The Mutability of History: Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

This article analyses the first major New Zealand production of Troilus and Cressida, presented by Toi Whakaari/The New Zealand Drama School and directed by Annie Ruth and Rangimoana Taylor. In the production the play was localised to become ‘indigenous’, and the global context of the Trojan Wars was used to interrogate narrative and myths of New Zealand history. The Trojans were played as a Māori iwi (tribe) in conflict with the invading Greeks, played as British colonisers, and the production was set amid the Land Wars of nineteenth-century New Zealand. Māori protocol was used, and the Greek debate was staged in the Māori language. The play was reshaped to suit and illuminate the local New Zealand context.

Notes

1. Don Selwyn, quoted in Janinka Greenwood, History of a Bicultural Theatre: Mapping the Terrain (Christchurch, NZ: Christchurch College of Education, 2002), p. 13.

2. The Treaty was signed on 6 February 1840. The Māori chiefs who signed the treaty ceded sovereignty to the British Crown. Much of New Zealand's history, up to and including the present, has been driven by debates as to exactly what the Māori signatories thought they were ceding. See the entry on the Treaty at <http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealandInBrief/GovernmentAndNation/> [accessed 11 February 2009].

3. Controversial legislation introduced in 2003 to ensure that the Crown, rather than the tangata whenua (Māori), controlled the foreshore and seabed of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

4. National Business Review, 18 September 2003.

5. Annie Ruth, quoted in the Dominion Post[Wellington], 10 September 2003. Te Rauparaha (1760s–1849) was a powerful Māori chief of Ngati Toa and a prominent figure in the inter-tribal warfare of the early nineteenth century.

6. Annie Ruth, interview with author, 2004.

7. All references are to the New Cambridge edition of Troilus and Cressida, ed. by Anthony B. Dawson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

8. See Image 6.

9. Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 120–1.

10. Programme notes; ‘manchester’ refers to cotton and linen goods.

11. A precedent for such a characterisation of Helen can be found in Ben Iden Payne's 1936 Stratford production in which Payne dressed both Helen and Cressida in panniered farthingales and feathered hats; see Troilus and Cressida, ed. by David Bevington, The Arden Shakespeare, third series (Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1998), p. 95.

12. Dominion Post, 15 September 2003.

13. Similar costuming was used in Michael Langham's anti-imperialist and anti-war production of 1963 when the civil rights movement was at its height in the USA. See Troilus and Cressida, ed. by Bevington, p. 103n.

14. Anne Salmond, in Hui: A Study of Māori Ceremonial Gatherings (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1985), p. 135, notes: ‘In Taranaki, the district of Te Whiti the prophet, the challenger puts down a white feather, Te Whiti's symbol of “peace on earth, goodwill towards men”.’ It is ironic that a symbol of peace was used in this context to challenge the Greeks to a duel with Hector.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., p. 136.

17. Ruth, interview with author, 2004.

18. The first and only Shakespeare film made in Aotearoa/New Zealand is the 2002 film, directed by Don Selwyn, Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti, The Māori Merchant of Venice (He Taonga Films).

19. Gilbert and Tompkins, Post-colonial Drama, p. 169.

20. Annie Ruth, Troilus and Cressida, programme notes.

21. Parihaka, Taranaki holds a special place in New Zealand history as the site of non-violent resistance by local Māori to Pakeha forces in 1881.

22. All quotations from Taylor are from an interview with author, 2004.

23. The scene in which the terms of the bond are negotiated between Antonio and Shylock is set in an art gallery filled with Māori artist Selwyn Muru's Parihaka series of paintings. The backdrop for the major part of the discussions is a painting of Mount Taranaki and the incident at Parihaka.

24. Taylor, interview with author, 2004.

25. Anzac Day (25 April) is one of the few specifically New Zealand public holidays. It is a day to remember all New Zealand war dead, in particular those who died at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli during the First World War.

26. In Troilus and Cressida, ed. by Dawson, p. 63.

27. J. S. Bratton and Julie Hankey, ‘Series Editors’ Preface’, in Shakespeare in Production: Troilus and Cressida, ed. by Frances A. Shirley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. viii–ix.