From Haka to Haptics: Indigenous Māori and Intercultural Dramaturgies: Interviews with six Artists from Aotearoa/New Zealand
by Moana Nepia*
In this article six artists from Aotearoa/New Zealand discuss their experiences and understanding of dramaturgy. The first five of these artists (Dolina Wehipeihana, Moss Patterson, Bianca Hyslop, Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield and Sean MacDonald) are Māori performers, choreographers, directors and teachers who have worked with dramaturgs or cultural mentors, and some of them have also undertaken these roles too. They are part of an intergenerational network of Māori practitioners whose careers regularly cross paths in different productions and companies. The sixth artist, Mairi Gunn, is a cinematographer, film and documentary maker with Scottish ancestry who has worked with Māori and on topics of interest to them. For all of these artists, an ethics of care that draws upon indigenous Māori perspectives or worldviews, and tikanga or values and practices, is seen as a powerful force for change and decolonisation.
For producer, choreographer, and dramaturg Dolina Wehipeihana, dramaturgy is a tool for achieving decolonisation in her life. She emphasises the values of wairuatanga—a spiritual approach, whanaungatanga—an emphasis on relationships that is intergenerational, and kaitiakitanga—care for the environment. Through calling herself a choreoturg she nuances the role of a dramaturg within choreographic contexts, and as a producer, she has even dramaturged a budget, using it as a tool to develop and refine projects.
Executive Director and Artistic Director of the New Zealand Dance Company, and former Artistic Director of Atamira Dance Company, Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, like Wehipeihana, emphasises whanaungatanga, and seeks advise from his own family, peers and more senior artists within contemporary dance and arts sectors. He maintains that communication and building trust is necessary to develop a collective consciousness about our national history and who we are as New Zealanders, in order to achieve successful creative collaboration within the Aotearoa/New Zealand context.
Choreographer performer and co-director Bianca Hyslop co-directs productions with her partner designer Rowan Pierce. Her journey to deepen understanding of te Reo Māori me ōna tikanga (Māori language, culture, values and practices), helps to determine specific choreographic and design decisions, and thematic focus for her work on te Reo Māori language revitalisation. She discusses her collaboration with Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield (also featured in this article) among the Māori performers and cultural advisors she works with.
Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield is a senior Māori performing artist with a kapa haka (traditional Māori performing arts) background who has worked with several contemporary dance companies as an advisor, mentor, tutor and performer. Describing herself as kuikui, a senior Māori woman or matriarch passing on knowledge to those younger than her, she values the sense of respect given to participants within collaborative contemporary dance contexts she works in and the opportunity to develop confidence and leadership potential residing within those she works with.
Dancer and choreographer Sean MacDonald describes a dramaturg as someone who “keeps the choreographer or director on track and focussed on their ideas through asking questions.” His approach to choreographing has drawn upon cultural mentors from his own iwi (tribal) networks as well as whānau (family) members, and like others in this article, he describes his personal journey to connect with and deepen understanding of tribal traditions and knowledge as being crucial to developing his choreographic identity.
Cinematographer and director Mairi Gunn suggests that the role of cinematographer is like that of a dramaturg—they both involve working alongside others and assisting them to see what they are doing or trying to achieve from a different perspective, to be an outside eye, and to remain invisible for audiences while creating those opportunities. Through the use of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality she is also investigating how new technologies might enhance opportunities to connect with and learn about people from different cultural backgrounds they might not otherwise encounter.
Interviews for Dolina Wehipeihana, Moss Patterson and Mairi Gunn were conducted kanohi-ki-te-kanohi (face-to-face) in Auckland. Other interviews were conducted on Microsoft Teams. Digital recordings of those interviews were transcribed, translated and edited by Moana Nepia. Because Māori is the first language of Aotearoa/New Zealand, it is commonplace not to italicise Māori words in New Zealand. Translations of Māori text into English, however, are translated in this article to differentiate that text from questions and answers in English.
Keywords: indigenous dramaturgies, Māori dramaturgy, cultural mentor, kuikui, tikanga, te Reo Māori, Māori contemporary dance
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“I love the idea of dramaturgy as a tool for decolonisation in my life”
Interview with New Zealand Producer, Choreographer and Dramaturg Dolina Wehipeihana
Dolina Wehipeihana (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tūkorehe) is a producer, arts manager, choreographer, dramaturg and performer. She has worked with Auckland Arts Festival, Kia Mau Festival, Performing Arts Network New Zealand, Atamira Dance Company and runs production house Betsy & Mana Productions. In 2021 she was awarded the Te Waka Toi award Ngā Tohu Hautūtanga Auaha Toi, which recognises leadership and outstanding contributions to the development of new directions in ngā toi Māori (Māori arts).
Moana Nepia: Kia ora Dolina and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.
Dolina Wehipeihana (DW): Kia ora Moana. It’s great to be here.
What’s your understanding of dramaturgy?
DW: When I think about dramaturgy, I’m thinking about exploring the arc of a story, finding the meat or main elements inside, and drawing or massaging them out so that performers and audiences might feel things or understand ideas the maker wants to promote.
That’s interesting, you go straight to the idea of story. Would that be an approach you could apply to abstract work as well?
DW: Yes, I think so. I’m from a dance background, and when I think about story, that’s not necessarily a narrative or a linear tale. For me, story is the art of making meaning about something. That can be abstract, as well as more traditional ways of storytelling or a narrative.
When, and in what context did you first learn about dramaturgy?
DW: Through collaborative work with a colleague of mine, Waimihi Hotere, in 1995-96. She had just graduated from Toi Whakaari the New Zealand drama school in Wellington and I’d just graduated from Unitec’s Performing Arts School in Auckland. We collaborated on different projects, including one with Curve Dance Collective, a collaborative working space with Waimihi as director, who was really a dramaturg. Here, for the first time, I saw the benefit of having someone with an outside eye who was able to reflect, ask questions, and share ideas about what was being created on the floor, to help fulfil a choreographer’s vision. As a dancer, I’ve also been interested in that role ever since.
How has this way of working benefitted you and those you’ve worked with, and changed or affected the way you’ve worked over time?
