Love And Redemption in New Taki Rua Play

Love And Redemption in New Taki Rua Play to Premiere in July Featuring Rob Mokaraka

Well-known New Zealand actor Rob Mokaraka leads the cast of Taki Rua Productions’ new play Pūtōrino Hill .

The award-winning performer is best known as actor and co-writer of the internationally successful play Strange Resting Places and plays the lead role of Whiti in Pūtōrino Hill.

The play, written by long-term Taki Rua collaborator Chris Molloy with Te Kohe Tuhaka in the director’s chair, also features Jade Daniels, Lana Garland and Kim Garrett.

Pūtōrino Hill has its New Zealand premiere season at BATS Theatre in Wellington from 1-5 July, followed by a season at Q Theatre in Auckland from 15-19 July.

With fairies, prophetic visions and miracle healings woven into the story, audiences will journey into a magical and sometimes nightmarish world.

Commissioned by The Court Theatre and Taki Rua, Pūtōrino Hill is the result of the 2013 The Court Theatre’s Māori Writer’s Residency. Writer Chris Molloy has previously written for Taki Rua’s Te Reo Māori season.

“Essentially Pūtōrino Hill is about healing and what one person needs to do to achieve healing. I was inspired by philosophies from my Christian upbringing and Māori spirituality, but at the heart of it is an old man finally being able to to tell his story.”

Part fairy-tale and part rural legend, Pūtōrino Hill follows one man’s journey into the complexities of manhood, love and his battle to hold onto the ones he’s lost.

First meeting Whiti as an old man, audiences are taken on a journey into his past and the everyday and supernatural events that have marked Whiti’s path through life.

Set against a backdrop of the rural and almost deserted Reinga township, audiences will enter Whiti’s magical and sometimes nightmarish world – a world of taonga pūoro, ancient battles, of patupaiarehe (fairies), prophetic visions and miracle healings.

Sometimes dreamlike and sometimes painfully real, this is the story of a man on a quest for redemption – for himself, his koro and his sleepy hometown, Reinga.

Pūtōrino Hill is the first play in Taki Rua’s 2014 programme of theatre which will include two more new works; the Te Reo Māori season work Ngunguru I te Ao I te Po will be performed in marae and schools throughout the country, while Vanilla Miraka , written and performed by Hayley Sproull, will have its first season in Wellington in November.

Pūtōrino Hill is at BATS Theatre in Wellington from 1-5 July and at Q Theatre in Auckland from 15-19 July. For more information visit www.takirua.co.nz

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