Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 85| October 2024

1. Issue 85 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Contents
3. Editorial
4. Karakia in Rehearsal: A Reflection on Indigenous Praxis Fran Kewene  

   This article is a short reflective piece which explores a personal approach to using a Māori ritual called karakia. This reflection explores the importance of karakia as a culturally responsive theatre praxis and an act of decolonising and embodied love within the context of the rehearsal process in Aotearoa New Zealand. Told using a personal story of grief and loss, this reflection introduces the reader to: the whakapapa of karakia, and how karakia is used in Marae Theatre in Aotearoa New Zealand. It also provides examples of karakia used in theatre praxis and concludes with a challenge to the reader to explore their own biases before including karakia authentically into their own theatre praxis.

    

   Keywords

   Decolonisation, karakia, Māori theatre, rehearsal, praxis

5. The Waka of Love: Decolonial Anti-Racist Praxis of Aro Ki Te Hā led by, with and for Indigenous Kids in Aotearoa 

   This article describes The Waka of Love, a Theatre Marae-informed stage production situated within a Kaupapa Māori research project examining impacts of racism on mokopuna Māori in Aotearoa. Underpinned by ethical co-designing – an approach aligned with Indigenous rights that emphasises power-sharing, accountability and positive transformation – and through wānanga-based creative participatory inquiry grounded in Te Ao Māori, mokopuna Māori collaborated to address racism and its impacts on hauora. The Waka of Love serves to illustrate decolonial anti-racist praxis that challenges colonial knowledge systems through empowerment of mātauranga Māori and whakamoemoeā for mokopuna Māori. Central to The Waka of Love is that of aro ki te hā – the sacred reverence for the breath – fostering deep interconnectedness, compassion, empathy, and respect for oneself, one another, Papatūānuku, and the universe. The Waka of Love underscores decolonial anti-racist

   efforts toward liberation, enabling the flourishing of mātauranga and hauora for mokopuna Māori, their whānau and communities.

    

   Keywords

   Love, Indigenous, Māori, decolonial, racism

6. Seeing Yourself to See Others: The Importance of Critical Love in Work with Marginalised Communities 

   This article discusses the unintended harm that Applied Theatre practitioners can inflict on their participants due to their unconscious biases and assumptions. The author argues that this is the result of ‘fake love’, wherein practitioners only centre the vulnerabilities and experiences of their participants while neglecting how they participate in broader systemic issues. The article proposes a shift from ‘fake love’ to ‘Critical Love’, which requires practitioners to engage in a critical and deep self-reflection on their own biases, privileges, and the power dynamics they bring to the room. The author provides examples of her own critical self-reflection and how these may affect participants, and she encourages practitioners to do the same. Through Critical Love, the article argues, practitioners can foster more authentic and empowering relationships with participants, which has the potential to drive real social change and justice within Applied Theatre practice and beyond.

    

   Keywords

   Critical Love, Applied Theatre, facilitation

    
7. Performing Compassion/Performing Aroha in Learning Disabled Theatre 

   In 2023, eight learning disabled performers from Different Light Theatre collaborated with eighteen drama school students from NASDA (National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art) in Christchurch on a production of Faust.Us based on Marlowe’s

   text. The framing principles of the process were intended to be whanaungatanga (kinship and belonging), kotahitanga (unity) and, particularly, manaakitanga (hospitality) in which the non-disabled staff and students would afford support for the learning disabled performers. However, the emotional and theatrical outcome of this process was a profound reversal of this ‘economy of affection’ in the collaboration and the performance. It was in fact the support of the learning disabled actors for their non-disabled colleagues that proved invaluable and unshakeable. While in inclusive theatre we might assume that the performance of compassion would be for the benefit of the learning disabled actors, this flipping of the script had real power to hit everyone in the guts.

    

   Keywords

   Learning disability, inclusion, radical compassion, manaakitanga

8. ‘Approaching with Alofa’: Transforming Acting Spaces for BIPOC Creatives 

   This talanoa (conversation) between final year PhD candidate Sepelini Mua’au (Levī-Saleīmoa & Matāutu Falelātai) and Nicola Hyland (Te Ati-Haunui-a-Pāpārangi/Ngāti Hauiti) explores the ‘why’ of Sepe’s project that centres around decolonising frameworks and Theatre in Aotearoa. Exploring the whakapapa of this research, Sepe speaks to his upbringing as a second-generation, New Zealand-born Samoan and delves into key moments in his creative journey as an actor, writer, director and theatre-maker. The talanoa questions historical institutions with colonial foundations to encourage conversations around decolonised ways of working as a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour) creative in Aotearoa. What does approaching rehearsal spaces with alofa/aroha mean for BIPOC creatives? This talanoa acknowledges Sepe’s experiences within the Samoan concept of the vā, which centres around the formation and maintenance of meaningful relationships with people, and. in this instance, Sepe’s creative practice.