DW: I think I was being a dramaturg without knowing it. I called myself a choreoturg for a while, because I was working with choreographers and physical theatre-makers. Now, dramaturgy is a way for me to maintain a creative practise in dance and theatre. I’ve also become more interested to learn about dramaturgy and how it can be applied in different contexts.
In the devising process it’s about seeing what ideas come forward and how they’re received. It’s also the art of making choices about how deep you might go into a subject, how long you might keep someone in a particular zone, shift energy and draw out more meaning from a particular moment. Dramaturgy has also helped me to apply a deeper level of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) to my work.
Have you worked with Māori mentors, advisors, or kaumātua, kūia (Māori elders) in the making of work?
DW: Recently, Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield (Te Arawa, Tainui, Tūwharetoa), a senior Māori performing arts expert and advisor, came into a workshop and filming process that choreographer, performer and video artist Louise Potiki-Bryant (Ngāi Tahu) and I were working on with my daughters. We’d gone back to film at Te Hākari Wetland on our whenua iwi (tribal land), at Kuku, which is on the south-western coast of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s North Island.
We were hearing different stories from my whānaunga (relatives) Hūhana Smith and Aroha Spinks, and Tūī would come on our hīkoi (walks) when we were filming, or sit next to us. Every now and then she shared her whakaaro (thoughts). I felt like she was able to take the ideas that I was playing with, and connect easily to a deeply rooted knowledge of the whenua (land), cosmology, and Atua Wāhine (Māori female deities). Having her feed in different ideas enabled us to take the work to a deeper level. As practitioners we felt as though we’d had knowledge injected into our bodies, so that when we were dancing, that knowledge was able to come through. It sounds odd, but I did really feel it.
What do you mean by odd?
DW: It’s hard to explain how that knowledge can be absorbed into the cells of your body and change the way you perform or present work. When the knowledge you receive is tūpuna (ancestral) knowledge from kaumātua (elders), it’s coming through them to you but you’re already connected to it, so it’s like a knowing that is awakened inside you. That’s why I really love the act of mahi toi (Māori art-making processes). Dramaturgy as a creative process is curious and interesting for me because it’s not just another tool, it’s actually central to what I’m trying to achieve in my life and in my art practice.
How were Louise and your daughters part of this process and how might their contributions be thought of in a dramaturgical way?
DW: Louise is such a remarkable person, maker, choreographer and designer who’s so experienced now. Having found learning te Reo Māori (Māori language) a very creative space, I asked if she would be interested to make a short one or two-minute film with my girls, for my next assignment. She was very busy, but rang me to say she would like to make it into a full-length work. When Louise and I collaborate, we take turns at the dramaturgy. If I come up with a concept, she will come back to me with some reflections, ideas, or things that she sees, and then we’ll talk about how those ideas hono (connect) to each other, and to deeper kaupapa (subjects or issues) we are searching for in the work, which in this case was hauora (wellbeing) for us and other generations of wāhine Māori (Māori women).
Of course that then connects to ideas about mana wāhine (the mana or authority of women); and issues raised in the Waitangi Tribunal Mana Wāhine Kaupapa Inquiry (that heard outstanding claims alleging prejudice to wāhine Māori as a result of Treaty breaches by the Crown); and He Wāhine, He whenua (the synergy between Māori women and land). Dramaturgy in this way is relational—finding all the relations and then choosing which ones you want to bring forward into your work. For my daughters, I want to pass knowledge on to them so that they can know what it is to grow up and be strong young Māori women who are raised in the city, being sent to Kura Kaupapa (Māori language immersion schools), re-learning culture, and living in the rapidly changing world of social media and Artificial Intelligence. But I’ve realised that it goes both ways. It’s also about what can I learn from the girls. There were other conversations that happened intergenerationally between Tūī and the girls without me, where they percolated ideas and fed that into the work too.
Have you asked the girls about their experience of this process?
DW: We’re still in the middle of the development process, and I haven’t asked them, but what I do know is that the act of going back to whenua and being creative together as a family is good for our well-being. It’s almost like what I want the work to share. The process is automatically creating well-being for our family.
I’ve been very inspired by other people’s approaches to dramaturgy like Hone Kouka and Mīria George (Māori playwrights and directors). They got me to do some dramaturgy on one of their works The Beautiful Ones,[1] which I had also been a choreographer for earlier. I love what they are looking for in their process while creating work that pushes boundaries. The design of their work is always amazing, there’s often dance in it, and they’re always trying something new to push their own boundaries.
I’m also inspired by people like Lindsay Lachance who’s an Indigenous Algonquin Anishinaabe Canadian playwright and dramaturg who wrote her doctorate about indigenous dramaturgy,[2] and how she was inspired by birch barking, nature, rivers in her area, and the Seven Grandfather Teachings—mātauranga (knowledge) from her natural environment and how that informs her creative and dramaturgical processes.
If you were to describe your creative practice in a dramaturgical way, how might you do that?
DW: I love the idea of dramaturgy as a tool for decolonisation in my life. It’s a way to re-look or re-shape the lens of how I’m looking at my work or my life. I see everything as an act of dramaturgy…at micro and macro levels in my life. I dramaturg anything. I’ve even dramaturged a budget. As a producer, the act of producing can incorporate dramaturgy. I see a project budget as carrying the story of a project, and clues to the actions required to bring it to fruition. I use a budget to develop a project, as a tool to play with the scope and its creative potential.
What tikanga, values, practises, or concepts are important to the way you work?
DW: Wairuatanga, or a spiritual approach, whanaungatanga (an emphasis on relationships), and as part of my process there’s always karakia (ancestral chants and incantations), mihimihi (acknowledgements or greetings) and manaakitanga (offering hospitality, kindness and support) towards the team.
What is a spiritual approach?
DW: It’s acknowledging connections to Atua (ancestral deities), to Te Taiao (the natural world), and having a greater purpose in the works I’m making or trying to tap into. In order to let the creativity come in, I consciously change quite a lot of things about the time, space, and way I’m working. If I set aside two days for something to be created, I hope that I’m going to feel creative when I’m also busy with kids at school, drop-offs, and other jobs. I have to shift and create space in order to do that dramaturgy.
In addition to the dramaturgs, Māori mentors and cultural advisers you’ve worked with, are there others you might ask for feedback from and what kind of questions are you interested in being asked?
