KIA MAU ANNOUNCES FIRST SHOWS FOR 2023

Fierce theatre, a hip-hop musical set in the city streets of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, customary Indigenous dance made contemporary, and wāhine Māori telling it like it is – these are among the first events announced for the trail-blazing, biennial Kia Mau Festival 2023.

Now in its seventh iteration, Kia Mau brings winter warmth to the Wellington region and has fast become one of the world’s most highly regarded contemporary Indigenous arts festivals. This year, it continues its emphasis on uplifting mana whenua artists, but will also welcome performers and companies from Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Ōtepoti/Dunedin, the Pacific and Canada to Te Ūpoko O Te Ika A Maui/Wellington region from 2 to 17 June. 

Its founders, leading Aotearoa creatives Hone Kouka and Mīria George, have today announced the first events on the 2023 programme – a programme filled with powerful theatre, dance, music, wānanga and hui, and visual arts.

Kia Mau Festival 2023 will be opened by award-winning musician, singer and songwriter, AJA (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Porou).

A grounded and powerful musician, AJA’s voice and musical arrangements speak intimately to a wide audience. With sure and guided vocal tones, AJA lures listeners into a vast musical soundscape.

In 2022, AJA, Byllie-Jean Zeta and Chris Wethey won the prestigious Silver Scroll Maioha Award for an exceptional waiata in te reo, for their song Te Iho. Te Iho praises the essence of powerful wāhine Māori, using poetic language to express the importance of women.

Despite the pandemic, 2020 marked the release of AJA’s waiata KĀWAI exploring themes of creation and environmental awareness. It’s an uplifting ode to the element of water; a recount of human lineage and our relationship to water. KĀWAI is a sweet dedication to wāhine, ko wai koe, ko wai au.

During te wā o Matariki 2019, AJA released her first single Non-Handler. On 23 March, she is dropping a live video featuring her new waiata Feel It.

AJA will perform at Circa Theatre on 2 and 3 June.

Celebrating its 40th Anniversary, Pōneke-based Taki Rua brings to Te Papa one of its original Te Reo Māori productions, Taku Waimarie, by Willy Craig Fransen. Since its founding in 1983, Taki Rua has blazed a trail as the first national kaupapa Māori performing arts organisation, producing, commissioning and developing theatre works through a distinctively Māori lens.

Performed entirely in te reo Māori, Taku Waimarie has become a classic and is now reimagined for the tamariki of today, utilising humour and endearing characters as it reveals the power of working together to overcome life’s challenges. 

Taku Waimarie is at Te Papa on Saturday, 3 June.

After a sell-out 10-day season at Bats last year, Mokomoko returns to Pōneke, this time at Circa Two. Mokomoko looks back and explores whakapapa and inevitably the impacts of colonisation on identity through the eyes of Moko, played by Mycah Keall (Taranaki, Te Whānau-a-Apanui). Presented by a Māori-led creative team, Mokomoko was written by Sherilee Kahui (Taranaki).

“I want wāhine Māori to come and feel seen, heard and empowered. This show is for us. I want tāne Māori to listen and enjoy the lols, but also take away that they need to have our backs,” says Sherilee. “I want our pākehā and tauiwi mates to come and listen and strengthen their allyship. Regardless of who they are or where they are coming from, I hope people find moments that resonate and perhaps start to feel like there is a way forward past personal and communal trauma.”

Mokomoko is at Circa Two from Tuesday, 6 June to Saturday, 10 June.

Katie Wolfe’s The Haka Party Incident, presented in partnership with PANNZ, makes its Pōneke debut in Kia Mau 2023. Described as documentary theatre at its most compelling and relevant, Katie (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) won three Adam New Zealand Play Awards for The Haka Party Incident which combines storytelling, verbatim script work and kapa haka.

Based on an event that changed race relations in Aotearoa forever, it resurrects the eventful day when a group of University of Auckland engineering students rehearsing their annual mock haka were confronted by the activist group, He Taua. Though just three minutes long, the encounter sent ripples through the nation and changed race relations in New Zealand forever.

