A man and a woman stand next to each other underneath a row of round lanterns.Layered with myth and fable, The Moon­cake and the Kūmara is a mov­ing story about a mixed-up, Māori-Chinese love affair that sprouts among rows of pota­toes. Told in a mix­ture of Eng­lish, Māori and Cantonese, the play is show­ing in Wel­ling­ton as part of the Kia Mau Fest­iv­al. Māori-Chinese play­wright Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen talked to us about the play.

“I tell people it took me sev­en years to write The Moon­cake and the Kūmara.  That’s not entirely true – there was the 10 minute ver­sion, which was first per­formed in 2008 and again in 2010 and the full length play that’s com­ing to Wel­ling­ton is an exten­sion of that 10-minute ver­sion. I wrote the 10-minute, three-hander in con­junc­tion with my cous­in Kiel McNaughton. It won Best Drama at Short + Sweet 2010 and so I was encour­aged by that to work on a full-length script.

It’s taken sev­er­al years since then for the play to reach the point it has now – being per­formed at Han­nah Play­house as part of the Kia Mau Fest­iv­al. That said, because of the sup­port­ive crew involved, I’ve had a rel­at­ively easy ride get­ting my script to the stage.  I’ve had so much sup­port all along the way – Play­mar­ket ses­sions with Stu­art Hoar thanks to Banana Boat and Jenni Heka and Mur­ray Lynch, con­nec­tions with lec­tur­ers and super­visors from the past, access to lots of oth­er work – I could go and see lots of plays because I knew lots of people involved in theatre.  I knew about Fest­ivals, theatre com­pan­ies, and enough about how theatre works to provide me with a lot of hook ups.

Then there’s the role of pro­du­cers in actu­ally mak­ing sure the play got put on. I put the script in front of Carla van Zon [then Dir­ect­or of Auck­land Fest­iv­al] and pleaded with her to read it. After the work premiered at the Auck­land Arts Fest­iv­al 2015, Betsy & Mana Pro­duc­tions with The Oryza Found­a­tion and The Tour­ing Agency toured the show to Nel­son, Oamaru, Tarana­ki, Taur­anga, and Hamilton.

Now my super-duper pro­duc­tion team have organ­ised the tour that is bring­ing the show to Kia Mau.

Primar­ily I’m aim­ing the story at people like me; people who love stor­ies about Aotearoa, people who are inter­ested in the secrets, loves, tri­als and dreams of those around them, people who have big, cul­tur­ally mixed (in whatever way) fam­il­ies like my one, people who have come here from some­where else, people who are lonely, people who are in love and I wrote the story for my whānau…that’s a LOT of people.

The play is very spe­cial to me because it’s about my grand­par­ents – my Chinese grand­fath­er (Goong Goong) and my Māori Grand­moth­er (Nan). I wrote it in response to a couple of things. One was ima­gin­ing of how my mum’s par­ents came togeth­er. There were all sorts of stor­ies fly­ing around when we were kids and none of them was ever touted as the TRUE/REAL story so I wrote this to add to the rep­er­toire – it’s only loosely based on my grand­par­ents.

The oth­er reas­on I wrote the play was to depict that strange space that you occupy when you’re in between stor­ies. So it’s in response to me look­ing through fam­ily photo albums when I was young­er and see­ing all these people and places I knew were part of me (China, Hong Kong, Ngaru­awahia, Tur­angawae­wae) but that I had no idea about…and I didn’t really know how they were part of me. As well, I was moment­ar­ily in situ­ations where Goong Goong would be speak­ing Cantonese to our rel­at­ives and Nan would be speak­ing Māori to my great aunties and uncles and I would listen, slightly bemused and not really know­ing how I belonged or what was going on.