DW: Jack Gray (Māori choreographer, founder and former Artistic Director of Atamira Dance Company) is incredible to talk to about your concept and what you might be doing for a particular project. He once helped me move from a very generic provocation that I’d given myself about wāhine and whenua, to look more specifically at my own daughters and connections to place. I have invited other choreographers I have worked with and trust to help with feedback too.
I’m also interested in creating the right environment for discussion, and that’s where Liz Lermen’s critical feedback process that Carrie Ray Cunningham (former Director of Auckland’s Tempo Dance Festival) introduced here a while ago, is useful. It sets up four questions and an environment where, as an artist, I find I’m more able to be part of the discussion. In Aotearoa/New Zealand we can be very good at saying what we think, putting forward opinions based on our perception of what we’ve seen or understood, and we are less defensive when we are part of processes like this.
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“How can a proud, brown man work in non-brown, non-digital spaces and find a consciousness with others who haven’t had the same experiences?”
Interview with New Zealand Choreographer and Director Moss Te Ururangi Patterson
Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Rāhiri) is a dancer and choreographer, former Artistic Director for Atamira Dance Company, and was appointed the Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the New Zealand Dance Company (NZDC) in 2023. His work has toured throughout New Zealand, to Taiwan, China, Korea and to Jacobs Pillow in the United States, and in 2020 he was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate.
Moana Nepia: What is your understanding of dramaturgy?
Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (MP): Dramaturgy is a way to connect my story to larger stories that are happening around me, in my community, country, and the environment. It also helps me to tell stories within a studio and connect them to bigger stories in work I’m making.
Before making Whakairo[3] in 2007, I was drawing on patterns from kōwhaiwhai (customary Māori painting), whakairo (carving), and tukutuku (woven wall panels) that feature in Māori meeting houses, to develop movement for abstract choreographic works connected to where I’m from, and who I am as an Indigenous Māori man and contemporary Māori artist. But with Whakairo, I also wanted to connect to larger socio-political themes, and the history of colonisation in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Tāmaki Makaurau /Auckland, where I was living at the time. I wanted to create work that was about something bigger than myself.
Have you ever worked with a dramaturg?
MP: No. But because I’ve worked with others who critique what I do, I think I’ve always involved dramaturgical processes in my work. I’d often ask my mother and grandmother for feedback on my work, for example. My wife Annabel and I research things together, attend lectures and seminars, and have read books together including Ranginui Walker’s book Ka whawhai tonu mātou,[4] which expanded my consciousness around the history and social-political landscape of Aotearoa/New Zealand at the time. More recently, my wife Annabel and two daughters have joined me in the dance studio to ask what I’m trying to say and help search for story. That’s a process I invite others into as well.
In the past I’ve invited members of the dance community to offer feedback on my work, including yourself, Steve Bradshaw, Dolina Wehipeihana, Charles Koroneho, Susan Jordan, Michael Parmenter, and many others from New Zealand dance companies including Taiao and Limbs, and the wider dance community. My mother is probably my greatest critic and mentor. I go home and spend days boring her with my ideas, and within those discussions, she often summarises what I’ve said in a form she thinks I’m thinking about at the time. When I drive back from Tūrangi to Auckland, I see more clearly what I’m trying to achieve.
Does your mum have a background in the arts?
MP: She’s a potter and paints. I have early memories of us at the kitchen table making things with clay and being taken on the back of her bike to a pottery studio every weekend where I watched her working on the wheel making the plates we now eat off at home. As a clay artist, she constructs things using all kinds of skills and creative processes. I think some were transferred to me. We also loved searching for things at dump sites that might hold a memory or become an inspiration for something else.
I can see how that relates to the process of bringing things into a creative space to generate ideas and provoke thinking about how to develop stories. What tikanga, values, and practices have been important for you in your mahi (work)?
MP: Earlier, when testing ideas, I didn’t always know what I was doing, or understand what was important to me. Now, whakapapa (a genealogical or relational way to understand the world) and whanaungatanga (an emphasis on kinship and relationships) are important foundations from which my dramaturgy grows. I also draw upon my emotions and a deep kind of knowing. I always start and finish creative sessions with mihi (greetings and appropriate acknowledgments), ensure dialogue between artists is ongoing, and regularly make time for artists to share their kōrero (stories or perspectives) within those sessions.
Wherever we might be, practices that enhance the mana (status and authority) of those we work with help to establish trust and ensure good communication between us. They also determine how I communicate, shake hands and talk, the music I play, food we provide, or what to talk about when first meeting. Reinforcing the values and practices I want to convey in my work, gives us all greater confidence to tell our stories and find new stories together.
Did you alter how you work when starting with the NZDC?
MP: Yes. Working in different cultural spaces while honouring my tīpuna (ancestors) is tempered by a very practical fear that their consciousness may not be understood by others. Building trust and maintaining good communication is especially important when working with people for the first time in new environments.
I understood more about myself after working with Atamira Dance Company for ten years. As Chief Executive and Artistic Director for NZDC, it’s important to be clear about who I am, what my connections to whenua (land) are, and what I’m doing, if I’m to lead the development of a collective consciousness. How else are we supposed to create something together?
While developing socio-political awareness, cultural competency, and racial consciousness within the organisation and our audiences, we must seek a better understanding of our nation’s history, and build a mana-enhancing relationship to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi), which is the founding document of our country. They’re important issues for us all in Aotearoa.
How can a proud, brown man work in non-brown, non-digital spaces and find a consciousness with others who haven’t had the same experiences? That dramaturgical question is helping to guide where I’m walking, and how I’m working now.
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“The huia bird is not extinct because it’s alive in our thinking”
Interview with New Zealand Choreographer and Director Bianca Hyslop
Bianca Hyslop (Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Tūhourangi-Ngāti Wāhiao) is a director, performer and choreographer who has worked specifically within the Māori Contemporary Dance Sector for fifteen years. A whānau (extended family) member of Atamira Dance Company, Ōkāreka Dance Company, and The New Zealand Dance Company, Bianca also works in close collaboration with designer Rowan Pierce. The pair have co-directed two full-length works He Huia Kaimanawa[5] [6] and Pōhutu[7] to critical acclaim.
