Marama

Strong. Graceful. Mesmerising. We are carried trance-like through these women’s homelands … Marama is a beautiful, beautiful creation of sound, light and movement, certainly a work for director Nina Nawalowalo and The Conch to be proud of. It is dark. Intense. Striking. Necessary.
– Theatreview

Building on the international acclaim of previous works Vula and Masi, Marama is a powerful call from women of the Pacific – the voices of a vanishing world. The devastating effects of deforestation on their homelands and culture are brought startlingly to life through waiata, chants, dances and rituals gracefully and magically performed.

“One day, on a local bus, we stopped where there were no signs and a lady stepped off the bus, left the road and walked into the forest, swiftly disappearing into the trees. It struck me deeply that this was a powerful metaphor, that the edge of the forest was like this woman’s reality, a place where worlds meet, from which she steps into the world of others and returns into her own…that the forest conceals and protects, shelters, like her body, the inner life hidden from view. I began to see this in the Pacific women I met, that in response to the world of others, much has been taken into a deeper place where few know the pathways.”
– Nina Nawalowalo Artistic Director