Theatre
The Pohutukawa Tree
Bruce Mason · 1960
Synopsis
At Te Parenga, on the coast, Aroha Mataira, a proud Maori matriarch and fervent Christian, refuses to leave the land of her ancestors, of which the Atkinsons, white settlers, now own everything but one acre. Her grandfather once defended the place there against colonial troops and, in memory of the fight, planted the tree with red flowers that the new occupants find increasingly threatening. She brings up her children, Johnny and Queenie, according to the ways of the whites, in a country on the threshold of change.
Context
Written in 1955, the play was first given in 1957 by the New Zealand Players, as a workshop production, in Wellington and then in Auckland. BBC television staged it in 1959 and New Zealand broadcasting made a radio version of it the following year; the text was published in 1960 and revised in 1963. It opens a cycle of five plays on Maori culture since the arrival of Europeans, collected in 1987. Amateur companies and secondary schools have kept it in the repertoire, and the Auckland Theatre Company revived it in 2009.
Who it is for
A play never translated into French. It helps to know how Maori lands passed to the settlers.
Prizes and reception
The first great success of its author; James Bertram sees in it the greatest role written until then by a New Zealand playwright.
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