Pōhutu (geyser) draws parallels between the restless geothermal landscape “forever re-shaping itself” at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, in New Zealand’s Central North Island, and the decline of Hyslop’s eighty-eight year old grandmother, the late Ramari Rangiwhiua Haslem, and her shapeshifting mind, due to the progression of Alzheimers.[8] Simultaneously rooted in personal experience, family history, and deeply-felt connections to place, Pōhutu reaches beyond the specifics of its story-telling and performance language to offer a poetic response to pathological disorientation, the loss of memory, dignity and personal identity, and the fractious, explosive potential of Ruaumoko—Māori deity of seismic, volcanic and geothermal activity. Audiences were also invited to reflect upon the fragility of human and environmental existence, and the strength needed to confront challenges to cultural identity, and mental, physical and social wellbeing.
In their more recent work He Huia Kaimanawa, Hyslop and Pierce strengthened working relationships with key collaborators to offer an optimistic glimpse at what the revitalisation of te Reo Māori (the Māori language) might sound like, and deepen their collective understanding of Māori ways of thinking.
Moana Nepia: How did you develop ideas for Pōhutu and how did that compare to He Huia Kaimanawa, which I saw at Te Pou Theatre in Auckland earlier this year?
Bianca Hyslop (BH): Both works were very collaborative. We didn’t have a dramaturg for either production, but for Pōhutu,[9] I was able to be on the outside. For He Huia Kaimanawa, I performed in the work and had two other performers in the production who gave me feedback as it developed: choreographer and dancer Kelly Nash (Ngāpuhi, Ngāiterangi) who was rehearsal director and my choreographic mentor; and Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield (Te Arawa, Tainui, Tūwharetoa) who was an important Māori cultural advisor for our team and helped develop the soundscape.
In Te Mauri o Pōhatu, the installation version of Pōhutu, her voice came over loudspeakers at regular intervals each day, and then once a week for three weeks there were live activation events too.
BH: Yes. Tūī’s voice embodied the geyser erupting at regular intervals. The live events included her performing in the space dancers with two dancers.
I gather from reading about Pōhutu and what you’ve mentioned earlier today that your design decisions have been led by psychological or emotional elements within the stories you work with, including in this instance themes of separation and loss, moments of re-connection, surprise, beauty and joy. You also mentioned wanting to “decolonise Alzheimers” through re-envisaging your grandmother’s mental decline as part of a final spiritual journey of return and reconnection to her ancestral homeland. Were design decisions for He Huia Kaimanawa made in a similar way?
BH: In He Huia Kaimanawa,[10] we responded to the idea of Māori being suppressed and came up with the idea of a box-like structure or a container for the set, and explored how we might break that box open to fly free again. I’m interested in how utilitarian structures can colonise the stage, and cause friction or tension that forces you to think differently and create new pathways. We also worked to contrast hard, rigid set elements with softer, more amorphous qualities in the dance and in the movement of haze filling and pouring out of translucent screens made from gauze that could hold a projection of sound wave patterns generated electronically by Tūī’s voice.
In that moment it felt as though listening became a whole-body sensory experience and the emotional impact of her voice was intensified. I was also reminded of how the concept of rongo (to listen) is the Māori word for all the senses except sight. There was an additional design element featured towards the end of the performance that looked like a billowing cloud of fabric. What was the significance of that for you?
BH: We thought of it as a tongue, or a wave, something big, soft, and malleable that could take over the space. It was also a vessel for introducing and carrying three children who performed in the work.
My friend Beau Child shared some beautiful kōrero (narration) about her experience of learning te reo Māori little by little, like trickles of rain getting stronger and flooding to become a river. That’s what was in the sound score as the fabric “creature” was expanding, giving rise to the next generation with their beautiful reo (voice and language), and consuming space like a big wave taking over.
Tūī’s voice in full flight at the end represented for us the idea of bringing the huia bird back from extinction, and being able to fly again through the revitalization of our language. We had done a lot of brainstorming with her, other dancers, and Rowan. They were all very open with each other throughout the process.
Were the children performing involved in that process too?
BH: Yes. We held a two day workshop together and did lots of acrostic poems and things that were accessible to them. They were incredible—they wrote their own mōteatea (poetic song) in te Reo Māori, and ngeri (exhortations to rouse a group to achieve its objective) with Tūī’s help.
Wow.
BH: We shared the idea of te Reo Māori being a precious gift and asked how that might relate to them. We regard them as taonga (treasures) too. Their voices, and ideas about the importance of te Teo Māori, and what they wanted for the future in their country, were very strong and amazing to have in the work. They will stand stronger in themselves and with greater mana (authority) as a result of taking on the responsibility to carry this kaupapa (agenda) into the future. Our role as co-directors and co-creators was to ensure their messages were clear for the audience.
The intergenerational commitment here to collaboration and giving voice to shared dreams and aspirations is wonderful. In her review of the work, performer and video artist Rachel Rucksthul-Mann wrote:
…if you’re going to cast kids in a work, you can guarantee they’ll steal the show. This was absolutely the case here. In a good way – our mokopuna [grandchildren] emerged, vibrant, light, staunch. The future embodied. We expand as an audience together. We return to our breath. It is complete.
np
As a visual artist I’m also interested in the way you’ve described Rowan introducing sculptural elements to force new decisions during your making process, and to stimulate or expand new ways of thinking for audiences.
BH: My partner Rowan and I dream and think together, and we co-directed that work. Rowan doesn’t come from a movement background and for both of us, all elements on stage are important. When there are no people on stage, the set and other elements carry the performance.
How else did you work with Tūī in He Huia Kaimanawa?
BH: Tūī works in the space with us rehearsing from day one. She’s quite staunch about wanting to be part of the whole process. Having her on stage for He Huia Kaimanawa with different generations of performers as part of the collaborative team was important too. As she explained, having a good understanding of the work helps her to support us in the best way she can. When Tūī explained how the huia bird is not extinct because it’s alive in our thinking, she also explained how that is an extension of the way Māori think about time, and how the past, present and future can exist together. She helps us to unpack colonised ways of thinking and offers us a Māori perspective on things to weave into the narrative we’re developing.
As a choreographer, I don’t get finicky about the moves and the details of things, or the position of a leg for example. I look for the energy or the feeling of each piece. I also share the responsibility for creating a lot of the movement.
