AK03: Two towers

By LINDA HERRICK

The voices are unmistakable. "Mr Henare!" booms the deep rumble that is the distinct parlance of Nat Lees, actor and director. "Mr Lees," replies the other actor, his timbre slightly lower in key but no less distinctive, "you've lost a lot of weight, man."

George Henare and Nat Lees, aged 56 and 49 respectively, both look fighting fit.

They must be, if their punishing work ethic is any indicator. Henare has just finished a Christchurch season of Briar Grace-Smith's Potiki's Memory of Stone, in a role he's reprising for an Auckland Festival/AK03 season. His schedule is fully booked until 2005.

And Lees has been rehearsing, as director and lead, no less, for the premiere of Albert Wendt's first play The Songmaker's Chair, as well as directing Albert Belz's Awhi Tapu - both also for AK03. (He's also just wound up a brief season on Shortland Street, where he played a detective, and he periodically teaches directing at Te Whakaari drama school in Wellington, where he is based. He also appears in the second and third instalments of The Matrix trilogy.)

But note the writers and titles of the stage works both men are involved with here: entirely Maori and Pacific Island. Yet when Henare first started acting in the mid-60s, theatre was "theet-ah" - white and middle class, all silly English farces, Gilbert and Sullivan and a smattering of Shakespeare.

"It was all terribly well-spoken in those days, too," he says. "When I started off it was all that very standard English accent, very neutral. You had to achieve that to go across a wide range and do the Shakespeare and English plays."

When "Maori theatre" was staged - rarely - it was written by Pakeha such as Catherine Styles-McLeod, who penned Mr King Hongi, a weird musical about Hone Heke which played at the Mercury in 1973. Henare was the chief.

"It sort of worked," he recalls, just a little sheepishly, "but it was a bit romantic, a white person's image. Poi dancers and that sort of thing. Hmmm. The people who were writing back then were Pakeha, like James Ritchie, but what's so good now is that Maori are writing for Maori."

Nat Lees: "Yes, it's been happening over the last 10 years, young writers have started coming through, like Albert Belz and Hone Kouka, young people are writing stories. It's a godsend, in a time when people want to be in movies or be a TV star, that there are people who want to write. Without them we can't do anything."

Henare became involved in theatre when he was in his late teens, after brief dabbles as a postie and trainee teacher. He sang in the New Zealand Opera Company chorus in productions such as Porgy and Bess and The Mikado - until they noticed his voice, which he too modestly classes as adequate. But he was extremely adept at "pulling faces" and getting noticed, "so they pulled me out of there and gave me some little acting roles".

Under the auspices of the then-Maori Theatre Trust, Henare found himself "doing Maori stuff" - including promotional work for New Zealand produce. "We got sent over to Aussie or Japan or Hong Kong to do kapa haka things. 'Buy more meat! Buy New Zealand mutton and beef and butter and cheese' ... "

He joined the Mercury at the age of 25, in 1971, and just over 10 years later had already notched up 414 stage deaths and dozens of parts, including Ratty, Dracula, Toad of Toad Hall, Snoopy, a bumblebee, a gorilla and more serious characters such as Lear, Lenin and Caesar. The role toll in the ensuing years has still not been definitively counted and he long ago widened out into television and film.

In 1976, the 22-year-old Nathaniel Lees met Henare at the Mercury, and the friendship that has proved so vital to the shape of New Zealand theatre was formed.

"I started acting when I went to the Mercury and saw this chap," says Lees. "I found him inspirational. That was the reason I kept on doing theatre - watching these guys do what they did, and doing it for a living. It surprised me, a full week's wage for doing that. I thought it was the best job in the world."

Along with some friends, Lees auditioned for The Naval Officer, a drama about the murder of Captain Cook. "They were looking for brown people to dress up as Hawaiians, wave a few spear things and talk this nonsense Hawaiian."

He got the part, then shortly afterwards joined the South Auckland company Manukau Theatre and spent five years working with schools and community groups in that region.

