Eight NZ artists join the 130 strong Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate alumni – receiving a total of $280,000 entirely funded through generous giving to the arts. NZ actor Miriama McDowell explains what the award means to her.
It’s a Sunday morning when Miriama McDowell appears on Zoom, sitting on the couch in a hotel room in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa/Gisborne, looking more awake than many of us might had we, the night before, opened a groundbreaking theatre show.
That show is Oro Māia, the poems of Maya Angelou translated into te reo Māori and performed by McDowell, Maisey Rika, Mere Boynton, Erena Koopu, Tuakoi Ōhia and Maarire Brunning-Kouka.
You’d think for an acting powerhouse such as McDowell (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi), it would be “just another day at the office”. After all, in a career spanning more than two decades, she’s notched up lead roles in TV shows from Head High to Find Me a Māori Bride, played young Dame Whina Cooper in the biopic Whina and kept us on the edge of our seats in Coming Home in the Dark, plus performed with most of New Zealand’s leading theatre companies. She started directing in 2015, winning major kudos for her work on Pop-up Globe’s Much Ado About Nothing.
But Oro Māia is different. It’s one of the first times McDowell has performed publicly in te reo after taking 2023 away from her acting career to study at Te Wānanga Takiura o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa in Auckland.
“From about week three, you start standing up to speak and it starts with an eight-minute speech which feels impossible, but by the end of the year, you’re doing a one-hour speech,” explains the 45-year-old.
“Before I started, I could do a mihi but nothing off the cuff and I didn’t know how to structure [speeches] or the tenses to use. I knew I had the facility for being able to learn things and hold them in my head so I could learn, but it’s quite intimidating to go from that to performing poetry in te reo Māori. You’ve got to get the sounds right, honour the sense, the rhythms…”
But there was more to McDowell’s nerves than concern about getting the lines right.
“I found it really hard to come back and find my place again after taking my time out to learn my reo. I don’t know if it was about losing my self-confidence a little bit, like, in an audition room, or that I just got out of my groove.
“My focus had been somewhere else, so to shift it back to acting was harder than I thought. I would say that this year has been a very difficult year, if I’m honest.”
Which is partly why, when McDowell received an out-of-the-blue mobile call to say she was being awarded one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent awards, she burst into tears. She is one of eight recipients of this year’s Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Awards.
Alison Wong, Claire Cowan, Carin Wilson, Horomona Horo, Lonnie Hutchinson, Saskia Leek, Victor Rodger and McDowell received awards at a ceremony in Auckland last night.
The annual awards recognise New Zealand’s most outstanding practising artists working anywhere in the world, and their impact. Criteria include their commitment to having a career in the arts, being an outstanding artist in their field and being important to their communities and to New Zealand.
In giving McDowell the Sir Roger Hall Theatre Award, the judging panel said: “Miriama is a multi-hyphenate practitioner who excels on stage and behind the scenes. She is constantly working to grow her performance practice, incorporating te reo Māori into her writing, and forging new ground with her intimacy coaching.”
When she received a message from Chelsea Winstanley, the Arts Foundation’s co-chair, asking her to call back to discuss the laureate awards, she figured she was being asked to organise something for one of her friends who was receiving one.
“I thought, ‘She must want me to organise a performance. I’m going to do a flashmob!’ and my brain was going crazy with ideas. Then she called back and said, ‘It’s for you’ and I just sat in my car crying. I felt so seen by my colleagues.”
Given the recent doubts McDowell has faced, she says the call came at the right time.
“The other thing is that, from the moment they call you to say you’re a laureate, you’re just celebrated as an artist. Every exchange you have with them, they thank you for your contribution, for what you do as an artist and for our country.
“They whakamana artists, which is amazing and something I don’t think happens enough. It does something for your spine, your vision for yourself and your art and your future.”
Having celebrated at last night’s Arts Foundation Laureate Awards party, McDowell flies to the Wellington Jazz Festival to perform Oro Māia. As for the rest of the year and beyond, she’s taking the one-hour piece made for Te Wānanga Takiura o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa and turning it into a solo show.
Working with fellow theatre-maker Katie Wolfe, the aim is to tour it to kura reo – language gatherings or schools, usually held on marae – around the country. “It’s written for people who are learning te reo, so I’d like to, sort of, give it as a gift.”
McDowell is also working with Wolfe on a new version of the seminal theatre show Woman Far Walking, Witi Ihimaera’s play first performed in 2000 and starring Rachel House as Tiriti, a woman born on the same day that Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed. The new production will be in English and te reo Māori while Tiriti will be185 years old. It is, acknowledges McDowell, an “interesting time” to be making the play.
Increasingly, she’s coaching other performers.
“I love that when a company is coming together and making a show and they go, ‘Who are we going to call to give support to this person?’ It’s different sorts of support. Recently, it was for an actor who was having to go into some really dark places. And they were like, ‘We need someone who’s going to give some advice on how to hold this spiritually and uphold it emotionally’ and they called me to be that person.
“I love that role of uplifting and giving care and sharing my experience with young actors.”
Which doesn’t mean McDowell is ready to retreat behind the scenes. Far from it.
“What I’d really like is a good screen acting gig.”
Meet the 2024 Laureates:
Alison Wong (Cantonese (Jung Seng/Zengcheng 增城) New Zealander): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Burr/Tatham Trust Award. A celebrated novelist, poet, creative nonfiction writer, and editor whose works weave together themes of identity, migration, and cultural heritage.
Claire Cowan: 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Joanna Hickman, Waiwetu Trust Award. A trailblazing composer and multi-instrumentalist who transcends concert, film, television, theatre and ballet. In 2019, she made history as the first female composer in Aotearoa New Zealand to score a full-length ballet with her adaptation of Hansel and Gretel for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Carin Wilson (Mataatua, Ngati Awa, Tuhourangi): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Design Award Gifted by the Crane Foundation. An influential designer and sculptor whose career has been dedicated to advancing Māori design principles and promoting culturally relevant practices in architecture and furniture making.
Horomona Horo (Ngapuhi, Ngati Porou, Taranaki): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Award Gifted by Jillian Friedlander. A masterful composer and musician, known for his expertise in taonga pūoro. With over two decades dedicated to this ancient art form, he innovatively blends traditional sounds with diverse genres.
Lonnie Hutchinson (Ngāti Kurī ki Ngāi Tahu, Samoan (Faleilili), Celtic): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the My ART Visual Arts Award Gifted by Sonja and Glenn Hawkins. A leading multidisciplinary artist whose thought-provoking works comment astutely on aspects of indigeneity, colonisation, and the complexities of identity.
Saskia Leek (New Zealand Pākehā): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Female Arts Practitioner Award Gifted by Liz Aitken, Foggy Valley Aotearoa. A visionary contemporary painter whose intimate-scale works explore the intersections of the incidental and the canonical, inviting viewers to discover mystery and specificity within the familiar.
Victor Rodger ONZM (Samoan [Iva], Scottish [Broughty Ferry]): 2024 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Arts Award Gifted by Hall Cannon. The award-winning playwright and producer is known for his bold and provocative works that delve into race, identity and sexuality. He has significantly influenced Aotearoa New Zealand theatre and he is celebrated as a pioneer of queer writing.