Are there any additional tikanga, practices or values that you incorporate in your work?
BH: We open and close rehearsals with karakia (chants and customary Māori incantations), which as Tūī has explained to us, need explaining to be understood—why we do them, what their purpose is, and how they ought to relate to what we’re doing. We also share our thinking openly with each other and believe this helps to build good working relationships and healthy, safe workspaces.
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“Everybody involved in a production is a dramaturg in a sense, because everybody has a story to tell”
Interview with New Zealand Performer, Storyteller and Mentor Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield
Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield (Ngāti Ohomairangi, Te Arawa, Hōkioi, Tainui, Kaiwhare, Hōhou-te-rongo, Uruao, Honoiti, Mataatua, Nukutere, Paikea, Nukutaimemeha, Tākittimu, Te Ara-i-te-uru, Uruao, Manuka, Maahunui, Ngāti Manu ki Karetu, Kurahaupō) is a Kapa haka & mau rākau-patu exponent, Te Matatini judge/Matatoki, composer, chanter, karanga lecturer, whakapapa holder, storyteller, pastoral & spiritual caregiver, researcher and Mātanga Mātauranga Māori for The New Zealand Dance Company,[11] Ōkareka Dance Company,[12] Movement of the Human,[13] and Hyslop/Pierce/Hinetūītepō Partnership.
Interview excerpts included below include her thinking about mahi tahi (collaboration) informed by important tikanga Māori ( Māori values and practices), and the benefits of working in this way. This discussion also refers to her involvement with He Huia Kaimanawa,[14] a full-length dance work based on an intergenerational commitment to revitalising te reo Māori ne ōna tikanga (Māori language, culture, values, and practices).[15] Co-directed by Māori choreographer and performer Bianca Hyslop (Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Tūhourangi) who is interviewed separately for this article, and her partner sculptor/musician Rowan Pierce,[16] this work exemplifies how cultural mentorship within the development of individual productions is also enhancing potential for social development through growing future generations of leaders within the Māori arts sector.
The interview was conducted in te reo Māori, which is the first official language of New Zealand, and in English. Where translations of the original Māori text are offered, that text is italicised.
Tūī Matira Ranapiri-Ransfield (TR): Ko te mahi ngātahi kei te mōhio ngā tāngata katoa, ka whai koha rātou ki ngā whakaaro katoa. He mea pai rawa atu ana tērā. Collaborative working together is knowing that everyone has a contribution to make to every idea. That’s a very good thing.
Everything that’s brought to the space is trialled and if we don’t use it at the time, it’s recorded or captured, and we might use it at another time. But none of it is a waste of time. Every person is valued in the contemporary dance spaces I’ve worked in, because everybody’s ideas, thoughts, or processes are utilised at some stage in the development of whatever we’re creating. That for me is so respectful. It’s what I call a true collaboration. I’m grateful to be working with people who put a lot of value on that. When I used to teach kapa haka, I would sometimes give people lines of an action song, ask them to go and make the actions, and then ask them to come back and see what we could put together, but that’s not always the case in kapa haka (Māori performing arts groups).
Collaborative approaches have always been part of how our pā (Māori villages) work: the divers are out diving, the hunters are out hunting, some people in the kitchen are cooking, others are setting up tables or packing things away. Then we would have people like us, the artists, musicians orators, and performers, who would do the pao (impromptu songs), the ngeri (chants to admonish people to support a cause), give speeches, entertain, and do the special jobs that make hosting memorable, palatable, and leave indelible, lasting impressions. To do it by yourself is a lot of work, a lot of hard work, but with everybody:
Ko te mahi ngātahi a te katoa, ka tae mai rātou, me o rātou kete mātauranga, pūkenga katoa. Nāu te raurau, nāku te raurau, ka ora ai i ngā mea katoa mō te hui. It’s everyone’s work together, they arrive with all their baskets of knowledge and skills. With your food basket and mine, all things will go well for the gathering.
In the kapa haka arena, I have worked as co-leader and tutor for Te Mātārae i Ōrehu (one of the most prominent Māori kapa haka groups in Aotearoa) with Wetini Mitai-Ngatai (Te Arawa) who once asked me, “Why do you always get the women to lead?” “They don’t have the same ihi, wehi and wana (excitement, awesomeness, and exhiliration) as you. That’s why I want you.” I replied, “You know what? We are just two people, two leaders and tutors. I’m trying to see where the talent is. Far out! I want them all to lead. They might be better than me, or have a better voice. I don’t have the voice. I don’t have the strength of voice.” He said, “Nor do I.” At which point I said, “I’m all about the future. Vision is about growing succession. Plus it gives my voice a break.” I was always about collaboration and seeing where talent lies.
I also believe in growing the potentiality of confidence. Most people don’t have that initially. But when you encourage them, you’d be surprised at the leadership qualities that are sitting there. If you didn’t give them an opportunity, you wouldn’t know. There are lots of great things about collaboration.
Moana Nepia: He aha tō whakaaro mō ngā tamariki o te whakaari He Huia Kaimanawa?
What do you think about the children in the production He Huia Kaimanawa?
TR: Ko tērā whakaaturanga e hāngai ana ki te reo Māori me ōna tikanga, nā reira e tikina atu kia kite atu ki ngā tamariki, ngā Rangatira o te āpōpō. That show is based on the Māori language and its culture, values, and practices so it should be taken to be seen by children, the leaders of tomorrow. I led wānanga (intensive workshops) for the children, three young girls. Nā reira, e rua, e toru haora kātahi ka mahi mātou i ngā titonga hou e rima. I puta i te toru haora me te manawataki, te manawataki o te ngeri, te manawataki o te haka, te manawataki o te pātere, te manawataki o te waiata. Ka puta ngā hua. Ka tere puta ngā hua. Nā reira he rawe. E rua ngā wānanga pērā e whakamahia mātou mō ia wā, mō ia wāhi i tū ai te whakaaturanga nei, arā i Kāpiti, i Pōnekeneke, i Tāmaki Makaurau. I panonihia e au ētahi o ngā kupu. Nā te mea ka hangaia ki tērā wāhi… ki te whakapapa, ki ngā tūtohu whenua kei reira, i hangai ki ērā wāhi kei reira te whakaaturanga e tū ana. So, we spent two or three hours working on five new compositions [and] the rhythm—the rhythm of the chant of admonition, the rhythm of the posture dance, the rhythm of a chant of derision, and the rhythm of the song. The fruits of this work emerged and appeared quickly. That’s why it was great. We held two workshops like that for each time and place where the performance was held: in Kapiti, Wellington, and Auckland. Some of the words were changed by me because they were connected to those places… to the whakapapa (genealogies), to landmarks there, and to the places where the performances were held. Ka kaha rātou ki te whakaako. He pērā hoki ki tō te whaikōrero o Nancy. I panonihia e au mō ia wāhi…e tū atu ai i te whakaaturanga. They were eager to learn. It was the same with Nancy’s speech. I changed it for each place…where the performance was held.
