This volume examines how Indigenous theatre and performance from Oceania has responded to the intensification of globalisation from the turn of the 20th to the 21st centuries. It foregrounds a relational approach to the study of Indigenous texts, thus echoing what scholars such as Tui Nicola Clery have described as the stance of a Multi-Perspective Culturally Sensitive Researcher. To this end, it proposes a fluid vision of Oceania characterized by heterogeneity and cultural diversity calling to mind Epeli Hauofas notion of a sea of islands.
Taking its cue from the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, the volume offers a rhizomatic, non-hierarchical approach to the study of the various shapes of Indigeneity in Oceania. It covers Indigenous performance from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Hawaii, Samoa, Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Each chapter uses vivid case histories to explore a myriad of innovative strategies responding to the interplay between the local and the global in contemporary Indigenous performance. As it places different Indigenous cultures from Oceania in conversation, this critical anthology gestures towards an imparative model of comparative poetics, favouring negotiation of cultural difference and urging scholars to engage dialogically with non-European artistic forms of expression.
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Statement of Editorial Policy
Introduction: Staging Local Indigenous Cultures in a Globalised Oceania
Marc Maufort and David Odonnell
1Taenga Mai/The Arrival: Acts of Remembering and Resistance at Aotearoas
Border
Nicola Hyland
2Theres a Gap Here: Thoughts on Four Plays that Helped Invent Mori
Playwriting in Aotearoa
Murray Edmond
3Creating New Star-Paths to Traverse Disciplinary Territories
Hilary Halba, Rua McCallum and David Odonnell
4Bridging the Global Live Performance Marketplace: The Modern Mori Quartet
James Wenley
5F*ck it Up Sis: Representation and Agency in the Work of fafswag
Sean Coyle
6The Trauma of Return Mori Battalion Narratives in the Theatre of
Aotearoa
David Odonnell
7Kkulu o Kahiki: Kanaka Maoli Narratives and Performance Rooted in
Oceania
Tammy Hailipua Baker
8Preserving Indigenous Identities in a Globalised World: The Magical Realist
Vision of Tammy Hailipua Baker and Albert Wendt
Marc Maufort
9School Theatre Productions in Rapa Nui as Community Responses to
Globalisation: Performances of Aamu Tuai at Aldea Educativa Hoaa o te
Mana
Moira Fortin Cornejo
10(Re)positioning an Indigenous Standpoint in Theatre Making Practices
Liza-Mare Syron
11Saibai Island Ancestral Performative Knowledge: Centring Body, Experiences
and Associated Knowledge in the Twenty-First Century
Margaret Harvey
Index
Marc Maufort, Ph.D. (1986) is Emeritus Professor of Anglophone literatures at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium (ULB). He has written and (co)-edited a number of volumes on Eugene ONeill, American drama, and Anglophone postcolonial theatre. His most recent book publication is Forays into Contemporary South African Theatre. Devising New Stage Idioms (co-edited with Jessica Maufort, Brill/Rodopi, 2020).
David O'Donnell was Professor of Theatre at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand until his retirement in late 2023. He is an award-winning director and has published widely on New Zealand theatre, including co-authoring the book Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa (2017) with Lisa Warrington.
