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.