He wā ki te ako tonu ne?
Times to continue learning?
TR: Ae. I puawai a Nancy i ia wāhi. He mahi tino uaua māna, engari i mau ia, i pupuri hoki ki tōna hinengaro me te painga hoki o tōna tukuna. Yes. Nancy blossomed in every place. It was a very difficult task for her, but she seized it, retained it in her mind and the quality of her delivery.
And the children were so enthusiastic. We didn’t have to babysit them in the space, although we had an adult who sat with them all the time they were there. I love working with Bianca and Rowan, with Tai Royal and Malia Johnston, because everyone is respectful. And when you work like that, with aroha (love and sensitivity), you get the best out of people. At the end of the day, I’m just Tūī who can contribute some skills, thoughts and cultural knowledge to a process, or within a work. I’m kuikui (an elderly woman or a matriach). A kuikui has all of that. The mahi (work or action) is really about communicating with people and working with whatever extraordinary, joyful, productive, meaningful, or seductive things they bring to a collaborative process. Everybody involved in a production is a dramaturg in a sense, because everybody has a story to tell.
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“Holding space in a Māori way is important if you’re going to do anything involving Māori concepts or Māori knowledge”
Interview with New Zealand Choreographer and Performer Sean MacDonald
Sean MacDonald (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Raukawa, Rangitāne, Tūwharetoa) trained at Auckland Performing Arts School and the New Zealand School of Dance, worked as a freelance dancer with leading New Zealand choreographers for over thirty years, has choreographed for Black Grace, the New Zealand Dance Company and Atamira Dance Company, and in 2023 was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate. This interview with Sean was conducted via Teams while he was working with director Raewyn Hill and CO3 Contemporary Dance in Borloo (Perth), Australia.
Moana Nepia: What is your understanding of dramaturgy?
Sean MacDonald (SM): A dramaturg is someone who keeps the choreographer or director on track and focussed on their ideas through asking questions: Is this or that happening? Is this following the line of your thought? What do you want? Is that making sense? Is this reading? Is the drama working or making sense? If you find someone that you can be really intimate with, and who knows your work, they can also feel free to give you honest feedback.
Dramaturgs are a lot like what a rehearsal director or mentor might do in the dance world. They can be an outside eye, someone who can watch and ask you questions, sometimes privately without involving the cast. It’s important for makers to form a working relationship with their dramaturg or rehearsal director before getting into the studio in order to understand what the maker is doing, their vision, concept, or narrative line.
Have you felt a need to have someone there for specific cultural reasons?
SM: When I made Ngā Wai[17] for Atamira Dance Company, I worked with Māori choreographer and performer Terri Ripeka Crawford, who has Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou and Ngai Tūhoe ancestry. Ngā Wai, which translates as The Waters, is a full-length dance work that responds to the sacred waters and whakapapa (genealogies) of Waimārama, which is a village on the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island, and where my Kahungunu tribal ancestry connects to.
Atamira Dance Company’s website offers a description of Ngā Wai referring to its connection to different waters, the moon, things maternal, and connections to histories of migration including the journey of Takitimu (migration waka/canoe) from Samoa to Waimārama. You’ve also described how Waimārama has a very strong feminine energy and that this work was designed to hold up the mana and respect for wāhine toa, some of the brave women leaders in your tribe too. How did Terri and your female performers contribute to this process?
SM: Terri wasn’t there the whole time, but when she was, she helped me to integrate work with patu (Māori hand clubs), and the voices of Māori women in the production, including karanga (chants and calls of welcome). Because she had Kahungunu ancestry too, she knew all the Pūrākau (ancestral stories), whakapapa (genealogies) and mythologies I was interested in. She also had a lot of knowledge that I didn’t have, which brought a level of cultural safety to the process that I respected. Her role wasn’t stipulated as a dramaturg, but she helped me to develop the work in its initial stages, and held the space in terms of karakia (traditional chants and incantations), waiata (Māori songs), and mau rākau (traditional Māori hand-held weaponry), which she was very knowledgeable about.
It was really great having Terri there with us. When we went down to Waimārama to make the work, Terri took us to Te Ātea a Rangi, the navigational star compass outside of Napier, and organised other things that helped to ground us in relevant cultural knowledge. Holding space in a Māori way is important if you’re going to do anything involving Māori concepts or Māori knowledge.
For that, I also had my uncle Rob, who shared ancestral stories and knowledge for this work. I went to him whenever I wanted a waiata or haka from home, and sometimes he would call Papa Tīmoti. Uncle Rob would say, “We’re gonna come, OK? You guys are gonna cook and I’ll invite him over for dinner. Cause he’s from here. He’s whānau (family).” Around the table, we talked about things. Uncle Rob was my guide and mentor for what I was doing for Ngā Wai.
Does he live in Waimārama?
SM: Yes, he’s buried there now. He passed when we performed at Q Theatre in Auckland November 2020. After that season, I knew that I needed to take Ngā Wai home to Waimārama. My mum passed soon after, in January 2021, and on the night before her burial, Mum was outside on the veranda where the family gathered to share stories about her. I knew I had to get up and say or do something and everyone else knew I was a dancer. I told them I was going to do a dance for my mum, “I don’t have any music. I’m going to improvise.” As I started, a korimako (bellbird) began to sing. That was a very special moment for us all. After giving my speech the next day at the end of the hākari (final feast), I finally began to relax. After returning to our home out at Waimārama, I went for a swim. Being in the sea helped me to feel free, and while swimming I decided on a beginning for the work that recreated what I had done during her poroporoāki (ceremonial farewell).
