Rob Mokaraka, Cohen Holloway, Erroll Anderson, Jerome Leota, and Jamie McCaskill as The Māori Sidesteps.The new­est and naugh­ti­est Maori show­band on the Aotearoa enter­tain­ment scene plays at BATS Theatre dur­ing the Kia Mau Fest­iv­al. Self described as “Funny Māor­is with funny songs” this show is more of a gig than a theatre piece for the act­ors involved. Band mem­ber Jam­ie McCaskill talked about the ori­gins of the group and what they do.

“Rob Mokaraka, Cohen Hol­lo­way, Jam­ie McCaskill, Erroll Ander­son and Jerome Leota are all pro­fes­sion­al act­ors based in the Wel­ling­ton region. We wanted to cre­ate a group that is polit­ic­al, enter­tain­ing and funny. Hav­ing all these guys togeth­er feels like a super group. 

Rob is cur­rently tour­ing his show “Shot bro” around the coun­try, Cohen is a busy act­or involved in lots of film and tele­vi­sion. Jerome is a stay at home dad and an amaz­ing musi­cian and act­or. Jam­ie is a dir­ect­or of Tikapa Pro­duc­tions and a writer/actor/musician. Erroll is the young­est in the group and has an amaz­ing career ahead of him. So fit­ting in Maori Sidesteps gigs is tough but we all have a great time doing it.

We star­ted as a live group first in 2016. Pro­du­cer, Brandon Te Moananui came to us around the same time we were get­ting the group togeth­er and wanted to make a Māori music­al web series so Mooks [Rob] and I said, well we hap­pen to have a Māori music­al group. Let’s do this!”

McCaskill says the show is aimed at “Abso­lutely every­one. It is an inclus­ive type per­form­ance that should make you proud to be a New Zeal­ander. We are cheeky and naughty there’s no doubt about that. But we won’t slap people over the head with polit­ic­al ideals. I just hope [the audi­ence] have had a great time and sing along. We are put­ting togeth­er a show that has recog­nis­able tunes with our own spin on things. If I see every­body smil­ing and hum­ming the tunes at the end I will con­sider that a suc­cess. Even bet­ter if they buy some of our mer­chand­ise we will have on sale.”

Watch The Māori Sidesteps – Step­is­ode 1.