The Haka Party Incident, presented in partnership with PANNZ, is at the Opera House for one night only on Thursday, 15 June. 

One of Canada’s leading Indigenous dance companies, The Dancers of Damelahamid, brings its acclaimed show Mînowin to Pōneke’s Te Whaea Theatre.  The company, from the northwest coast of British Columbia, are leading exponents of masked dance and Mînowin is its largest theatre production. Using movement, song and multimedia design, it immerses audiences in a story that reflects on Indigenous identity and illuminates moments of connection, understanding and renewal.

Mînowin is at Te Whaea Theatre from Wednesday, 14 June to Sunday, 18 June.

Also heading south from Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Rēhia Theatre’s KŌPŪ promises to make audiences sit up, laugh, cry and reflect on a world they might not recognise. Te Rēhia Theatre’s Amber Curreen (Shortland Street, Kawa, Waru) and a team of young wāhine Māori use live music, acting, poetry and poi to shed light on the oft-hilarious experiences of wāhinetanga today: “The duality of being fiercely everything at once.”

They invite audiences to “kindly unpeg yourself from the patriarchy, check your white feminism at the door and join us in a hearty musical celebration of the ira Wāhine in all of us. KŌPŪ calls you in a cheeky ballad of a show, sharing the songs of our young wāhine Māori as they navigate this world, hairy nipples first, following in the footsteps of our naughty nannies from the kauta.”

KŌPŪ is at the Hannah Playhouse from Tuesday, 6 June to Saturday, 10 June.

One of Pōneke’s newest theatre companies, I Ken So Productions returns to Kia Mau with O le Pepelo, Le Gaoi Ma Le Pala’ai – The Liar, the Thief and the Coward. A Matai faces his own mortality through an unknown illness but decides not to appoint a successor which sends his family and village into a whirlwind chase for the title.

I Ken So was started in 2017 by Natano Keni, a first generation New Zealand Samoan raised in Upper Hutt, and Sarita So, who was born in Wellington to parents who fled Cambodia some 40 years ago. Since their debut production, Natano and Sarita have experienced phenomenal success having been awarded The Peter Harcourt New Playwright of the Year at the Wellington Theatre Awards with I Ken So's debut production, Riverside Kings, which was also nominated for two others, and receiving an invitation to take their second, Digging to Cambodia, to Hawai’i. 

O le Pepelo, Le Gaoi Ma Le Pala’ai – The Liar, the Thief and the Coward is at Circa One from Thursday, 15 June to Saturday, 17 June with a preview on Wednesday, 14 June.

Flames: A Hip-hop Musical received rave reviews when it premiered at BATS with Theatreview’s Margaret Austin describing it as “smart, sassy and exhilarating.” It’s back for Kia Mau so that Private Detectives Morgan Reid and Ian Sheff can attempt to solve a series of arsons across Wellington city. But their inability to work together forces them to rely on two outsiders and, unintentionally, a band of misfits is brought together.

Its creators, Toi Whakaari graduates Roy Iro and Reon Bell, say Flames is a one-of-kind show that celebrates the whakapapa of hip-hop in Aotearoa.

Flames:  A Hip-hop Musical is at Circa Two from Tuesday, 13 June to Saturday, 17 June.

Award-winning local choreographer Eddie Elliott (Ngāti Maniapoto) has spent significant moments in his career working with Canadian dance companies but the production he and creative partners, Niwa Milroy and Cian Parker, bring to Kia Mau, and Circa One, is grounded in an exploration of Māori ancestral origins and legacy.

Waiwhakaata – Reflections in the Water is contemporary dance combined with explosive and innovative physical theatre, taonga puoro and kōrero tuku iho to explore one man’s journey of self-rediscovery.