    

   Keywords

   Decolonial, BIPOC, actor training, Pasifika

9. Indigenous Performances of Love beyond Settler Recognition in Vigil and The Unnatural and Accidental Women 

   The proliferation of the discourse of recognition in state politics is, as many anti-colonial scholars have argued, a form of governmentality in settler colonial nations. How does love among the colonised disrupt colonial recognition? What learnings do we gain when we theorise acts of decentering colonial recognition in terms of love? This article explores these questions through Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s performance Vigil, and Métis playwright Marie Clements’ play The Unnatural and Accidental Women from northern Turtle Island (Canada). The article theorises love as an insurgence against what Dylan Robinson calls ‘perceptual logics of settler colonialism’.

    

   Keywords

   Recognition, Canada, love, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), performance

10. Adaraye Aragalaya (Struggle for Love): Sri Lanka’s ‘Occupy’ Moment, Plural Political Enactments, and the End of the Rajapaksas 

    The article explores how Aragalaya embodies Judith Butler’s concept of plural performativity as a call for justice and rejection of precarity. This unique Sri Lankan socio-political movement, often called ‘Adaraye Aragalaya’ (struggle for love), reflects its non-violent ethos and practice of inclusivity. In April 2022, groups of young people occupied the Galle Face promenade beside the Presidential Secretariat building in Colombo to demand that the Sri Lankan President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, resign. Butler suggests that when masses occupy public spaces to protest, exercising their ‘plural and performative right to appear’, the gatherings embody ‘plural performativity’, and the bodies enact ‘political meanings’. The article features an

    analysis of three artists’ performances: a trans woman, a man who carried a large wooden cross, demanding justice for the victims of the 2019 Easter bombings, and a performer who painted his body red to commemorate the 1983 Black July massacre victims.

     

    Keywords

    Sri Lanka, Aragalaya, plural performativity, Judith Butler, non-violent protest

11. Wellbeing in the Performance of Morally Questionable Characters: Enacting Love and Compassion for Human Woundedness 

    The Healthy Conservatoires (UK), covering drama, music and dance training institutions, has included the spiritual (defined as ‘exploring beliefs, values and ethics and creating a sense of purpose and meaning in life’) as one of eight key dimensions in its online wellbeing framework. Yet few drama schools have formally incorporated considerations of moral and spiritual development as part of their curriculum. In 2020, interviews with nine professional actors documented the impacts of playing a villain or other amorally inclined characters. The study found that three factors can impact actors’ personal and relational wellbeing in enacting such characters: 1. the requirements of empathy in the creation and performance of character; 2. the potentiality of moral distress and injury in the creation and performance of character; and 3. the shaping of intrinsic and extrinsic values during professional identity formation. Love and compassion for human woundedness needs to be honoured in drama schools.

     

    Keywords

    Actor training, moral injury, spirituality, intrinsic values, wellbeing

12. Hine’s Monologue Delivered to Her Husband Talite at His Tangihanga, on the Eve of the Poroporoaki 

    Hine’s Monologue is a poroporoaki to her late husband Talite, as she comes to terms with his passing after the unfortunate collapse of their marriage. Despite enduring love, the obstacles they faced together in the form of personal challenges exacerbated by societal inequities and mandates from church authorities undermined their ability to live in love. Hine’s monologue is a call to whānau and community to better support young, brown couples and their families, and a reminder that the kupu aroha is both tūingoa (noun) and tūmahi (verb); in equal parts a nameable thing, a destination, an action, state, and condition. Hine’s monologue, performed by Erina Daniels and Emma Katene, was one of six monologues woven together under the title ONO and presented at both Tahi Festival 2023, Wellington and Koanga Festival 2023, Auckland.

     

    Keywords

    Aroha, Māui, Whānau, Church, Poroporoaki

13. Contributors