Home Fires rekindled

By LINDA HERRICK arts editor

Almost 10 years ago, Hone Kouka sat in my kitchen having a cup of tea and chatting about his role in David Geary's Lovelock's Dream Run, staged by the Auckland Theatre Company at the Watershed Theatre. That was 1993, and you could say a lot has happened since then ...

"Oh yeah," says Kouka, "that was the last time I did any acting."

Not that he was a failure - but his heart was elsewhere. The year before Lovelock, Kouka was the youngest playwright to win the Bruce Mason Award, for Hide'n'Seek, written with Hori Ahipene.

Since then, he has become a strong and respected voice for Maori and, now aged 34, is passing on his skills and enthusiasm, working with a new generation of Maori and Pacific Island writers in an ongoing initiative at Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington.

At the latest count, Kouka has 17 drama scripts under his belt, and he also writes short fiction, children's stories and poetry. His 2000 Waitangi Day television drama Nga Tohu: Signatures, written with Andrew Bancroft, won six awards - which surprised him, says Kouka, "because it was so inflammatory".

He is a part-time drama producer with Radio New Zealand and has just finished his first novel, The Warmth of the Sun, which will come out next year. He has been working on the adaptation of Witi Ihimaera's Bulibasha for film and, right now, is working with his partner, actor-director Nancy Brunning, on a touring production of his play Home Fires, which is being brought to Auckland by Wellington's Taki Rua Productions.

Starring Rawiri Paratene and Rangimoana Taylor, Home Fires is the second in a trilogy written by Kouka. The first, Waiora, premiered at the 1996 International Festival of Arts, then toured the country and was staged with great success at a festival in Brighton, England and in Hawaii.

Home Fires, which originally featured two women and opened at the 1998 arts festival, has been reworked for this production and Kouka has just finished the draft for the final in the trilogy, The Prophet, which will premiere next year.

"Waiora was about the urban migration of Maori, those of us who left home," explains Kouka. "Home Fires is about those who stayed behind and ensured lots of the stories about the past were remembered.

"You had to leave to gain strength but after one generation you realise there's lots of strength back home as well and you need both. You have to keep the home fires burning or the stories will die."

Kouka says this time around, Home Fires has had "quite a rewrite and a cleaning-out". He likes that.

"I'm a believer that we don't get enough opportunities to rework our stuff. You can never 'get it' first time. That's how I have treated The Prophet, which is about the next generation, the grandchildren of the parents in Waiora.

"I workshopped The Prophet and rewrote it over two years and had a very low-key lab production here in Wellington [he and Brunning and their 6-year-old daughter, Maarire, live in Paekakariki]. By the time it goes out to tour next year it will be in good shape."

Home Fires is quite different stylistically from its predecessor. Choreography is by Teokotai Pa'iti, set design by Ross Gibbs, sound by Warren Maxwell of Wellington band Trinity Roots and costume design by Colin McLean.

"Waiora was closer to an Arthur Miller-type model - this one is closer to a European-type. I wanted to see the two men using quite lyrical dialogue and text, that's why we got a choreographer in. The piece is quite stylised. A lot of Maori work is really gritty and realistic - I want to move quietly away from the pigeon hole we've been pushed into."

Kouka's work reflects his concern for the young people of this country, especially with The Prophet and its city kids going back to the East Coast.

" Our youth are starting to assert their own identity - recently, anyway. If you'd asked me a year or two ago I would have said no. Now there seems to be a lot of strength coming through, and the young people are reassessing but we have to listen to them.

"The past six months - with all those teenagers in court - are a real illustration something is going wrong. Hopefully, some of our writers will see the need to discuss that ... there are so many stories to tell."

He is happy to help others to tell those stories. "Most of my energy has been in working with new writers [in the Taki Rua writers' group] and I love it. It has been going for 18 months and I can proudly say every writer has had something produced professionally and some are writing for TV now.

"It was to give them a taste so they can go, 'I want to do more of this'. The work is widening what Maori and Pacific Island writers are writing about."

* Home Fires, Herald Theatre, October 19 to November 9. Hone Kouka and Witi Ihimaera are in conversation on Thursday at 7pm in this week's Playmarket forum series in Wellington.