On to the healing stage

By LINDA HERRICK Arts editor

As Jim Moriarty talks on the phone, he says he's "looking at a kid who's 10. We just came from a men's prison in Christchurch and this little girl's dad was in there. That's how she got on to our programme - her dad thought what we do was going to be ideal for her. And here she is."

The programme is Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu, Te Rakau for short, a therapeutic theatre trust which since 1995 has reached nearly one million people throughout New Zealand, mainly young people.

Moriarty and his team of counsellors and facilitators reach out to people in prisons, institutions and those on the way, and make them an offer they can't refuse: "Are you happy with where you are? Do you want to change?"

"I've never met anybody who's said no, who's not sick of being miserable," says Moriarty. "But I tell them they might have to do a lot of crying on this."

Te Rakau's latest project is Te Timatanga Hou o Aotea (Whakapapa Tamaki), or A New Beginning - a theatrical performance which will debut at the Aotea Centre as part of next week's ignite03 festival, before embarking on a lengthy tour.

Whakapapa Tamaki is the culmination of a 10-week residency at Tapu Te Ranga Marae in Porirua, which involved 85 young people aged 10-18.

And yes, most of these were "at-risk" youth, or as Moriarty prefers to put it, kids who have "been on the back foot for a wee while, just surviving".

"We talk about the war in Iraq - there's a war here in Aotearoa," he growls.

"You hear some of the stories from these kids and you know this is an emotional, moral and values warzone, a warzone of dysfunction and harm and hurt, lack of parenting and community support, lack of education, all sorts of things."

Because Te Rakau has been around for some time, it has an established network for putting the word out for recruits for a new project. For Whakapapa Tamaki, Moriarty and his team wanted to reach an Auckland catchment of young people, and there was no shortage of potential.

The programme, which is fully residential, is tough. "It's bloody hard work for everyone," says Moriarty, who in 2001 became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to drama.

"This is a solutions programme and we are together 24/7 on the marae for the entire programme, which is 10-12 weeks. We've got as many rules as the Army, and in the end they are a creative family bound by a common code.

"There's generally a performance outcome [this will be the 16th Te Rakau project] and it's an old Brechtian approach really: once you get detached from your own hurt and memory, you can objectively sit outside it and see what power it had over you, and now what power you have over it."

To get the power, the kids have to learn to articulate what has happened in their lives, including abuse and neglect, which will eventually form part of the performance.

"We get kids who come to us like feral animals, full of rage or depressed and suicidal. Within two, three, four weeks, the light starts to go on in their head and they engage.

"When they first tell their story they are often almost inarticulate and muted by the memory, but by the time they get down the track in the performance, it's out there and put up as a gift. Like, 'This happened to me but I'm moving on. I'm not going to be a victim, I'm beginning to understand that if I stay in a place of hurt, and the world owes me, nothing will change.'

"This is a huge thing to ask these young people - I have no fear of that because they've had the worst thrown at them. Why not throw the best at them?"

But what of the kids who go back to a harmful environment at the end of the programme? What is there for them after the safety and security of Te Rakau's tough love?

"Yes, sometimes it is very hard to say goodbye, and yes, some of them will go back to the darkness, but we hope we've turned a little light on for them.

"We do follow-ups, work with referral groups, the parents and guardians can come through any time and hear from their kids' point of view what it's like to be on the receiving end."

The performance at the Aotea Centre next week is a "journey", says Moriarty, "with a beginning, a middle and an end".

"The first piece is to welcome the audience to share this time with us, then we have a deep look at what they hoped to get out of life and then what they got. We investigate that, hear the language about the first hurts. We dramatise those hurts in a deeper way, and in the last section, it's about hope and light.

"It is emotional theatre, some people cry, they laugh, they stand up and do spontaneous ovations, some are numbed. Everyone has a different response but you can't go away and not have been emotionally impacted on in quite a big way."

As for Moriarty himself, the limelight is on the kids, not him. You're unlikely to see him on stage "unless someone loses their voice".

"I don't need to do much acting any more, I had a good run at that. I call myself the safety officer. I operate the lights on the night."

Performance

* What: Whakapapa Tamaki, as part of ignite03

* Where: NZI Convention Centre, Aotea Centre

* When: April 7-10, 12.30pm (school performances); public performances at 6.30pm