Kia Mau Festival

[1] The festival covers Māori, Pasifika and Indigenous performing arts, including comedy, music, dance and theatre, across a variety of venues around the Wellington area.

The Matariki festival developed over time to include presentations of plays as well as workshops with playwrights and hūi / meetings about Māori theatre.

As well as Māori and Pasifika led performances the festival has grown to include international artists, 'including indigenous and First Nations people from Canada, Hawai’i and Australia'.

[1] The 2017 Kia Mau Festival ran from 2–24 June, and included a tribute to playwright Rore Hapipi, who died in 2016, called Portrait of an Artist Mongrel produced by Hāpai Productions (Nancy Brunning and Tanea Heke) that included theatre artists old, Jim Moriarty, Mitch Tawhi Thomas and young, Trae Te Wiki and Moana Ete.

[17] It included an all-female production of Hone Kouka's play Waiora – The Homeland by Wahine Works at the Hannah Playhouse.

[18] At the 2019 Kia Mau Festival was Pakarū written by Mitch Tawhi Thomas about a solo mum raising teenagers in New Zealand produced by Hāpai Productions.

[4] At the Michael Fowler Centre was Avaiki Nui Social, about the string band music of the Cook Islands that go back to the 1940s.

[27]Kōpū takes the audience on a journey through life, snippets of core memories that are shared within Māori wāhine’s lives.