Performing Difference Differently: New Ways of Doing, Old Ways of Seeing

Abstract

In our daily lives, we perform difference differently. ‘We’ here refers to a collective of cosmopolitan artists, members of my company: JK Productions: He Korero Ngā Tahi. JK Productions was established in 2017 as a platform for developing diverse theatre and other artistic work in Auckland, New Zealand. Our first major production was America Rex by Tom Minter, which I directed for a developmental presentation at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre (TAPAC) in August 2018. Our company was extraordinarily diverse, especially by New Zealand standards, a mix of tangata whenua and tauiwi, including some who were Indigenous, albeit in other lands (the Caribbean, Zimbabwe, Samoa, and so on). For most of us in this work, especially as members of intersecting diasporas, the colonial past remains proximate. Yet, what we make as theatre artists is not always, or even often, what an audience sees so clearly as we intend.