Red Leap The­atre presents Kororāre­ka: The Bal­lad of Mag­gie Fly­nn, writ­ten by Pao­lo Roton­do and direct­ed by Julie Nolan. The show is set in the era of the sign­ing of Te Tir­i­ti o Wai­t­an­gi, up at Kororāre­ka (present-day Rus­sell). Fic­tion­alised from the sto­ries of real life NZ women, it fol­lows Mag­gie Fly­nn, who leaves Ire­land a con­vict and arrives in Kororāre­ka the cap­tain of a whal­ing ship. When bury­ing her hus­band on the shores of this land she is cap­tured by a Māori chief and becomes his mōkai, a pres­tige slave more akin to a pet. Her for­tune con­tin­ues to twist and turn until one day cul­ture and his­to­ry col­lide and her ulti­mate undo­ing is the very world she sought to escape.

This work is a lega­cy to the women in our past, the ones often too wild to be cap­tured by his­to­ry books. Roton­do says ““Start­ing with my moth­er, this sto­ry is a fic­tion­alised homage to the strength, pow­er, tough­ness, resilience and wit that exists in the char­ac­ter of the New Zealand woman.  I do not believe that Kate Shep­pard, Helen Clarke, Lorde or Eleanor Cat­ton, are excep­tions to the rule, in fact they are a prod­uct of a long line of pow­er­ful women.”

(Use the code MAGGIE to get $10 off adult tick­ets)