We took Ngā Wai to Waimārama just before Easter of that year, and gave an informal presentation of the work to family and other members of the community in the local community hall.[18] As guests arrived, I greeted them while other performers remained seated with boxes in the space. The boxes were meant to represent my Mum. Bringing the work home also reflected the journey of our ancestral waka, Takitimu. When it arrived in Aotearoa it stopped in Waimārama, where the tohunga (priests and navigators) on board were able to land.
Art exists anywhere and everywhere, and while this work was a homecoming for me, it was also a work for the people in Waimārama who had another tangi (gathering and funeral for someone who had passed) at the marae (centre of a Māori village) just up the road. In between afternoon and evening performances, Terri and I went to pay our respects and sat around the tūpāpaku (the relation who had passed away) with other members of his whānau sharing and listening to stories together.
While you’ve been talking, you’ve been moving a lot Sean. You speak with your body, which reminds me of a reply that haka expert Henare Teowai once gave to a pātai (question) from Wiremu Parker who asked ‘what is the art of performing haka? Teowai answered “Kia kōrero te katoa o te tinana” (The whole body should speak).[19]
SM: I once saw some rangatahi (young people) doing haka, their bodies were so alive and speaking, they were like some other creatures. Haka is so much more than dance.
Having performed in Ngā Wai without a dramaturg or rehearsal director there the whole time with you must have been very difficult at times, and I would imagine that having a dramaturg or rehearsal director alongside you for any future work you make that you are performing in would be especially important.
SM: That is something I’ve thought about for the future.
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“I prefer to be invisible”
Interview with New Zealand Cinematographer and Documentary Maker Mairi Gunn
Mairi Gunn is an award-winning documentary maker, cinematographer, and Senior Lecturer in Design at Waipapa Taumata Rau—The University of Auckland. Her transdisciplinary practice-led research uses Extended Reality technologies to support intercultural relationships in temporary commons.[20] This pre-modern concept entails non-hierarchical relationship-building and self-determination in shared spaces.
I first met Mairi when she was teaching at Auckland University of Technology and doing her Master’s degree, and while I was there doing my PhD. She was a cinematographer for some of the video material generated for my practice-based thesis, and more recently I was a supervisor for her PhD at Waipapa Taumata Rau. What follows is an edited version of a discussion where she likens the role of cinematographer to a dramaturg and describes how her commitment to social service has informed technical decisions.
Mairi Gunn (MG): Being a cinematographer is like being a dramaturg in some ways. I assist directors to bring stories to life. I’ve worked with directors who are very good at writing dialogue, and seeing themselves as part of the scene, as one of the protagonists inside the world of the film. But they can’t always visualise the scene from the outside. That’s fascinating to me.
Moana Nepia: I imagine visualising scenes from both outsider and insider positions would broaden the range of options for you and for other directors who decide what we see or experience.
MG: Cameras are portable and enable us to enter the world of actors. But viewing modes tend to distance audiences by situating them as viewers who stare at screens. I used to display my films on flat 2-dimensional surfaces. The audience sits looking ‘at’ something on the screen, in the same way that an audience looks ‘at’ whatever is happening on a stage. With my newer work, which uses virtual and augmented realities, the audience moves through a window into whatever it is that we’ve constructed. That just blows away the idea of an audience or the viewers being ‘removed’. When you go through the window, you’re ‘in’ the world of the storytellers.
So how does the technology that you’re working with facilitate that?
MG: The images are global. If I use a 360° camera, for example, I’m not selecting a close-up or a mid-shot. I’m capturing the whole thing. It’s how people experience the world. They can turn their head to look in any direction.
Film theorist Laura Mulvey, who wrote about the male gaze in her article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, suggests that females who film tend to do long slow pans. I’m one of them. She describes the zoom lens, which goes out on a stalk and prioritises things, as being very male. A slow pan doesn’t prioritise in the same way, it’s more universal. 360° video is even more universal—it captures a whole sphere of information. When it’s screened on a PC, the viewer can scroll around, look-see, zoom in, and pan about. If they hear a sound, they can pan or scroll to where they think it might have come from. If viewing in a headset, they can turn their whole body around to see what the camera captured from there.
I’ve heard you say that this is not the real world. It’s a form of representation, or a creative response to it.
MG: It’s certainly not the real world. The camera is strategically placed and while making augmented reality for art galleries, I strategise to realise a political construct. I invite certain people in or take the camera to a place I’m invited into. The only options I give myself as far as capture goes involve camera position—height and proximity. All power goes to the storytellers.
In Haptic Hongi,[21] viewers feel the action of hongi (a customary greeting and pressing of noses) through a haptic insert in an augmented reality headset. During the capture, Tania Remana (Ngāpuhi) sits down at a black table with a black background. In the art gallery the viewers sit at a table decorated with a checked tablecloth and a vase of flowers representing Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) and the commons.
When the volumetric (3D) video is triggered, and Tania appears to sit down opposite them. She addresses her visitors directly, “Ko wai koe? Who are you?” She’s in control of what she says and does. According to some viewers, she brings her worldview with her. Viewers can’t affect her. She appears to be self-determined.
Conversely, in virtual reality, viewers are teleported into the world of the ‘subject’. When interviewing people with 360° video cameras (rather than the red, green, and blue depth sensors we use to capture AR material), I start talking to them then slowly lower my head below the camera, so they end up looking directly into it. I later replace the image of me with a plate of the environment. When viewers put the headset on, they feel the person being interviewed is looking directly at them. My presence is made invisible, despite being the director and conversationalist while recording.
When viewers encounter Pusi Urale, one of the subjects in common/place,[22] she says, “Talofa, it’s good to see you today” while seated at her table. Viewers feel as if she’s inviting them to sit with her in her whare (house) and speaking directly to them. They can also look around her room and out through windows to see what’s growing in her garden.
