KEY POINTS:
On an early summer's evening in Cambridge, sun streams through the Gothic arches and across the manicured lawns of King's College.
Tourists promenade the footpaths and students whiz down the cobbled King's Parade on bikes. Across the street, the storeowner blasts Bhangra beats from his souvenir shop. It's a postcard-perfect snapshot of modern Britain.
And just around the corner is a piece of Pasifika. Down an alley is the Corpus Playroom, one of the theatres hosting the Pasifika Styles Performing Arts Festival.
The week-long festival, which opened last month, is described by festival director Alexander Leiffheidt as "the living heart" of the two-year long Pasifika Styles exhibition, which is at the midway point.
It showcases the work of around 30 contemporary New Zealand artists among taonga, or treasures, housed by Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Leiffheidt, whose London-based theatre company Far Cry specialises in international productions and collaborations, describes the Maori and Pacific Island theatre scene as "a breath of fresh air.
"When I went to New Zealand [to plan the programme] I found the particular combination of oral traditions, Maori expression and experiences with European forms of theatre very exciting and innovative."
Funded by the Arts Council, the programme included three plays, as well as an activities day that drew around 300 visitors.
Around 50 per cent of all tickets were sold, a respectable amount, says Leiffheidt. "For something like the Edinburgh Festival you would budget for 30 per cent sales so it has exceeded that. It was always going to be a pioneering experience as it's so difficult to introduce new works to theatre-goers."
Part of the programme also travelled to London where it attracted bigger audiences.
The production with the most pulling power was Niu Sila, written by comedy duo Oscar Kightley and Dave Armstrong. A funny and poignant story of multicultural friendship, the award-winning play has already been seen by around 16,000 New Zealanders. It achieved "near sell-out" performances in Britain, says Leiffheidt.
Niu Sila travels well because the themes are universal, says Kightley. "Any person in England who has grown up with people from different backgrounds, be they Muslim, Hindu, West Indian, Chinese or Eastern European, will immediately relate."
Samoan-born Makerita Urale's play Frangipani Perfume, a black comedy with an all-female cast, was also chosen for the festival.
"Theatre has played an important role in the whole emancipation of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand by voicing unique concerns, and plays like Frangipani Perfume are testament to that," says Leiffheidt.
The third production, Wellington playwright Miria George's And what remains, gave British audiences an insight into the complex nature of New Zealand politics and race relations. Directed by Hone Kouka, the play was first shown in Wellington in 2005.
It is set in Wellington's international airport in 2010, when Aotearoa no longer has an indigenous population: all Maori have either died or fled, except for one. The last of the tangata whenua is Mary (Erina Daniels), a young woman waiting for her flight.
Joining her in the departure lounge is a diverse bunch of strangers who have their own reasons for leaving. When the flight is delayed, they discover the truth about why Mary and her people have gone away.
And what remains was written in response to the Foreshore and Seabed Legislation, passed in 2005 and which extinguished the right of iwi to coastal ownership. In New Zealand, the play provoked strong responses: one reviewer called it "absurdist theatre", arguing that the premise just couldn't happen here.
For George, it already has. She argues that the way the Government went ahead with the legislation, despite the Court of Appeal ruling that Maori had the right to explore entitlement to coastal ownership, is a prime example of the way cultural debate is promptly extinguished.
Sitting in a cafe in London's Royal Festival Hall, George - named Emerging Pacific Islands Artist in 2005 - says she describes the play to British theatre-goers as "indigenous science fiction.
"It is indigenous theatre but it doesn't necessarily have the same shapes as you might expect from indigenous theatre, for example traditional music and dance, or kapahaka."
And what remains still incorporates music, however: the cast move slowly on to the set to Fat Freddy's Drop's Midnight Marauders; the play opens with Shapeshifter's spine-tingling Long White Cloud. These are the sounds of 21st-century Aotearoa.
One criticism of the play is that it is seen as "too wordy" - certain characters convey large chunks of New Zealand history and politics during the 90-minute play. But George is unapologetic: "It's very much a play in the traditional sense."
English theatre-goers "enjoy language", she says. "The audiences were listening and laughing. In Wellington it was much more restrained and there was less laughter."
Once the performances in Cambridge were over, George spent a week in London meeting several black and Asian theatre groups. "I went to one workshop and there were all walks of life - being around different sorts of people opens you up."
In And what remains one of the characters, Ila (Rashmi Pilapitiya), urges fellow passenger Solomon (Shortland Street's Semu Filipo) to travel because then he will know why New Zealand feels like home - because of the tangata whenua.
George, who is Ngati Awa and Te Arawa, spent significant periods of her childhood in the Cook Islands with her father's family and later had a two-year stint in South America. She says coming to London has opened her eyes.
"I have realised New Zealand is even more conservative than I thought. There's not so much integration as this," she says, waving towards the variety of people wandering around the South Bank. "It's so mixed."
Despite the hard-hitting political message, And what remains is also a bi-cultural love story. "It's about people - despite our history and what's happening at the moment, I think that sometimes we forget about the personal side."
All the characters are flawed, none of them - European, Samoan, Malaysian, Indian or Maori - is without some blame. But in the end all are determined to make a difference.
"This is the heart of the play," says George. "We can all do something - that's the main thing. We all have a role to play, as long as the communications are open."
