KEY POINTS:
When Amanda Hereaka tucks 15-month-old son Finn in for naps, she attends to her other baby: co-ordinating an international indigenous theatre festival which reaches Auckland this weekend.
Modelled on the writers' festival Honouring Words, the biennial Honouring Theatre Festival was first presented in Canada in 2006.
It unites indigenous theatre companies - from Canada, New Zealand and Australia at this stage - to share stories which, says Hereaka, are often strikingly similar tales of endurance in the face of adversity.
This year's trio of plays are I Don't Want to Play House, produced by Perth's Yirra Yaakin Theatre, Tawata Productions' He Reo Aroha and Annie Mae's Movement presented by Native Earth Performing Arts, Canada's oldest professional aboriginal theatre company.
Hereaka says Annie Mae's Movement, a play about FBI raids on a North American Indian reservation in the mid-1970s, has similarities with last year's police "terror" raids into Tuhoe lands. The play was selected before the raids but it demonstrates that the issues facing Maori have an international context.
Annie Mae's Movement charts the final years in the brief life of Annie Mae Aquash, who became involved with the American Indian Movement in 1973 and was murdered in 1976 aged 31. Her death followed a shootout the year before at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation during which two FBI agents and an Oglala Indian man died.
Although Aquash was not there, she was interrogated and asked to inform. For years after her death, there was speculation whether the FBI or the AIM ended her life.
Local offering He Reo Aroha features former New Zealand Idol contestant Kali Kopae, who acts and performs her original compositions during the 70-minute love story.
Co-written by Miria George and actor/musician Jamie McCaskill (King and Country), it marks the latter's international debut as a playwright and is produced by Tawata Productions. Established in 2001, Tawata hopes to encourage the development of emerging Maori writers.
Across the Tasman, Yirra Yaakin has been working since 1993 to enable Australian aboriginal communities to tell their own stories. Its offering, I Don't Want to Play House, is an autobiographical account of the early childhood of performer Tammy Anderson, who tracks her journey through 16 houses during her first 15 years of life. Recounting the abuse she and her family endured, her story is surprisingly humorous and optimistic.
Hereaka, formerly artistic director for Taki Rua Productions, says the oral storytelling traditions of indigenous peoples fit well into a theatrical format.
PERFORMANCE
What: Honouring Theatre Festival
Where and when: Telstra Pacific, Manukau City, June 22-27