"That was a real eye-opener because although the Merc and Theatre Corporate had toured some productions there, none of the kids had any idea what it was all about. They could not relate to it. So when we came out we asked them, 'What's going on in your street?' and they would tell us about the Black Power, the Mongrel Mob, someone next door being beaten. They told the stories and we put them together and performed them. I still meet people from that time who remember us going out there and doing that."

Because of the colour of their skin, Lees and Henare have occasionally - and almost inevitably - been asked to go for roles which have offended them. Says Lees: "There was a Samoan piece based on Margaret Meads' studies that they [he won't say who] asked me to look at. I told them no, it was bullshit."

Henare: "Yeah, when Americans come to shoot things about Maori or Polynesians, they have this wonderful view that everyone hugs each other and says, 'Good morning father, how are you father', when that's got nothing to do with reality. They should go and sit in a house and watch people.

"But no, if the American population is going to watch it, we must do it their way, and if they're going to pay that much money, I'll do it. I don't approve, but that's the sort of thing that goes on."

Never more so than when the pair worked on the 1994 Kevin Costner-produced megabuck clunker Rapa Nui, in which Henare played Tupa and Lees was landed with the task of fleshing out one "Long Ear Chief". That was the same year that Once Were Warriors, in which Henare also starred, came out.

"It was interesting to come from Rapa Nui into Warriors and see which was the best with such a shoestring budget," says Henare.

"It was a good story in Rapa Nui, but the way they cut it, they removed all the political side of why the Easter Islanders committed genocide and smoothed it all over," says Lees. "It was so disappointing," adds his mate. "It was like, what happened?"

Then there was the time Henare worked on a Ted Turner-financed telemovie of The Lost World. It was shot in Queensland, set in the Amazon, he played a Samoan (the producers claimed a South American-Polynesian link) and part of the script was Maori. He learnt his lines fastidiously but when the director called out for one of the other Maori actors to "just say boogie woogie", that was it ...

Both men are concerned about the future generations in Maori and Pacific Island theatre. "I don't act so much any more on the stage," says Lees. "The problem is that the theatre I want to do is Samoan theatre, but so few people have the experience to direct. Much as I want to be on the stage I don't have a choice many times. There has to be a new generation and I'm working on it. I keep dropping the line and inviting people to come in and watch the rehearsal."

Henare says there is no way young people should assume acting - on the telly - is a quick route to fame. "I know there are a lot of Maori who want to go straight into television and be famous. They want to bypass this process. I ran into one guy and he said, 'I want to be where you are now, I don't want to go through all that theatre nonsense.'

"It's taken me years to get where I am today. I suppose it's the age of instant gratification. There are human psychological things you have to go through - it's life, and a 19-year-old can't say, 'This is life'. It's hopeless. Some can fluke it if you've got the right look, but it will show up somewhere along the line and you'll get caught out."

"Yes," adds Lees, "These people who are 18, 19, and suddenly want to be up there - what have you got to show me? You don't know what you're talking about, do you? "They understand what I'm trying to tell them but they still want to be a star right away. I just go, yeah, okay. What they don't understand is that it is about your passion for your craft.

"If you're prepared to be open about it, it'll hook you because you are watching people discover things. I tell people an actor is the most selfish person in the world because everything they do is to learn about themselves."

Says Henare, "I hate to tell them this but you never stop learning. That's the most satisfying thing, the process of getting right into the nitty-gritty.

"I love to show off and all that adulation, but you get over that. You get to a stage when you appreciate the clapping but for different reasons. They've enjoyed your work and you've made a difference to somebody."

The good thing too is that an actor - and a director - need never retire, if they're good at their job.

"Yes, a friend died on stage recently," says Lees. "He was in the middle of rehearsing Oliver! What a way to go."

He breaks into song, "It's a fine life ... " They both laugh like mad. It is a fine life, indeed.

* The Songmaker's Chair, Maidment Theatre, tonight until Sept 27; Awhi Tapu, Regent Theatre, Sept 22-25; Potiki's Memory Of Stone, Regent Theatre, Sept 30-Oct 3.