Nga Pou Wahine: Tale with rich, poetic history

Kura Forrester was determined to get the role. Photo / Supplied

Award-winning play about a factory worker’s dreams of a better life is revived

They may have been friends for nearly a decade but Miriama McDowell was adamant Kura Forrester had to audition for the 20th anniversary production of Briar Grace-Smith's seminal play Nga Pou Wahine.

Forrester says she joked about whether friendship would play a role in the first-time director's casting decisions but McDowell's only advice was not to "stuff up" the audition because the best person for the job would get it.

"I knew there were a lot of people auditioning [16 in all] so I made sure I prepared really well and worked hard because I would have been really mad if I hadn't got it," says Forrester.

Miriama McDowell is new to directing but has had plenty of help with the play. Photo / Supplied

The opportunity to be the sole performer in a play like Nga Pou Wahine is a rare one. Grace-Smith wrote it to counter a lack of major roles in theatre for Maori women and crafted six "fabulously flawed and memorable characters".

Forrester returned from London, where she had been waitressing. Most recently, she wrote and starred in a one-woman stand-up comedy show, Tiki Tour, based on her European travel experiences.

"There is nothing more nerve-racking than doing stand-up," she says, "but it went really well. It's definitely helped me feel more confident about doing this show and I came to rehearsals feeling match fit."

First performed at Taki Rua in 1995, Nga Pou Wahine tells the story of Te Atakura, a young woman who dreams of escape from her job in a tomato sauce factory. It combines drama and comedy to move from the present to events surrounding Kura's birth 21 years earlier as she pieces together the truth about her family and the powerful history of her ancestor, Waiora.

Grace-Smith was inspired by a story her father told her.

"When I was a child, I remember being taken out fishing with my father in Whangaruru Harbour. While we were out there, he told me the story of a great tupuna [ancestor] with long red hair. She was captured, and while being taken out to sea, she cut her hair and threw it into the waves, giving back her mana to her people."

Acclaimed theatre-maker Nancy Brunning made her directorial debut with Nga Pou Wahine while Rachel House's performance won her the 1995 Chapman Tripp Most Promising Female Newcomer of the Year Award. The play itself won Best Short Play and, later that year, Grace-Smith won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award.

It quickly became regarded as a watershed in Maori theatre and although Nga Pou Wahine has had several successful seasons, neither McDowell nor Forrester have seen it. However, they know it well, having performed various monologues from it at drama school and for other auditions.

"Nga Pou Wahine has got such a history," says McDowell.

"I'm sure every Maori actress has used one of its monologues at some point because they are so rich and poetic and the characters are just great.

"I did try to find a recording of the original production because I think it's important to acknowledge where you have come from and because that's what the play is about, but I couldn't find any footage so it's obviously meant to be that we are creating this production anew."

McDowell and Forrester aren't daunted or nervous about bringing the play back to the stage. Instead, they're excited and honoured that Grace-Smith has handed it to them, telling them to make it their own.

Like Brunning in 1995, McDowell is new to directing but says she's had plenty of support including feedback from Brunning who has sat in on a handful of rehearsals while Grace-Smith is always happy to answer questions about the script.

"The most fun thing about this is being on the outside and looking into the production," McDowell says. "As an actor, you go deeper and deeper into being a different character and bringing that person to life. As a director, I'm learning to step further back and to ask questions, and find answers, about all the other aspects of the production. I was terrified I wouldn't be able to do that."

With Forrester, she's modernising some of the dialogue and says the biggest conundrum is whether to introduce mention of social media into the play. If the characters had been written now, they most likely would have been referencing the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Tinder.

Forrester will complete the tour without McDowell, who leaves on July 1 for Paris, where she will study at Ecole Philippe Gaulier helped by the Sally Markham Memorial Grant she received from Massive, the theatre company she's been a member of since 2004. Massive's patron, Sally Markham, died in 2013, leaving the company funds to go towards young people in the performing arts.

McDowell joined the company to work on its show 100 Cousins and has since appeared in a number of its plays as well as tutoring and taking parts in its first directors' lab training programme.

What: Nga Pou Wahine
Where and when: Te Papa, Wellington, June 24; Herald Theatre, Auckland, June 26-July 1; The Old Library, Whangarei, July 5-7; Te Ahu Centre, Kaitaia, July 9-10