Ana Scotney will bring her solo show to the Q Theatre next month. Photo / Nicola Sanford
Ana Scotney will bring her solo show to the Q Theatre next month. Photo / Nicola Sanford
The tectonic talent Ana Scotney’s new solo play, ScatterGun: After the Death of Rūaumoko, is personal and political, but ]it’s about people first’.
Next month Ana Scotney (Ngai Tūhoe), described as a “Māori millennial on fire” by Silo Theatre, will bring her solo show to the Q Theatre. A love letter to Aotearoa, ScatterGun: After the Death of Rūaumoko has been updated with renewed vigour.
“Would I have ever expected that there would be a government taking a possible amendment of Te Tiriti to select committee to discuss changing Te Tiriti O Waitangi-the Treaty of Waitangi? Only in my worst nightmare,” Scotney tells Spy.
Scotney, 29, shot to fame starring in such films as The Breaker Upperers, Millie Lies Low and Bad Behaviour, and television shows Shortland Street and Wellington Paranormal.
By the time she graduated from Aotearoa’s top drama school Toi Whakaari, she had constructed and performed in two solo shows that toured throughout the country.
ScatterGun explores the themes of grief, whānau, connection, and identity. Photo / Taoki Okano
ScatterGun is Scotney’s latest solo work, exploring the themes of grief, whānau, connection, and identity, and has received accolades and awards at New Zealand and Australian Fringe Festivals.
Now with the support of the Silo Theatre and a team of industry-leading designers, Scotney is taking ScatterGun to the next level as their first production of the year.
The play centres around Agnes, a character Scotney says has existed in her imagination for a long time and is steeped in real-life experience. But she stresses an artist never kisses and tells the specifics. “Agnes acts as an avatar that I can write both my lived experiences and the experiences of friends and other loved ones into, blending these with both fictitious events,” she says.
“For this play, it was quite straightforward. Agnes would be the story’s protagonist, and the audience travels with her for a journey across one night in her life,” Scotney explains.
“This particular night marks the five-year anniversary of the death of her younger brother, Rūaumoko, who is named after the Māori god of volcanic and tectonic movement.”
Scotney spoke to whānau from Te Urewera, Pōneke, and Tāmaki Makaurau, combining their voices with personal experiences and using her wild imagination to solo perform 10 characters to the stage mashing up poetry, waiata, movement and sound in her storytelling.
Scotney's solo show may be political, but more than anything she says it is her personal text. Photo / Nicola Sanford
Scotney hints that ScatterGun may be political, but more than anything says it is her personal text.
“It’s about people first, I think,” she says. “As opposed to being about making political statements.
“I think that dogma of any kind is dangerous. Will we change the text to respond to what’s happening to Māori, politically? Maybe. Probably. A little bit.”
Scotney says she will be channelling a personal rage and voltage in her performance as a means of artistic activism against what this Government is bringing to the table and legislatively reforming in Wellington.
“Greed and colonial imperialism are still alive and kicking in Aotearoa, and though I am safe and protected in my immediate community from such violent ideology and discourse taking place, it’s a good wake-up call, and I am very proud to be an artist in Aotearoa.”
Before Scotney even thinks of touring ScatterGun internationally, she wants to ace the coming Auckland season and figure out how they tour this version of the show to Te Urewera in the bush to share it back in the place where much of the source material was born.
“How we can bridge the space between Western and urban artistic environments and contexts like theatres, cinemas and galleries, and take them to be experienced by off-the-grid communities in remote places, like the bush, is important to me.”
The multi-talented Scotney also makes music under the moniker Kōtiro. Last year she released the award-winning podcast True Justice, about people who have lived under the criminal justice system. She is also writing and producing a short film as part of a film intensive she is doing at Jane Campion’s pop-up film school, A Wave in the Ocean.
“After that, I am thinking it might be time for me to finally migrate overseas for an international era,” she says. “Or maybe I’ll finally get my motorbike. Let’s see how that plan shapes up, ha!”
ScatterGun: After the Death of Rūaumoko is on from April 18 to May 4 at Q Theatre in Auckland. Tickets are available from Silotheatre.co.nz
