Conference Proceedings by Rand Hazou
Book Chapters by Rand Hazou
In E. Kahu, R. Shaw, & T. Moriarty (Eds.) Tūrangawaewae: Identity & belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand, Massey University Press, pp. 128 - 149., 2022
In this chapter, we work through three key ideas, providing a case study for each. First, we cons... more In this chapter, we work through three key ideas, providing a case study for each. First, we consider the power of the arts to shape both national and individual identities. An example is provided of how art can perform racial identity through the work of Alice Canton, a New Zealand-born theatre-maker and performer of Chinese and Pākeha descent. Second, we discuss how art can challenge and contest dominant ideas as well as celebrate marginal histories. Here — and in this, we echo points that Ella made in the previous chapter — we consider how the arts might also be used as a form of protest that ensures that dissenting or marginalised voices of this country are heard. Here we return to the Whakaako Kia Whakaora mural to explore in more detail how it celebrates the community activist history of the Polynesian Panthers to improve conditions for Pasifika and Māori communities in Auckland. Finally, we consider the place-making role of the arts, and the connections between art, belonging and well-being. We explore these issues through a case study of the performance Shot Bro, created by Māori actor and director Rob Mokaraka, which uses the arts as a way to facilitate community engagement with issues of mental health, suicide and depression. In conclusion, we introduce the notion of cultural rights to aðrm the importance of participation in the arts as a crucial aspect of citizenship.
Tū Rangaranga: Rights, Responsibilities and Global Citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2022
In this chapter, I explore Banksy’s creative engagements in Palestine to interrogate the extent t... more In this chapter, I explore Banksy’s creative engagements in Palestine to interrogate the extent to which his interventions can be considered acts of global citizenship. I begin with a brief history of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict to contextualise Banksy’s most recent venture, which has involved establishing a boutique art hotel in Bethlehem. I then explore the issue of rights by highlighting how the hotel draws attention to the impact of the Israeli Separation Wall on Palestinian rights, as well as the impact of the hotel on tourism in Bethlehem. I then explore the notion of responsibility by highlighting how the hotel and Banksy’s work might reinforce or resist the normalisation of the occupation, and how these considerations might
help bring about a more nuanced and critical understanding of solidarity as an expression of global citizenship
Tūtira Mai: Making Change in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2021
In this chapter, I provide an overview of the Forum Theatre plays that were developed by the inca... more In this chapter, I provide an overview of the Forum Theatre plays that were developed by the incarcerated community at Auckland Prison, Paremoremo in 2017. I begin by providing a context for understanding theatre in prison, before providing a brief outline of the Forum Theatre approach. The chapter will then describe the three short plays that were performed, and explain the significance and the implications of the issues presented. This chapter explores how the Forum Theatre project worked to empower the community to take action and be involved in deliberating the issues of dysfunction presented in performance, in an effort to enhance the health and wellbeing of prisoners. I will then conclude by arguing that theatre in prison offers wider society a useful and pragmatic means to redefine what citizenship can mean by highlighting the importance of cultural rights.
Routledge Companion to Applied Performance: Volume One - Mainland Europe, North and Latin America, Southern Africa, and Australia and New Zealand, 2021
Precarity: Uncertain, Insecure and Unequal lives in Aotearoa New Zealand Auckland, 2017
This chapter gives a very brief overview of some of the ways that theatre in New Zealand has resp... more This chapter gives a very brief overview of some of the ways that theatre in New Zealand has responded to the issue of asylum seekers and refugees. The chapter begins by exploring the notion of the precariat in relation to refugees, and more specifically the idea of the denizen – a group of people who have limited rights. The chapter briefly sketches out how we generally tend to deal with refugees in New Zealand before exploring the ways denizens have been dramatised and how the precariat in relation to refugees has been performed in Aotearoa. If the refugee experience is defined by the condition of precarity, this chapter briefly considers the role that theatre might play in facilitating stability and belonging for refugees in our communities.
Embodying Transformations: Transcultural Performance, 2015
Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters, Oct 2012
In September 2011, I was invited to visit the Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine to attend Handala pr... more In September 2011, I was invited to visit the Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine to attend Handala presented Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Society (ACTS). The play was based on the famous cartoons created by Palestinian artist Naji Al-Ali. In this chapter, I employ an auto-ethnographic writing style as a means to negotiate the various forms of encounters that I contend with during my visit to the camp, both as a Palestinian born in the diaspora returning to my homeland and as a ‘outsider’ researcher visiting the refugee camp to attend a performance. By employing an auto-ethnographic approach in my writing, and by recognising my personal background and involvement, I hope to clearly situate my role as researcher, acknowledging that claims of subjective bias do not arise from the level of ‘immersion’ in a cultural setting, but rather from a researcher’s ambiguous placement in a field of inquiry (Coffey 1999). I intersperse performance analysis of the play with historical and political information, segments of interviews with General Director of ACTS Abdelfattah Abusrour, and personal recollections in the form of travel notes, to highlight the significance of notion of ‘sumud’ or steadfastness in the Palestinian non-violent struggle, and which informs the strategy of ‘beautiful resistance’ employed by ACTS in their creative practice
Journal Articles by Rand Hazou
Australasian Drama Studies, 2023
This article explores the work of the Hobson Street Theatre Company (HSTC) and how it negotiates ... more This article explores the work of the Hobson Street Theatre Company (HSTC) and how it negotiates issues of precarity and resilience associated with the street experience. Formed in 2010 from members of the street community accessing the homeless services, food assistance and health support provided by the Auckland City Mission, the company uses theatre to foster dialogue on issues perpetuating homelessness. In this article I explore the work of HSTC in relation to indigenous Māori principles of Manaakitanga (hospitality or care for one another), Whanaungatanga (kinship or sense of family connection), and Kotahitanga (unity or collective action), which are situated as practical cultural resources that the HSTC mobilises to enhance the well-being of both their members and their audience. I conclude by offering the notion of ‘transilience’ to better describe the aspirations of the HSTC actors ‘to move beyond’ the precarity they experience in life.
