Performing arts in New Zealand include amateur and professional presentations of theatre, circus, dance and music where it accompanies live performance. New Zealand has an active contemporary performing arts culture; many people participate in performing arts activities and most people live near an arts centre or theatre building.
History
Māori performing arts, toi and whare tapere The Indigenous peoples of New Zealand are Māori. The Māori worldview is different to that of the settler colonists and Western perspective, and performing arts was interlinked with aspects of daily life. The closest word for arts in the Māori language is toi. ...'toi' often translates as knowledge, skill, excellence, source, origin, or mastery. (Ranea Aperahama, 2018) Pre-European Māori culture was oral, passing on knowledge through story, song and genealogy. Knowledge was transferred and preserved in art, including carvings (whakairo), weaving (raranga), song (waiata) and dance (haka). Artefacts were handed down through generations.
Artist and scholar Rangihiroa Panaho relates to viewing and understanding Māori art as a meandering river, through the viewpoints of both a 'traditional' and 'contemporary' lens. Māori art is an idea, not so much a form: it is the flow, not so much where the flow settles. (Rangihiroa Panaho, 2015)It is known from mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) that there were Whare Tapere, pre-European places of storytelling and entertainment which included waiata (songs), haka (dance), ngā kōrero (stories), taonga pūoro (musical instruments), Ngā Taonga-o-Wharawhara (body adornments), karetao (puppets) and tākaro (games and amusements). Academic Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal says of Whare Tapere: "They fell into disuse in the 19th century and new ways of performing were subsequently developed by Maori communities." Tinerau and Kae are the Māori ancestors of performing arts.
The well-known form of kapa haka is part of the new ways of performing in Aotearoa.
Haka is translated into English as dance but as scholar Tīmoti Kāretu says it is more than a pastime; it is a composition, an expression of disciplined emotion and can hold a variety of roles including as welcome, as entertainment, as challenge, and as defiance and contempt. The ability to haka and to do so with style, grace, elegance and panache, was extremely important in traditional Māori society. (Tīmoti Kāretu,1993)
Settler colonist performing arts
Late 18th century and 19th century Sailors, sealers and whalers were the first Europeans to arrive to New Zealand at the end of the 18th century. They sang shanties, mostly of British and American origin, although some were adapted to a New Zealand context such as The Sailor's Way. Settler colonists started arriving in New Zealand at the beginning of the 19th century with trading stations established in the north. The first Christian mission station was established in the Bay of Islands in 1814 by Samuel Marsden. The first ship of settlers from the New Zealand Company arrived in Wellington in January 1840. The British upper class brought their culture of poetry recitals, literary reading and music with them. Amongst possessions shipped to New Zealand were instruments such as pianos as fictionalised in the film The Piano directed by Jane Campion. Working-class people from England, Ireland and Scotland were the biggest earliest migrant groups and they brought their performing arts traditions of singing, folk dancing and storytelling. Chinese immigrants came to New Zealand during the 1860s gold rush, with over 2,000 Chinese men settled in Otago by 1869. Other groups came to New Zealand too such as Dalmatians in the 1880s. There is very little written about performing arts of non-British migrant groups such as those from China and Europe over this period.
Once there were British settlements in New Zealand, touring theatre and music productions with English actors and managers toured through New Zealand and Australia. J.C. Williamson was one of these companies and Mrs W. H. Foley was a well-known performer of revues that included dramatic sketches and music. Pollard's Lilliputian Opera Company toured in Australia and New Zealand for thirty years from 1880. Entrepreneurial theatre managers built theatre buildings in every town as the settler populations increased. In Wellington the first theatre opened in 1843, only three years after the first settler ship arrived. This first theatre was called the Royal Victoria Theatre, it was a small wooden building with stalls and a gallery, lit by whale oil. In Auckland the Fitzroy on Shortland Street opened in 1844.
Early 20th century
In the 1920s, performing arts in cities changed with radio and cinema being introduced. Drama and entertainment consisted of touring British or Australian companies, for example English Shakespearean actor Allan Wilkie, who toured New Zealand seven times between 1916 and 1930. There were some New Zealand poets, novelists and short story authors but creating original New Zealand-based plays was not common. Rosemary Rees tried to established a theatre company in the 1920s and Ngaio Marsh was a member. Marsh also was part of Wilkie's touring company in 1919 and 1920.
Charles Cabot was a well known entertainer born in Wellington who travelled in 1912 on horse and cart with circus groups and also worked in Australia.
