Reviewed by Jules Daniel.

Presen­ted by TAHI: New Zea­l­and Fest­iv­al of Solo Per­form­ance, HATCH is an oppor­tun­ity for five emer­ging stu­dent artists from Te Aua­ha, Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, and Te Her­enga Waka – Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity of Wel­ling­ton to show­case and devel­op their work fur­ther. The mahi of a pro­gram with a kaupapa to value and foster emer­ging stu­dent artists’ tal­ent is an endear­ing and admir­able concept to begin with.

HATCH is a solo show type cab­aret, split into five sec­tions. HATCH was advert­ised as run­ning for approx­im­ately 100 minutes but it ended up run­ning over some­what on the night I atten­ded. There was also a facil­it­at­or to the event, Emma, who skill­fully led us between each of the pieces. The pieces also had assist­ance on light­ing, sound and stage design from oth­er stu­dents.

Sec­tion 1 – Gideon Smith: Manu­ia le po, manu­ia le aso (Good night, Good day)

Gideon had a fun use of mim­ing and phys­ic­al com­edy in his piece with a min­im­al stage set design. He showed excel­lent use of phys­ic­al­ity for both humor­ous effect and emo­tion­al pull. Gideon had a keen sense of the audi­ence and abil­ity to acknow­ledge them and inter­act with them to expertly draw them fur­ther into the per­form­ance. Through­out the piece there was com­pel­ling struggle, ten­sion and release that was cap­tiv­at­ing to watch. Tech­niques of ‘in your face’ theatre seemed to be imple­men­ted to engage and call to atten­tion some of the absurd phys­ic­al­ity that a social point is hid­den behind, it was not always obvi­ous to me what that mes­sage was, but there was a clear encour­age­ment to think, “who wins in a fight, a black dog or white dog? The dog you feed more.” The power­ful dance form of “krump” was imple­men­ted with dance music play­ing over and a pro­jec­tion of dream-like visu­als. A cap­tiv­at­ing look into per­spect­ive that was proudly and strongly influ­enced by Gideon’s own life, upbring­ing, Sam­oan her­it­age and fam­ily. I would very much enjoy see­ing this as a longer piece that could thread and expand on some of the themes a little more coher­ently through­out the per­form­ance. A delight to watch on the stage.

Sec­tion 2 – Isaac Hoop­er: Plug

Isaac had a bare stage set but also the fun spec­tacle of a space­man-type cos­tume that attached a vocal loop­er to him that he could then use to do what he appar­ently coins “Lan­guage voguing” to cre­ate music. Isaac has won­der­ful phys­ic­al­ity and comed­ic pacing/timing. The sounds that he cre­ates can be mood set­ting, pretty, funny, uncanny and unfor­tu­nately some­times a tad pitchy and off-put­ting to a point bey­ond the sake of art. The act of loop­ing vocals on stage to cre­ate mean­ing and ambi­ance far out­weighs any slightly pitchy moments how­ever and with dynam­ic light­ing design really cre­ates a fun and inter­est­ing piece to watch, sort of a solo sound­scape. The solo gave a beau­ti­ful feel­ing of ali­en­a­tion at points. Isaac was able to turn the simplest phrase into pure com­edy, a stand out being “Who’s com­ing? Me. I’m com­ing for who?” It felt pur­pose­fully absurd and I would love to see it elab­or­ated fur­ther into that theme of com­mu­nic­a­tion, how we com­mu­nic­ate and what that com­mu­nic­a­tion means to us. I’m also fond of a good use of Heelys. Fun, ener­gising, absurd.

Sec­tion 3 – Parekawa Fin­lay: The Col­lect­or

Parekawa has beau­ti­ful and inter­act­ive set design in her solo. Mail pack­ages, art easels and canvases are stacked up to sym­bol­ise and rep­res­ent vari­ous things. “Through look­ing and listen­ing we gain wis­dom.” Parekawa uses a doc­u­ment­ari­an-style voi­ceover, set and light­ing design, and her­self to rep­res­ent the story of Hor­a­tio Gor­don in an enga­ging way, and from a wahine Māori per­spect­ive. She does this as three dis­tinct dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters – a Māori war­ri­or. a Te Papa his­tor­i­an. and a tat­too artist.

Parekawa calls atten­tion to the issue of cul­tur­al appro­pri­ation with­in a pre-exist­ing his­tor­ic­al con­text. She draws to light an unsan­it­ized real depic­tion of the atro­cit­ies, bru­tal killing, weird cul­tur­al fet­ish­ism and oth­er­ing Hor­a­tio par­ti­cip­ated in as well as some record keep­ing that pre­served moko art for future gen­er­a­tions, point­ing out the bit­ter­sweet way. We are made to think what might have been kept if it could have been pre­served in Te Reo by Maori Tat­too­ists. Some ‘in your face’ theatre and a his­tory les­son, incred­ibly com­pel­ling and close to home in sub­ject. The paratext/set on stage was inter­est­ing to look at in the break. This was a great way to engage an audi­ence in import­ant, often over­looked Aotearoa his­tory.

Sec­tion 4 – India Wor­snop: Unpre­dict­able Mind

India’s solo per­form­ance revolved around the idea of unpre­dict­able might. The set was more elab­or­ate than some of the oth­ers although I’m not entirely con­vinced it added much to the piece bey­ond mak­ing the stage look like a bed­room. India reacts onstage to audio nar­ra­tion of what she’s doing in a man­ner akin to video games like Thomas Was Alone or The Stan­ley Par­able. Like in these games India’s char­ac­ter Mens reacts to the voice and is even defi­ant to its expect­a­tions of what she should do, fight­ing back against the sup­posed des­tiny laid before her. While the audio is a fun gim­mick espe­cially when it’s pan­ning around the stage and com­ing from dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions I feel that the audio record­ing edit­ing and deliv­ery could have been clear­er and more dynam­ic as it was some­times hard for me to fol­low. The light­ing in this was used very effect­ively and there was a fun amount of meta fourth wall break­ing and audi­ence atten­tion. While it was a fun piece I would have loved to find a stronger, clear­er, maybe more enga­ging mes­sage that was unique and from oth­er media doing sim­il­ar things.

Sec­tion 5 – Jack­son Burl­ing: CAUTION: WET FLOOR

Jack­son was non-verbal in his solo, and had a clear and bare stage. He played a cleaner/janitor char­ac­ter, who was armed with only a mop and buck­et as he set out to clean the stage. This was a very fun piece that engaged and inter­ac­ted with the audi­ence for almost the whole time. The per­form­ance had Jack­son clown­ing with great phys­ic­al­ity and under­stand­ing of his audi­ence, although at times broached into a weirdly sexu­al energy that I’m not sure entirely worked. This was eas­ily for­giv­en as the com­edy suc­ceeded very well out­side of that and the piece had effect­ive light­ing dir­ec­tion. Jack­son reminds us in this piece that it’s not about the size of the mop, it’s the heart of the clean­er hold­ing it. It really breaks down the walls between what is and isn’t a per­form­ance, and who is or isn’t per­form­ing in their work at any giv­en time. I described this solo in my notes as: “ser­i­ous fun”. A great note to fin­ish the night on.

Over­all this show was a very excit­ing oppor­tun­ity to see some upcom­ing tal­ent from vari­ous Pōneke ter­tiary insti­tu­tions that I thor­oughly enjoyed.