My PhD explored ways of using extended realities to push the boundaries of normal filmmaking. For my next project, I will continue to work with cinematic VR, which offers viewers a chance to explore the world I film with a 360° camera. But I’m not creating a VR experience that involves computer generated, 3-dimensional environments in which the viewer can move around with six degrees of freedom. This project is about the prison system in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I will film in a disused prison to give viewers an emotional experience of being in solitary confinement, if only for thirty seconds. I also want them to consider the plight of the families who are shut out, and what options we might have to do things differently. A lot of people in Aotearoa have been thinking about this very deeply for a long time. This is a trans-disciplinary research project inspired by the work of my mentor, Irene Hancy (Te Hikutū) from Kaikohe, and the research of Moana Jackson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) on Māori and the criminal justice system,[23] and constitutional reform[24] in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
There is a consistent sense of purpose in what you are doing to address existing social needs.
MG: In my current position at the University of Auckland, although budgetary constraints must always be dealt with, I am not looking to commercialise my findings and I choose research topics that interest me. I am most interested in being of service to others.
While working in the film industry I found dealing with egos, including my own, deeply problematic. If you’re a camera person filming actors, for example, people on set are watching them and then they’ll look at you, because you and the camera are moving. I’ve had people comment, “You look like you’re at one with the camera” or “Wow! A camera woman!” I think “Yeah…okay.”
Now I can be invisible. I prefer to be invisible.
Having worked with you in the past, and having seen some of your work, I sense your presence in it through the ways you focus our attention as viewers, draw us into the world of the stories you portray, and generate emotional impact. Being consistent in the way you produce quality work as a “dramaturgical” cinematographer is evident in the way you work with others, empathise and care for them and their stories, accommodate their needs, and find common ground. In these ways you are certainly not invisible, but seen, valued, and respected in return.
Endnotes
[1] Kouka, Hone (Writer, Director), (2017). The Beautiful Ones. Produced by Tawata Productions, Movement by Dolina Wehipeihana & Hone Kouka, Design by K*Saba, Performers Tama Waipara, Johnson Witehira, Wai Mihinui, Jaimee Warda, Sopheak Seng, Laurie Dean, Premiered 27 June 2017, Circa Theatre, Wellington, New Zealand.
[2] Lachance, Lindsay (2010). The Embodied Politics of Relational Indigenous Dramaturgies. [PhD Thesis] University of British Columbia.
[3] Patterson, Moss (2007). Whakairo [Choreography], Atamira Dance Company, lighting design Vanda Karolczak, sound design Paddy Free, set design Brett Graham, dancers Kelly Nash, Louise Pōtiki Bryant, Gaby Thomas, Peter Takapuna, Maaka Pepene, Jack Gray
[4] Walker, Ranginui (1990). Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou. Struggle Without End. Auckland: Penguin.
[5] Auckland Arts Festival, 2023, He Huia Kaimanawa, programme, Te Pou Theatre, 16-19 March.
[6] Kia Mau Festival, 2023, He Huia Kaimanawa, events, Te Whaea National Dance and drama Centre, 9-11 June.
[7] Pōhutu. Bianca Hyslop and Rowan Pierce. Australian Performing Arts Market.
[8] Australian Performing Arts Market, 2023, Pōhutu: Bianca Hyslop and Rowan Pierce.
[9] Pōhutu, 2019, Tempo Dance Festival. Performers Bianca Hyslop and Rose Tapsell, Design Rowan Pierce.
[11] The New Zealand Dance Company.
[15] He Huia Kaimanawa, Preview.
[16] Pōhutu. Bianca Hyslop and Rowan Pierce. Australian Performing Arts Market.
[17] MacDonald, Sean, 2020, Ngā Wai. Choreography Sean MacDonald, set design John Verryt, costume design Te Orihau Karaitiana, lighting design Vanda Karolczak, music David Long, voice Rio Hunuki Hemopo, taonga pūoro and cello Ruby Mae Hinepuni Solly, percussion Riki Pirihi Gooch, photo courtesy Sean MacDonald and Atamira Dance Company.
[18] Seawright, Megan, 2021, Incandescent Expressiveness, [Review of Ngā Wai], 16.04.21.
[19] In Kāretu, Tīmoti (1996). Haka! The Dance of a Noble People. Auckland: Reed Books, p.22.
[20] Gunn, Mairi (2023). Common/Room: Using Extended Reality Technologies to Support Intercultural Relationships in Aotearoa.” PhD Thesis, University of Auckland.
[21] Gunn, Mairi (Director) (2021). Haptic Hongi. [Augmented Reality (AR) experience]. Premiered at Ars Electronica: Garden Aotearoa (Global Festival for art, technology, and society), Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, New Zealand, 16 June-22 June 2022.
[22] Gunn, Mairi (Director) (2017). Common/Place. [360° 3D Virtual Reality (VR) experience]. Premiered at Whau Arts Festival, Riversdale Park, Avondale, Auckland, May 11, 2018.
[23] Jackson, Moana. “The Maori and the Criminal Justice System, a New Perspective: He whaipaanga hou.” Wellington, Policy and Research Division, Dept. of Justice, 1987.
[24] Mutu, Margaret (Chairperson) & Jackson, Moana (Convenor) (2018). Report of Matike Mai Aotearoa — The Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation.
Bibliography
Jackson, Moana. “The Maori and the criminal justice system, a new perspective: He whaipaanga hou.” Wellington, Policy and Research Division, Dept. of Justice (1987).
Lachance, Lindsay. The Embodied Politics of Relational Indigenous Dramaturgies. 2010. University of British Columbia. Accessed 28 December 2023.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminism and Film Theory. Routledge, 2013, pp. 57-68.
Mutu, Margaret and Moana Jackson. “Report of Matike Mai Aotearoa. The Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation. Accessed 28 December 2023.
Ruckstul-Mann, Rachel. “This is a Challenge, a Beating Heart of the Future.” Theatreview. 18 March 1987. Accessed 28 December 2023.
*Moana Nepia (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti) is a choreographer, visual artist, curator, designer and performer with backgrounds in Māori dance, contemporary dance and classical ballet. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Media Design School, was Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Pacific Islands Studies, Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). He is a dance graduate of VCA Melbourne and completed a PhD: Te Kore – Exploring the Māori concept of void from AUT. He was Arts Editor for The Contemporary Pacific and is on the Editorial Board of Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts.
Copyright © 2023 Moana Nepia
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques e-ISSN:2409-7411
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