Troilus and Cressida

Last night offered me another chance to indulge my theatrical side.  It was the premiere of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in te reo (spoken Maori).  I went because it had the two key ingredients going for it: the words 'free' and 'theatre' combined in one phrase.  The event was part of the International Arts Festival that I've mentioned in previous posts, and held at the Te Papa museum.  Now, because it was a live performance, the 'no photography' rule applies, which means I don't have any fun pictures to share with you.  Instead I shall apply my extreme description skill to get across this unique show.  Bare with me guys, as some of you know I've got a research project that deals with Maori performance integrated into theatre, so this will be an extra long post.

A description of the translation technicalities can be found here, so I won't get too into that here.  First, I suppose I should give a quick run down about Shakespeare's version of the show.  At the very bare bones of it, the story is structured around the ancient battle for Helena between Greece and Troy.  Even though that's the conflict that provides the backdrop, the action of the story is about Troilus (Toroihi in this show) and Cressida (Kahiri) and their love affair.  Much like any of Shakespeare's love stories, Troilus is a Trojan and Cressida is a Greek.  Now that's really all of the story that you need for me to talk about the Maori interpretation of it.  If you want some more here's the wikipedia entry on it.

So in true Maori tradition, the show starts off with a Haka, which is a traditional Maori dance that's supposed to inspire fear in their enemies, so lots of chanting and yelling at full volume.  I should point out right now, that if you've never seen a Haka go now.  Go on and google it, or look it up on youtube (I'd say youtube it, but I'm not sure if that's become an acceptable verb yet).  Like I've said, this is supposed to be a dance of intimadation, so it's not so much a dance as a performance of strength.  They flex their muscles, pound their chests all very mescaline like, but the kicker of the Haka is the faces they make.  Think of the scariest face you can.  It's probably something along the lines of Lon Chaney, or someone with bared fangs with their face scrunched up in a snarl, eyes wild.  Yeah, well wipe that idea from your mind.  The faces these guys make during the Haka are ridiculous.  Let me describe this as best I can; they stretch their face about as wide as it goes, so they look almost surprised, then open their mouths and stretch their tongues out, with this little glint of madness in their eyes.  The crazy thing is, it actually is pretty intimidating.  I was sitting in the very front row and I got the full force of a dozen of these guys chanting, flexing, and pounding these long 'spears' around, all while making these crazy faces.  It was definitely appropriate to their choice of show: the opening prologue sets up the two fighting camps, so these men were split into two different groups chanting and going nuts at each other.

Oh and it gets better, even though there weren't many women in the cast (and that's no fault of the Maori translation either, it's just how Shakespeare wrote it) they weren't left out of the opening Haka.  The women stepped up in turns and did a little bit of a dance as well.  Theirs was similar to the men's Haka because it was still, in its way, an intimating war dance.  They got up and did some of the same dance steps as the men, but a lot of their dance had to do with these very severe arm movements.  It was like they'd slice the air with their arms and then shake them violently.  It's hard to describe satisfactorily, but their bit was more of just a chant than a war dance like the men.  Another feature of Haka was that it served the purpose of an introduction to the characters.  You saw the leaders of each 'tribe' step up and the different factions split.  It was a great way to open the piece.

So there's the traditional Maori performance aspect brought in to.  There were some other small particulars within the performance that I figured must've been Maori performance conventions, but since I don't speak te reo (must rectify that), I couldn't quite pick out their meaning.  The one that stood out the most was the hand shaking I mentioned that the women did.  There were really two different kinds of this shaking; one of them was like the type in the dance, and one was a little more subtle.  The former was one that I only registered the women doing, it was almost like a warning.  Whenever they did this quick arm gesture followed by the arm shaking person on the receiving end backed off.  It almost looked a little like it could've been an explicit gesture: it was very severe.  The second time that they'd use it was usually just at their side; their hand would shake violently.  This one was a little easier to work out.  It was fairly easy to tell that they were pretty scared when they did this arm shaking.  It was a very presentational form of theatre, but since it was Shakespeare, and in a language that quite a few in the audience couldn't understand, I didn't really mind that too much.  There was a couple other small things that I could tell were more Maori customs.  There's a fight in Act 3 that's stopped halfway through because Hiakita (Hector) says that he won't fight  Ahaka (Ajax) because they're related.  After this they agree to stop and did this thing where they get up really close to each other and then kind of Eskimo kiss with their foreheads.  It's not really a headbutt, and that's the closest analogy I can come up with.  It was almost as if there was some secret telepathy going between them; it happened a couple other times throughout the show.

So far I haven't discussed a very important feature of the show, and I'm going to tease you a little more by continuing to delay that and talk about the music instead for a bit.  So similar to the Te Papa show, there was love traditional music to accompany the action of the story.  Instead of the great soundboard operator up in the back pressing a button there were live musicians playing instruments on stage for the sound effects and musical score.  I must say I really like that theatrical convention here!  It wasn't just limited to the musicians either; some of the cast members came on with instruments and even some of the musicians came out to play a part in some scenes.  No regard for breaking the fourth wall at all--which is the kind of theatre I like best.

Alright, I guess I'll stop teasing: the costumes, or lack there of.  Oh.  My.  I did not know what I was getting into when I chose to sit right smack in the first row.  Wow.  So when they went with traditional dress, they meant it.  The warrior men were wearing palm leaf loincloths with, and I kid you not, pants painted on.  It was epic.  So traditionally, Maori men would get facial tattoos to show how much power they had in the tribe; the idea being that the more intricately tattooed your face was the higher your status and probably the older you were.  Women had them too, but usually only on their lips and chins.  This...well I'm not sure how exactly it was related accept that you could tell it wasn't a real tattoo (now that would be some dedication to the role on the cast's part) because it was smudging in spots, but the designs were pretty cool.  They absolutely played it up as a comic bit too.  In one of the first scenes Panatara (Pandarus) talks about all the young men coming back from the day's fighting, especially meaning to make Toroihi look good for Kahiri, and as each of the soldiers come up on stage they do some sort of flex or something, and one of the guys comes up turns his butt to the audience and flexes those muscles.  Oh boy did he get some applause.

The costuming definitely helped to define who the characters were for the audience who didn't understand the language.  The servile characters, for example, were dressed in plain shifts with a kind of grass skirt hung over one shoulder under the other.  The women of higher standing, on the other hand, had silk dresses with a woven corset over the top of it.  All of the characters, I should also point out, were barefoot, so at least the costumer had one less thing to think about.

Hm, this post has gotten so long, but there's still a couple of quick things that I want to say: the acting was pretty good, some of the actors need to work on their pronunciation and some basic 'my line-your line' stuff, but for the most part I found their performances honest, funny, and true.  It's hard to judge acting when you can't understanding the language, but one of the best actors out of the company would've been (Thersites), who was played by a woman.  She's servant to Ahaka and essentially plays the 'fool' in the play, but like so many of Shakespeare's fools, is no fool at all.  This actress was always in character, always playing the action.  She was really fun to watch as she made some sex jokes, berated Ahaka and (Achilles).  Overall I like their performance, it took a little bit for me to pick up some of the conventions but as soon as I puzzled some of the out I could follow the action a lot better.  I'd be very interested to see how they vary, or if they will, the performance when they present it in London next.