Humanities Journal, 2022
This article explores a creative project entitled Performing Liberation which sought to empower c... more This article explores a creative project entitled Performing Liberation which sought to empower communities with direct experience of incarceration to create and share creative work as part of transnational dialogue. One of the aims of the project was to facilitate creative dialogue and exchange between two incarcerated communities: prisoners at Auckland Prison and prisoners at San Quentin Prison in San Francisco. Written using autoethnographic methods, this co-authored article explores our recollections of key moments in a creative workshop at Auckland Prison in an attempt to explain its impact on stimulating the creativity of the participants. We begin by describing the context of incarceration in the US and New Zealand and suggest that these seemingly divergent locations are connected by mass incarceration. We also provide an overview of the creative contexts at San Quentin and Auckland Prison on which the Performing Liberation project developed. After describing key moments in the workshop, the article interrogates the creative space that it produced in relation to the notion of liberation, as a useful concept to interrogate various forms of oppression, and as a practice that is concerned with unshackling the body, mind, and spirit. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution.
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2021
Threatened with ever-increasing levels of surveillance and confinement, this special issue attemp... more Threatened with ever-increasing levels of surveillance and confinement, this special issue attempts to extend the discussion of Prison Theatre to consider 'carcerality' as a pervasive neoliberal strategy. The issue aims to steer the discussion away from considerations of utility and the aesthetics of redemption, towards understandings of the arts in carceral spaces as a fundamental human right. What role can theatre and performance play in highlighting the rights of those experiencing state-sponsored control, confinement and exclusion? And what role can theatre and performance play in challenging the exclusionary structures of carcerality by enhancing freedoms, liberty and inclusion?
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2021
This article explores Ngā Pātū Kōrero: Walls That Talk (2019), a documentary theatre production s... more This article explores Ngā Pātū Kōrero: Walls That Talk (2019), a documentary theatre production staged by incarcerated men at Unit 8 Te Piriti, a specialist therapy unit for those convicted of sex offences located at Auckland Prison, Aotearoa New Zealand. The performance was built around Te Whare Tapa Whā (The House of Four Sides)-a widely used model of Māori health. In this article we discuss the use of masks in performance and the significance of Te Whare Tapa Whā as a dramaturgical device, which builds on the foundations of cultural rights in order to advance a decolonising approach to prison theatre practice.
Geographical Research, 2021
In 2017, as part of a restructuring of the Bachelor of Arts degree, Massey University introduced ... more In 2017, as part of a restructuring of the Bachelor of Arts degree, Massey University introduced the compulsory second-year citizenship course Tū Rangaranga: Global Encounters. Tū Rangaranga is a Māori word meaning to weave together or establish connections. The course explores citizenship from a global perspective with a focus on rights and responsibilities. In the course, students are encouraged both to reflect on the multiple factors shaping their identities, including Aotearoa New Zealand's colonial past, and to locate themselves in relation to complex global problems. This decolonial approach to curricula and pedagogy enables a greater commitment to Māori perspectives related to citizenship. This commitment is reflected in the weaving together of Māori and Western epistemologies in the course design and content. The course was developed in the context of a university that subsequently expressed a commitment to becoming a Tiriti-led university and to abide by its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, recognising the indigeneity and rights of Māori people. The decolonial imperative underscoring the teaching of this course was to enhance forms of collective reflection and action to address issues of cultural exclusion and disadvantage associated with colonial legacies that privilege Western epistemologies within curricula and pedagogy.
Theatre Journal, 2020
This article explores three examples of contemporary Asian theatre in New Zealand: Renee Liang’s ... more This article explores three examples of contemporary Asian theatre in New Zealand: Renee Liang’s opera The Bone Feeder (2017), Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen’s The Mooncake and the Kumara (2015), and Alice Canton’s OTHER [chinese] (2017). Enlisting a decolonial approach in our analysis, we explore how these recent theatre examples challenge constructions of White settler colonialism by imagining and representing different relationships between Chinese mi-grants and Māori. White settler colonialism often situates Chinese migrants as wanting to ‘fit-in’ to political structures that continue to disenfranchise Māori. This article argues that contem-porary examples of Asian Theatre in New Zealand employ decolonial strategies that disrupt co-lonial discourses and historical narratives in New Zealand that privilege White European knowledges and history. Contemporary Chinese Kiwi theatre challenges the often-ambiguous position that Chinese migrants occupy in relation to White settler colonialism by changing the terms through which Māori and Chinese relationships have been framed.