Having lost touch with his Māori heritage, caught up in the rat race of urban humanity and drifting further from his roots, Rehua begins a personal journey towards healing and redemption. A life-altering decision changes the pathway, guiding his return to the whenua and waterways of his forebears. Steeped in history, emotion, and an inherent connection with patupaiarehe, the ancestors guide Rehua as his identity resurfaces while learning to integrate his past with his present self.

Waiwhakaata – Reflections in the Water is at Circa One from Wednesday, 7 June to Saturday, 10 June.

Expect a poignant and potent synergy of movement, voice, spatial design and virtual technologies when leading choreographer Bianca Hyslop and visionary artist/musician Rowan Pierce bring – fresh from the Auckland Arts Festival - He Huia Kaimanawa to Kia Mau. A visceral live performance work, it explores and responds to the resurfacing, reclaiming and honouring of Te Re Māori.

It looks back to the past as we move into the future, bringing to light stories of loss and reclamation while celebrating the work of the many who carved the path for the ongoing revitalisation of te reo rangatira. 

He Huia Kaimanawa is at Te Whaea Theatre from Friday, 9 June to Sunday, 11 June.

With further announcements to come, Kia Mau co-founder Hone Kouka says he believes this year’s Kia Mau Festival is one centred on reconnection and strengthening the bonds with Indigenous artists around the Pacific rim.

“Kia Mau is led by the artists who are central,” says Kouka, who was last year named the Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate, receiving the Sir Roger Hall Theatre Practitioners Award. 

“Everything in the festival builds and arises from this but it’s not just artist-centric, it’s Indigenous-centric – and lots of people globally are looking now at the Indigenous world view but that view isn’t static or held in the past, it’s contemporary. 

“Kia Mau is founded on Indigenous story sovereignty – this, and our service to Indigenous artists, is at the heart of everything we do. We take very seriously our accountability as festival curators to mana whenua artists and are extremely proud of the powerful works, the stories they tell, the dialogue they create and messages they deliver. These are experiences audiences don’t forget.”

Kouka says it means audiences can expect genre-defying live performances with the power to transform the way they look at the world. While some are mainstage productions by established and award-winning performance makers, many others are by new and emerging artists so audiences get to see tomorrow’s superstars today.

Originally known as Ahi Kā, an annual celebration of Māori, Pasifika and Indigenous performing arts, Kia Mau was first held in 2017.  Hone and Mīrīa decided to make it a biennial celebration because its exponential growth meant it was too big for them to programme every year.

“And we wanted to keep doing what we do, being artists,” they say.

But Kia Mau has remained true to its roots, identifying artists at key turning points in their careers, or with specific projects, and supporting them to take strategic and pivotal steps forward. For this reason, Kia Mau Festival has made a significant impact on the many artists who have worked with the festival and, in turn, Aotearoa New Zealand’s contemporary creative landscape.

“Through Kia Mau, artists gain access to a festival that serves and nurtures them throughout the creative process, thereby building capabilities and in turn strengthening and diversifying the Aotearoa arts sector by uplifting Māori, Pasifika and Indigenous artists,” says George.

Centring events on Pōneke and growing regionally also remain pivotal.

“I wanted to make it Wellington-heart because I love that city and it’s been really good to me so it was my way of giving back to the city where I have had such great creative experiences,” says Kouka.

This coming together of kōrero and whanaungatanga means Kia Mau is increasingly recognised globally as a whare in which Māori, Pasifika and international Indigenous artists, and their communities, are looked after as they create, develop and stage extraordinary music, performance and art.

Because of this finely tuned understanding of the arts sector and strong relationships with both emerging and established artists, it means Kia Mau Festival is taking its place alongside some of the world’s best-known Indigenous cultural events like Melbourne’s Yirramboi Festival and Vancouver’s Talking Stick Festival.

It’s led Hone to dream big: “I want Te Ūpoko O Te Ika A Maui to become the global centre for contemporary Indigenous arts.”

Kia Mau 2023 runs 2 to 17 June. Tickets are on sale now, with more info and tickets at www.kiamaufestival.org.