Actor Rawiri Paratene is back in the director's chair for the Matariki season of Briar Grace Smith's When Sun & Moon Collide. The former activist and father of Green MP Marama Davidson hopes to see te reo taught in primary schools during his lifetime.
1. What was your childhood like?
I
grew up in a secure and happy family. When I was 7 we moved from Northland to Otara where Dad got a job as a process worker. We were part of the urban drift. Otara was very different in 1961. There was a wide mix of migrants; Dutch and English who came on an assisted package scheme. People didn't call themselves Pacific Islanders or Maori - they were Rarotongan, Niuean, Tainui, Nga Puhi. We didn't have much income but we weren't poor. I don't think anyone was back then. My parents bought their own house with a State Advance mortgage. I loved school. I wasn't academic but I was bright.
2. You were the first Maori graduate of Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School. What was that like?
I was 17 when I went to Wellington for the audition. I told my parents I was going to my friend's house for the weekend and took the overnight train. My history teacher Warren Lindberg, who went on to lead the NZ Aids Foundation, arranged for me to stay with his friends in Tinakori Rd - exciting, eloquent theatre people like Max Cryer and Dicky Johnson who was directing Aida at the time. It was fabulous. The audition letter said to wear warm-up gear so I walked into the room in my rugby gear only to find everyone else was in leotards and tights. I said, "Oh well, at least they'll know who I am." It was a totally foreign world but I had a ball. My attitude to being a performing artist has never really changed. It's all just a wonderful adventure.
3. You recently spent two years touring Hamlet around the world with the UK's Globe Theatre. Why perform the same play 200 times in a row?
Because it's Hamlet! It's full of themes that are relevant in different parts of the world for different reasons. Performing the last speech of Horatio on a stage littered with dead bodies in Bosnia, you knew people in the audience had living memory of that exact scene. At the play's centre is a young man from a new world battling an old world, which spoke to young audiences in the Pacific very well.
4. What was your favourite country to perform in?
Caribbean audiences are the most Elizabethan in the sense they feel free to offer their opinion during the play. I remember one strangely quiet performance in Antigua. We thought they must hate us but right after the interval when Pelonius got killed a matriarchal figure at the front said, "Finally! Somebody dying!" Everyone collapsed with laughter. Then when Hamlet got a bit rough with his Mum, another woman stood up at the back and shouted, "That's no way to be talking to your mother!"
