Kristyl Neho, who grew up attending more than 1500 funerals, will launch the tour of her show Tangihanga in Hastings at the Dying Matters Week. Photos / Charlotte Anderson
Kristyl Neho, who grew up attending more than 1500 funerals, will launch the tour of her show Tangihanga in Hastings at the Dying Matters Week. Photos / Charlotte Anderson
How many funerals have you been to? For Hastings woman Kristyl Neho it was 1000 by the time she was 18. Now at 42, it’s over 1500.
While most people would like to avoid funerals, Neho grew up surrounded by them.
Her grandfather was an undertaker, andshe spent much of her childhood in tangihanga, cemeteries and around grieving families.
That experience has now inspired her to create a solo stage show.
It’s called Tangihanga, and opens Hawke’s Bay first-ever Dying Matters Week, an international initiative encouraging open conversations about death, grief and end-of-life planning.
Neho’s 75-minute one-woman show, blending comedy, drama and moments of cultural connection, will be staged in the Bay on August 31 and September 1 at Taikura Rudolf Steiner school.
“I play all 30 characters, and it’s basically about a girl whose father passes away, and he asked her to make a promise that she will make sure that it’s a happy and joyful farewell,” she said.
“The family come all around to come back to his funeral at the marae, and you see the different way that people respond to hearing about his passing and how people deal with loss.”
Kristyl Neho performing Tangihanga, a 75-minute, one-woman show exploring the "chaos, beauty and heartbreak" of one whānau saying goodbye. Photo / Sarah Marshall
Neho, who wrote the show, says it’s based on the “chaos, beauty, and heartbreak of one whānau preparing for a funeral”, inspired in part by her own father’s farewell.
As a child, Neho helped prepare bodies and assumed everyone grew up around death.
“I just was raised thinking that was what everybody experienced,” she said.
That assumption ended when, at age 11, she casually told classmates she’d seen “three or four hundred dead bodies”.
“The room went silent,” she recalls.
“I remember looking up and everybody was staring at me, and then the teacher was like, did you say 400 bodies? I was like, ‘Yeah, isn’t that normal?’ And that’s when I realised it wasn’t normal.”
Those formative years taught her empathy, the value of services for people saying goodbye, and a belief she carries to this day.
“Don’t wait until it’s too late to tell people you love them,” Neho says.
While her Tangihanga performance is rooted in Māori experiences, it has resonated with audiences of all backgrounds.
“We’ve had about 65% non-Māori in the audience.
“Everyone recognises their own Auntie Margaret or the cousin who organises everything. Grief is universal.”
The production has been staged before, with Neho winning the best overall performer at Whangārei Fringe Festival 2024.
The polished version launching in Hawke’s Bay will mark the start of a tour to 14 locations around New Zealand, before heading to Australia.
The show in Hawke’s Bay will mark the start of a tour to 14 locations around New Zealand, before heading to Australia. Photo / Sarah Marshall
Hawke’s Bay’s Dying Matters Week runs from September 1 to 7 and is in its second year in New Zealand.
The national initiative is led by Go with Grace, which invited local end-of-life doula Alysha Macaulay to prepare a team of Hawke’s Bay professionals to bring the event to the region.
The programme includes free counselling drop-in sessions, youth workshops, a crematorium open day and a “cocktails and conversations about death” event at a local pub.
The only ticketed events are Tangihanga and a screening of the documentary The Last Ecstatic Days.
Macaulay says starting conversations before a crisis is key.
“It’s about giving people the confidence to know what services exist, how to talk about it, and how to plan,” she says.
“If people write it down and have that conversation, they can ensure their loved one is honoured.”
End-of-life doula Alysha Macaulay is helping bring Dying Matters Week to Hawke’s Bay for the first time, aiming to open up conversations around death.
Macaulay, who lost her husband to oesophageal cancer in 2022, now works with people with life-limiting diagnoses and their families to plan medical care, bucket lists, and funerals.
“It changed my perspective on life and made me determined to create better pathways for others.”
More information on the event is available at gowithgrace.nz/dyingmatters.
