What: The Pohutukawa Tree
Where and when: Maidment Theatre, September 3-26
Rena Owen is back home from Hollywood to star in The Pohutukawa Tree, a play widely regarded as a New Zealand classic but rarely staged by professional theatre companies.
Considered a seminal work because of its exploration of Maori-Pakeha relations, Bruce Mason's 1955 play was once popular with amateur companies and widely studied in schools. The BBC even turned it into a television drama in 1959 and a local radio version was produced five years later.
But the Auckland Theatre Company's production is its first professional staging in Auckland and only the second full professional show in the play's history. The first was 25 years ago at Wellington's Downstage Theatre.
ATC artistic director Colin McColl believes one of the reasons The Pohutukawa Tree is seldom performed by professional theatre companies is because there has been no one of the right age, experience and emotional range to portray its central character, Aroha Mataira.
However, McColl believes Owen is ready for the challenge of playing the Maori matriarch whose pride, stubbornness and fervent spirituality mean she cannot cope with change in post-World War II New Zealand.
Owen has wanted to do the play since she was a teenager because it was the only one she knew featuring roles for Maori. She describes The Pohutukawa Tree as a work of genius combined with courage and says its themes remain contemporary.
"It's a classic, it really is and Aroha is a gift for any actor. But she is one of those characters who require a certain kind of depth that only comes with maturity. I know I have to be disciplined because she is such a demanding character."
Having played Beth Heke in the film Once Were Warriors, Owen is no stranger to emotionally charged and demanding roles. But she doesn't liken Aroha to Beth, the battered wife who drew strength from her Maori heritage and left her violent husband. Instead she sees similarities between Aroha and the abusive Jake "the Muss" Heke, saying both are too proud to compromise.
"Jake couldn't give an inch and neither can Aroha because they have based their sense of self-worth and self-esteem on a certain identity and image which has no solid foundation. They cannot have that challenged because their fragile egos are invested in it.
"Once things around them start to crack, it becomes a slow demise for them because they are too proud to admit they were wrong, that there is another way."
While they are fictional characters, Owen says they reflect an innate Maori pride which can help or hinder depending on the individual situation. She knows that from personal experience.
One of nine children, she was raised by her Maori father and European mother on a farm in the Bay of Islands. She never knew her mother's family because they disowned their daughter for marrying a Maori.
Owen grew up steeped in Maori culture, developing a strong sense of identity and a love of cultural and artistic pursuits. But when she left school, she trained as a nurse, saying it was one of the only career options open to young women back then. Aged 21, Owen headed to London for her OE but the temptations of a big city proved too much.
"I had school certificate, university entrance, I was a fully qualified nurse and I was 21 and in London so I thought I knew it all. I was actually very naive and arrogant. I thought I could try drugs and not become addicted, that I was in control, but if you play with fire, you get burned and I did."
Owen was arrested when police raided the home of the heroin dealer she bought drugs from. She spent seven months in British prisons.
"It was pride that got me into trouble in the first place but pride that got me out of it. I went through a process of thinking long and hard about what I wanted from my life. I realised I still had a creative streak.
"My addiction and arrest turned out to be a blessing because they got me back on track. Theatre became my drug. If you find what it is that you are passionate about, you don't go wayward because you have something to live for that makes you get out of bed in the mornings.
"People have mainly seen me on screen but I cut my teeth in the theatre," says Owen, who trained at the Actors Institute in London and has written several stage and screen plays.
That theatre can become a passion which empowers is a sentiment shared by Glenfield College's head of drama Kathryn Whillans, who will take her students to see The Pohutukawa Tree. They will be among 1750 school pupils, from 40 schools, who will see the production described in publicity material as a glimpse into New Zealand's theatrical past.
"It's an enriching experience and the students love going," Whillans says. "It is essential for our students to see 'New Zealand on stage' because it enables people to think about our social and cultural past.
"By going to see The Pohutukawa Tree, they can think about a number of issues which extend into our world today. It will provoke the students to ask questions."
One of New Zealand's best known playwrights, Bruce Mason has long featured in the school syllabus. He wrote more than two dozen plays and was an actor, critic, fiction writer and advocate for professional theatre in this country.
His play The End of the Golden Weather, based on Mason's memories of growing up in Takapuna in the 1920s and 30s, is perhaps his most famous work.
"Bruce really was ahead of his time in that he did what lots of young actors do today when they need to create work opportunities for themselves," says McColl.
"He wrote a solo show which he could tour easily and travelled round the country performing it."
Mason was also progressive in critiquing race relations in New Zealand and Maori and Pakeha connections to the land, through works based on personal observations and his own experiences and political beliefs.
In The Pohutukawa Tree, Aroha Mataira is the matriarch of the last Maori family at Te Parenga. She lives on land that used to belong to her iwi, who now live further away.
A devout Christian, Aroha is fiercely proud of her ancestor, Whetumarama, who won a famous battle against European settlers there. Ultimately, though, her ancestors lost the war and the land is now owned by the Atkinson family.
While Aroha schooled her children, Queenie (Maria Walker) and Johnny (Tiare Tawera), to do things the "Pakeha way", she is increasingly ashamed of and threatened by their defiant behaviour.
She holds tight to a romanticised vision of the past, refusing to leave her ancestral homeland but otherwise shunning her culture. Her children see a brighter future but can Aroha find a place in their brave new world?
As well as casting difficulties, McColl believes the play fell out of favour because many believed it captured a long-gone moment in time and its themes were no longer relevant, particularly after the so-called Maori Renaissance.
"It became unfashionable and I don't think anyone wanted to look back on the 1950s but now we have had enough time to reflect on the era and see that Bruce Mason, in his humble way, was trying to explore the complexity of Maori and European relations.
"It has a lot to tell us about New Zealand. We can see how much things have changed but also how much they have stayed the same. It is always interesting to look back and reflect on where we have come from and think about where we may be going."
