It’s a chilly winter day in Pōneke, but the joy from the audi­ence sur­round­ing me and my theatre-going com­pan­ion could warm the most cyn­ic­al of souls. We’re here to see Hine Te Rēhia, a gor­geous piece of theatre by Auck­land-based Tutatara Col­lect­ive, and the mood in the room is unbe­liev­ably high.

For­give my lack of piece­meal spe­cif­ics, my notes writ­ten on my arm were oblit­er­ated by the fever­ish joy of this the­at­ric­al exper­i­ence, but I can give you an over­all vibe.

Hine Te Rēhia is an unbe­liev­ably beau­ti­ful and power­ful the­at­ric­al work. Even from the moment of enter­ing the theatre, where we’re greeted by a korowai adorned carving of Hine Te Rēhia (sculp­ted by Hāhona Ormsby), and set dress­ing that speaks to worlds and lives bey­ond the play – wall hangings, framed pho­tos, a gui­tar and a com­fy seat, we are held in rap­ture by what this the­at­ric­al piece of art presents.

Our six per­formers, young BIPOC women from a vari­ety of loc­ales, give us just over an hour of witty and tal­en­ted per­form­ance. From haka, to poi, spoken word, singing, sketch and dance, these six wahine per­form with unbe­liev­able power, and the theatre ignites in applause and cheers. I’ve nev­er seen BATS so loud, but that’s the power of these per­formers.

Told in vign­ettes wrapped around Hine Te Rēhia and oth­er Māori god­desses, our per­formers tell us stor­ies about fam­ily, drag up and dick about on stage as lads, bob around as sea creatures, and build memor­ies of home.

One vign­ette that par­tic­u­larly moves me is when a water­mel­on is gently car­ried onto stage and placed at the feet of Hine Te Rēhia; the god­dess provid­ing recog­nisa­tion of the ongo­ing gen­o­cide in Palestine, and pro­tec­tion for the Palestini­an people too. It’s a quiet moment but a mov­ing one, and I’m stuck with the image for long after the show ends.

Hine Te Rēhia is a show that feels utterly con­nec­ted to the world around it. There’s moments with­in that clearly have been devised or rede­vised with­in weeks of the show’s open­ing – a piece of spoken word about the recent “man vs bear” meme is funny and poignant – and that con­nec­tion spans not just pop cul­ture but the world between the per­formers and the one bey­ond.

It’s a show that feels built from not just mod­ern­ity, but the stor­ies and ties that bind the per­formers’ pasts, cul­tures and indi­vidu­al lives; this would not be a work that you could pass onto strangers to per­form, it’s the per­son­al storytelling that makes the piece blos­som such on stage, and the tal­ent of the per­formers that make it grow.

Hine Te Rēhia is one of those the­at­ric­al works that you come across so very rarely. It’s near word-per­fect in its exe­cu­tion, full of utterly tal­en­ted folk, deeply charm­ing and a piece of per­form­ance that will stick with you long after you see it. I am both envi­ous and emboldened by the per­form­at­ive space that’s been cre­ated in this theatre, and I urge you to catch this show if you ever get the chance.

It’s one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.