In 2015 I had cous­ins come to The Moon­cake and the Kūmara who’d nev­er stepped into a theatre foy­er before – that was a buzz. I caught up with fam­ily friends I hadn’t seen in years. I remin­isced with old school friends. I watched my tear­ful moth­er as she hugged the act­ors and thanked them for telling our whānau story. I met a woman from New Cale­do­nia who was so excited by the play she wanted us to take it there. Through­out the eight-show sea­son I was spoilt by a mini fam­ily-reunion as my whānau, and the whānau of the six cast mem­bers came into the city (some from as far as Te Awamutu) to share the story.

I hope [the audi­ence are] think­ing that their jour­ney to get to the theatre, to pay for and buy their tick­ets (not easy these days), to find park­ing, babysit­ters, friends to go with etc was worth it and that they’d do it again. I hope there’s some­thing in the show that res­on­ates with them – wheth­er it’s the stor­ies of migra­tion, home, com­prom­ise, romance or our country’s shared social his­tory.

I hope they are think­ing about our ancest­ors, about the world, soci­ety and envir­on­ment they lived in and about wheth­er that world has changed. I hope they are think­ing about the strength of women. I hope they are think­ing about the voices of the people on the fringes of our com­munit­ies. I hope they are think­ing ‘that show told some of my story’. I hope they are think­ing, wow, I nev­er knew that…I hope they are think­ing ‘that was funny’. I hope they are think­ing I’m going to go to anoth­er New Zea­l­and play!”

More about the people involved in the show after the jump.

“There were so many good, good people involved in get­ting this play up and on the stage…and it seems that the play (the story con­tained with­in it, really) has gathered togeth­er just about the best and most com­mit­ted, cap­able, caring and tal­en­ted rōpu ima­gin­able!

There’s a co-pro­duc­tion team – Oryza Found­a­tion for Asi­an Per­form­ing Arts and Besty and Mana Pro­duc­tions – headed up by the won­der­ful Yee Yang Lee, Sums Selva­ra­jan and Dolina Wehipei­hana and they are skilled, thought­ful and clev­er (and most import­antly, kind) pro­du­cers. There’s the dir­ect­or extraordin­aire Katie Wolfe who has known about the play and the story for many years and who has worked on the pro­ject along­side the pro­duc­tion team since it was first shown at Auck­land Arts Fest­iv­al in 2015 (and before that she was involved in work­shops and script devel­op­ment). She’s taken it to heart and worked incred­ibly hard with me and the cast for sev­er­al years now. She knows the drivers and motiv­a­tions in the play more than any­one else.

The play has been dram­at­urged to with­in an inch of its life. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Katie on dram­at­urgy, and also Fiona Gra­ham (she played a MAJOR part in get­ting the play to the place it was when I pitched it to Auck­land Arts Fest­iv­al) and Stu­art Hoar from Play­mar­ket as well as my dear friend Mur­ray Edmond.

Because the play was first presen­ted at the Auck­land Arts Fest­iv­al, I’ve also been sup­por­ted by the team there – Carla van Zon ex-Artist­ic Dir­ect­or in par­tic­u­lar has been very sup­port­ive of the play and the story.

And, of course, there’s the ded­ic­ated cast, crew and cre­at­ives involved in get­ting the pro­duc­tion to where it is now. The set and ward­robe and sound design­ers, the light­ing and sound ops, the stage managers…omg!

There have been many act­ors who have been involved in work­shops for the play, read­ings, ana­lyses, discussions…and of course, per­form­ing. The act­ors have to be able to speak Cantonese, Māori and Eng­lish, sing, deal with my strange script, do some dan­cing and work closely with 5 oth­ers. Every pro­duc­tion, includ­ing this one in Wel­ling­ton, has some cast mem­bers who are nat­ive speak­ers of their lan­guage and oth­ers who have had to learn bits and pieces of the show. It’s so hum­bling to watch them go about their work and bring the story of my whānau to life. This par­tic­u­lar pro­duc­tion has Katlyn Wong (play­ing the toughest role in the show), Jeremy Rander­son (grap­pling with the second toughest role), Taupunakohe Tock­er, Waimihi Hotere (who has been with the show for MANY years), Charles Chan and Sam Wang (who has had to learn Cantonese for his role).”