The 1910s and 1920s saw growth of amateur theatre in New Zealand, where people "put on plays for their own recreation and to present to other people". The New Zealand branch of the British Drama League was established in 1932. There were many writers contributing and three quarters were women. Violet Targuse was one who won several Drama League competitions with her work. New Zealand audiences wanted to see plays and the competition from cinema had mostly stopped the touring companies coming so amateur societies filled the gap. Most of the plays produced apart from the one act plays competition were English stories. Gilbert and Sullivan musicals and plays were popular in the 1930s. Writer Peter Harcourt in his book A Dramatic Appearance: New Zealand theatre 1920-1970 states that the 1930s although many people were involved in amateur theatre there was a "blinkered concentration on the west End of London" which meant writers and societies through the 1930s and 1940s presented plays about England. Harcourt describes this as "teacups and tennis-courts". Unity Theatre, a theatre company in Wellington founded in 1942 that ran until around 1979, specialised in bringing social, moral and political issues to audiences. Unity Theatre were an exception with most societies presenting only about one New Zealand play a year between 1950 and 1976. Other exceptions were the Community Arts Service in Auckland and the Māori Musical Society, which presented in 1941 an adaption of Hinemoa by Arthur Adam with soprano Te Mauri Meihana in the lead role.
Dance halls were how many people spent their entertainment time in the 1940s including a media outcry that this was introducing a slipping of morals, compounded by the numerous American soldiers stationed around New Zealand.
Establishment of professional New Zealand performing arts Development of professional New Zealand performing arts was also the development of a unique voice of New Zealand arts, one that reflected the communities that lived in New Zealand. Early professional theatre companies were New Zealand Players, active between 1952 and 1960 that toured nationally and the Southern Comedy Players (also called Southern Players) based in Dunedin and touring nationally, 1957–1971.
Richard Campion was the founder of the New Zealand Players, influenced by Bruce Mason and Ngaio Marsh. Mason's play The Pohutukawa Tree was written in 1955 and first performed in 1957 by the New Zealand Players. It is well known in New Zealand and often studied in schools. As director Colin McColl says, it is an expression of the 'complexities and the misunderstandings of Māori-Pākehā relations at the time'.
In 1963 a New Zealand government funding body for the arts was established, the Queen Elizabeth ll Arts Council. Bill Sheat was appointed to the drama panel and he was the chair from 1969 to 1973.
New Zealand actors and dancers were only trained by private teachers or learnt from appearing in amateur productions. The British-based Royal Academy of Dance's teaching certificate was first offered in the 1930s. If further training or education was desired for a professional career, people travelled overseas, usually to Britain. This changed with the opening of the National School of Ballet in 1967 (renamed the New Zealand School of Dance in 1982) and the New Zealand Drama School in 1970 (renamed Toi Whakaari in 1989). Rawiri Paratene was the first Māori graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 1972.
Downstage Theatre was a professional theatre company in Wellington (1964 to 2013) which occupied the purpose-built Hannah Playhouse.
The Māori Theatre Trust was formed in 1966 after an experience by Māori actors in Porgy and Bess that had Īnia Te Wīata in the lead and George Henare and 30 other Māori performers in the chorus. The Māori Theatre Trust supported training for Māori actors and the development and growth of contemporary Māori performance. Members included Don Selwyn and Rowley Habib (Rore Hapipi). They ceased to be active after 1970. The inaugural New Zealand Polynesian Cultural Festival began in 1972 and with the introduction of Māori Language Day in the same year, (initiated by Ngā Tama Toa and others including actor Rawiri Paratene), Māori cultural performing arts had more platforms to be performed in settings other than marae. The New Zealand Polynesian Cultural Festival became the Aotearoa Traditional Māori Performing Arts Festival in 1983 and then Te Matatini in 2004, and is a national biennial kapa haka competition and celebration.
Contemporary Māori performance company Te Ika a Maui Players started in 1976 with a three-year New Zealand tour of the play The death of the land by Rowley Habib. Circa Theatre in Wellington was established in 1976.
Te Ohu Whakaari, was a Māori theatre cooperative formed in the early 1980s that created and performed plays across New Zealand, touring for 15 years to schools and marae. It was formed by Rangimoana Taylor, and playwrights included his siblings Apirana Taylor and Riwia Brown. Writer and director Briar Grace-Smith was part of this group.
Blerta was a musical and theatrical collective from 1971 until 1975 that travelled around New Zealand. Red Mole was an alternative theatre company established in 1974, who also toured around New Zealand at various times.
The Globe Theatre in Dunedin, built by Patrick and Rosalie Carey in 1961 supported New Zealand poet and author James K. Baxter to write plays in the 1970s, they also presented Greek classics such as Euripides, the first production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in New Zealand, and other New Zealand work such as A State of Siege adapted from Janet Frame. The Fortune Theatre was professional theatre company in Dunedin from 1973 to 2018.