Waiora

Waiora Te U Kai Po (The Homeland) was commissioned for the 1996 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, revised for a national and international tour in 1997, and published (Huia, 1997) with an introduction by Roma Potiki and afterword by Judith Dale. It includes waiata and haka by Hone Hurihanganui, performed by spirit characters who observe the action in a manner reminiscent of a Greek chorus, but eventually go beyond that to conflict and interact with the living. The play again presents a tempestuous gathering, a birthday party in a sawmill worker?s family who have left their North Island homeland in search of material improvement near Christchurch. It draws irony from the ?immigrant? status of the Maori family. The 1965 setting enables social and racist attitudes to be simplified, while the play also shows the complex pressures of social aspiration and of increasingly global culture. Its centre, however, is the plangent sense of disruption and loss of home.