Māori Krishna + AltarNative is a fascinating and academic double-bill of semi-autobiographical solo efficiency items.
Despite being insular and episodic, the 2 constituent items are linked by shared themes and material. This connection between items is cemented by the viewers’s involvement within the pack-away and set-up between exhibits, and the shortage of break in efficiency between the items. The two items are complementary, and type a wealthy and full present.
Presented first, AltarNative is an brisk and interactive efficiency piece, which makes use of the artifice of a cult seminar to discover the professionals and cons of the performer’s upbringing. AltarNative particulars a childhood of music and dancing, of disruption and travelling, and of people festivals and Steiner faculties. Acacia O’Connor, the author and actor of AltarNative, employs a powerful mixture of track, props, physicality, and artistic lighting to convey to life a blinding array of characters and eventualities.
As the viewers enters the house, we’re greeted by O’Connor singing within the spherical and an evocative and eerie soundscape is created by means of using looping. This looped singing is a intelligent approach to harmonise dwell and, though used sparsely, provides poignancy to the scenes the place it’s used. By distinction, O’Connor additionally places some appreciable recorder abilities to work, to joyous and humorous impact. The piece additionally utilises extra-diegetic sound to intensify emotion and spotlight dialogue.
From the outset, AltarNative is energetic and bodily. O’Connor cartwheels and standing-long-jumps concerning the stage, shows-off the artwork of ‘style running’ and flits about between viewers members. This, coupled with the singing and recorder enjoying, offers a compelling and infectious vitality to the piece, which has the viewers contributing tremendously throughout the interactive segments. This energetic physicality is typified by the unbelievable character work of the Acacia/Caci/Host triumvirate. The three characters are skilfully embodied, and instantly recognisable by stature and motion, alone. Although, there’s a great sequence, which delineates characters, utilizing torches and intelligent side-lighting.
The props had been quite a few and used liberally. Gemstones, fairy studying playing cards, chocolate cash, and written mantras had been all proffered to the viewers to assist on the journey to the next stage. The amount of the gadgets, and the velocity with which they’re given, is paying homage to the on-boarding strategies and ‘sweeteners’ of multi-level advertising and marketing schemes, and different such cults. O’Conner does an exquisite job of connecting with us, and persuasively will get the viewers onboard ‘level 1117’ on their journey to self-belief. Enchanting and considerate, AltarNative in the end leaves the viewers energised and enlightened.
Māori Krishna is an intimate and informative efficiency piece, which weaves historic, autobiographical, and theological strands right into a charming lesson. In Māori Krishna, the author/actor, Hone Taukiri, outlines the historical past of the Hare Krishna motion, describes the beliefs and tenets of the faith, and recounts his ideas and experiences rising up immersed on this faith.
Māori Krishna begins with the resetting of the stage. The viewers is current for this step, and might witness the precision and reverence with which that is completed. Taukiri turns this mandatory step right into a kind of performative ritual, taking roughly 30 books out of a field and setting them, after inspection, on the desk, alongside a portrait. This serves to recentre the house, and the viewers, between the performances. After setting the house, Taukiri approaches every viewers member, and makes introductions. Each viewers member is greeted and requested for his or her title. This is earnest, and removes any pretence of barrier between viewers and performer.
This addressing of, and interplay with, the viewers continues. The viewers are requested questions, reminiscent of ‘who am I?’, or ‘What does your name mean?’, or ‘Who has heard of the boycotts?’. The viewers are invited to share their tales and work together with the books. This creates a reference to the viewers that’s fixed all through. This, coupled with the subject material and technique of supply, give the impression of a lesson or a sermon.
Taukiri not often leaves the chair subsequent to the desk of books, and spends the majority of the piece addressing the viewers on the historic context and private expertise of the Hare Krishna motion. Despite there being no change in lighting or sound, and few cases of motion across the house, the piece is partaking. Taukiri’s efficiency holds the viewers’s consideration all through. This stripped-back, lecture-esque efficiency fashion is an efficient medium for conveying info which is unlikely to be extensively recognized, and Taukiri utilises this to nice impact. It is obvious that Taukiri is aware of this materials properly, and is self-admittedly adept at splicing strangers’ experiences into the narratives he constructs – having labored in gross sales, in a previous life.
Māori Krishna is a honest exploration of early life spent on the fringes, and an enthralling training of the fascinating and undesirable parts of this life-style and perception system.
Both items of the present tackle the viewers immediately, and ask them to critically take into consideration the best way to contextualise our place on the earth. At the center of each items is a query about identification, of how we are able to go about defining ourselves and our relationship to the world, when our upbringing and experiences appear to vary a lot from these round us. It is necessary to additionally spotlight the title of this present, Māori Krishna + AltarNative, which centres each faith and tangata whenua in every morpheme. Both items incisively and compellingly painting the ups and downs of being raised away from the mainstream, and the reclamation of identification. The present is hauntingly earnest and deeply compelling.
Māori Krishna + AltarNative performs at Te Pou Theatre, from the eleventh to the sixteenth of September, as a part of the Kōanga Festival 202.
