Te Pou Theatre/Stuff
The renovated Te Pou Theater reopened Friday after a traditional morning ceremony.
A traditional dawn ceremony celebrated the opening of a newly renovated theatre designed to showcase Māori performing arts.
Te Pou Theater in West Auckland is a Kaupapa Māori driven project that will provide performance and rehearsal space for Indigenous theatre.
About 200 people attended the ceremony on Friday to unveil the home of Māori theater in Auckland’s new look.
Labor MP Kelvin Davis attended the event and said he hopes the venue will encourage more Māori in the performing arts industry.
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“We know that not everyone wants to become an accountant or a lawyer. A place like Te Pou gives our people the chance to follow their heart’s desire,” he said.
The renovation cost $3 million, and it took three years to raise the funds.
Te Pou Theater
The theater showcases Māori talent and the first play, Hemo is Hope, premieres on March 3.
The opening event included a traditional Māori “mauri” ceremony led by Rewi Spraggon and Hemi Tai Tin.
Former national kapa haka champion Te Roopu Manutaki also performed.
Co-founder Amber Curreen said the theater is a much-needed space for Māori and other Indigenous creative artists and was created to support and develop Indigenous voices.
“In Aotearoa and other Indigenous theater communities around the world, it is so important to have a place to stand, a place where you are not the other and where the commodity revolves around values that make sense to your culture,” said she.
“Te Pou is a place of belonging for the Māori community, where our people feel it’s their kind of place, which is so often the case with venues.”
Hemo is Home, a play about a child’s relationship with his deceased relatives in a urupā (cemetery), will be staged for the first time in theaters on March 3.
Te Pou Theater was founded in 2015 in New Lynn before moving to the Corban Estate Arts Center in Henderson.