front of 60,000 people at Six60’s record-breaking concert at Western Springs. Still only 16 at the time, she was the youngest dancer on stage.
“Mum always says I was dancing before I could walk,” says Irā, who’s trans. “It feels very destined to happen. I actually did not have any other choice.”
Technically trained in jazz, ballet and contemporary, she’s done some acting and is part of the LGBTQ+ voguing and ballroom culture scene with Auckland’s House of Givenchy.
Honey Givenchy, Irā’s house mother, is a treasured mentor who has become part of her chosen family.
“Mum is so empathetic and has taught me so much, but she isn’t queer, she isn’t trans and she isn’t brown. Honey helped me find my way in a world I didn’t know how to navigate.”
There’s a 16-year gap between Courtney and Irā, who’s closer in age to Courtney’s teenage son. When they were younger, that created a distance between them that wasn’t always easy to bridge.
“It‘s been interesting, getting to know each other as adults since Irā came back from Sydney, because I definitely used to have third-parent vibes,” says Courtney.
“I have a newfound respect for her art as well, because when I was growing up, it was just luggage. Mum was always driving her around to [dance] comp after comp and there were pirouettes all over the place.
“Now I’m really proud of you, Irā, and all the mahi you’ve put in – even though it caused our parents to miss my birthday every year because of your Christmas shows …”
“Hey,” breaks in Heta, from across the table. “This isn’t a trauma session!” And all three of them throw back their heads and hoot with laughter.
More than 500 people have come through the doors since Poppys opened (Poppy is what Heta’s four grandchildren call him).
The New Zealand Comedy Trust had been talking about ways to bring comedy out to the suburbs. Heta, who sat on the board, got tired of waiting for it to happen.
Friends donated the lights and speakers. Scott Blanks from The Classic gave him a pile of chairs. At a push, about 40 people can squeeze into the garage, with its low-slung ceiling and concrete block walls.
Some nights, big names are on the bill – Josh Thomson and this year’s Fred Award winner, Angella Dravid, among them. A couple of weeks ago, James Nokise did a solo gig as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival.
Courtney has been on the mic at Poppys a few times, too, although mocking her parents on their home ground, in front of a home audience, has made her rethink her choice of material.
She’s working on ideas for a new TV show, between studying te reo Māori at Te Wānanga, but says nothing matches the thrill of performing live.
“A friend of mine who works in film was talking about how you can’t make any money from theatre and live shows. That‘s not why I do it.
“Knowing you can stand on stage and have this moment with people, and then your words sort of just evaporate into the universe – that‘s beautiful. Yeah, I’m broke, but it‘s beautiful.”
Like most people trying to carve out a career in the arts, both Courtney and Irā have regular jobs that help pay the bills. Courtney manages a consignment store that sells secondhand clothes and Irā is now working there, too.
The dance industry can be brutal, but when Irā won a scholarship to Brent Street, a prestigious performing arts school in Sydney, her parents supported her all the way. Says Heta, “We thought, okay, we gotta give this kid a shot at their dreams.”
Being chosen to dance for Black Grace marks another breakthrough for Irā, as the company celebrates its 30th anniversary.
Courtney remembers going to see Black Grace shows with her mother, who thought Heta was such a great dancer that she tried to convince him to audition. (“Dad was never a dancer,” says Irā. “He was just a man with rhythm.”)
Black Grace’s founder and artistic director, Neil Ieremia, formed Company B in 2023 to create opportunities for promising newcomers.
Rage Rage, its third production, will feature 11 emerging dancers alongside three experienced Black Grace members, incorporating elements of physical theatre by Leki Jackson-Bourke and Saale Ilaua from Strictly Brown.
Irā says Ieremia has spent time talking with the dancers about different aspects of rage. “What makes us angry, why we’re doing this, the intention of it ... So it feels very much like I’m meant to be here, because I’m very, very angry about a lot of things in the world.”
Global issues that may be referenced during the performances range from the rise of fascism to the Palestinian conflict and conversations about land ownership and indigenous rights.
For Irā, the personal is also political. “Being trans is such a talking point right now and it‘s so aggravating because I just want to live my life,” she says. “I want to do the things I need to do to be who I am, and people are actively trying to stop that.
“It‘s so enraging, and to me it‘s just so boring. There are so many other things we could be focusing on, but people are trying to use a minority that is less than 1% of the population and create us into these monsters that do not exist.”
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.