Australasian Drama Studies Journal, 2020
Cellfish (2017) is a dark comedy written by Miriama McDowell (Ngāti Hine), Rob Mokaraka (Ngāpuhi,... more Cellfish (2017) is a dark comedy written by Miriama McDowell (Ngāti Hine), Rob Mokaraka (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tūhoe), and Jason Te Kare (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tainui). The play follows the story of a drama teacher, Miss Lucy, who enters the world of a men’s prison to offer Shakespeare classes. The play offers a critique of intergenerational violence and the legacies of colonialism that impact on the high imprisonment rates of Māori. This article offers an analysis of Cellfish by exploring certain principles of restorative justice that underscore the production. Restorative justice has become an established approach in criminology where it is most commonly understood as involving the victim, the offender, and the community coming together to repair the harm caused by crime. Instead of a narrow focus privleging the encounter between victim and offender, this article explores principles of restrative justice underscoring the Cellfish production including the key notions of Utu (restoring balance) and Whanangatanga (reciprocal family relations). The article begins by introducing the Cellfish production before situating the work in relation to the field of Prison Theatre. The article then offers a brief outline of restorative justice before providing a reading of how these principles can be traced in the play. I argue that Cellfish might be usefully conceived as enacting restorative justice by critiquing the punitive criminal justice system and offering instead alternative visions of justice based on ideas of restoring balance, inter-relationality, and healing.
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance,, 2018
In September 2015, and in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, there were widespread calls in N... more In September 2015, and in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, there were widespread calls in New Zealand urging the Government to raise its annual Refugee Quota. Māori Party co-leader Marama Fox argued that New Zealand could afford to take on more refugees as part of its global citizenship and suggested that New Zealand’s policy might be shaped by manaaki. The Māori concept of manaaki is most often translated as hospitality, care-giving, and compassion. This article draws on recent Māori scholarship that also situates manaaki as a social justice concept through its focus on enhancing the dignity and rights of others. This article explores the potential implications of manaaki and the reciprocal understandings underscoring this term through a brief and preliminary analysis of New Zealand refugee theatre. The article provides a context to this analysis by providing a brief survey of refugee theatre productions staged in New Zealand in recent years. To what extent has manaaki shaped the theatre staged in Aotearoa/New Zealand engaging with asylum seekers and refugees? In what ways might manaaki provide for a different ‘envisioning of asylum’?
This article explores notions of ‘the real’, ‘the authentic’, and ‘the masculine’ at play in The ... more This article explores notions of ‘the real’, ‘the authentic’, and ‘the masculine’ at play in The Brave (2013), a performance devised by eight male members of the Auckland-based Massive Company. Directed by Sam Scott and Carla Martell, the performance explores some of the many pressures that young men face today in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The performance highlights the pressure some younger New Zealand-born Pasifika men can experience when faced with the social expectations to act or behave like a ‘real’ Samoan or Tongan, for example. Underscoring the performance is a critique of particular essentialist, static, and authentic notions of maleness and masculinity. However, at the same time, the devising process that Massive Company enlists also seems to paradoxically employ a notion of authenticity that is tied to ideas of ‘the real’. When devising work the company often works ‘from the real’, exploring the actual stories of members of the cast and workshopping these experiences into performance. This paper considers the distinctions at play in Massive’s working methods and explores how ideas of authenticity and the real are informed by key clowning concepts through the influence of Philippe Gaulier. Ultimately this paper considers how The Brave might play with, and subvert, a static and essentialist notion of authenticity in particular reference to how male identity and masculinity is conceived.
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2015
E(Lab)orating Performance is a transnational collaborative teaching and learning project involvin... more E(Lab)orating Performance is a transnational collaborative teaching and learning project involving Massey University (New Zealand), University of Cape Town (South Africa), UWC Mahindra College (India), and University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). The project was devised to facilitate creative engagements between students and educators in theatre and performance classrooms at the participating institutions. By using online platforms to create transnational teaching and learning spaces, the project explored the affordances and the limitations of blended learning approaches to ‘live’ disciplines like Theatre and Performance Studies. In addition to exploring aspects of blended learning, the project was guided by an assumption that it might facilitate transnational cultural citizenship, through which participating students and educators might develop cosmopolitan engagements and openness to cultural differences. This paper critically examines the E(Lab)orating Performance project by providing an overview, a reflection on its various productive mistranslations, and a consideration of its effectiveness as a teaching and learning initiative.
In September 2011, I travelled to the Palestinian Occupied Territories to participate in an inter... more In September 2011, I travelled to the Palestinian Occupied Territories to participate in an internship with the Al Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah. As part of my internship I was invited to attend rehearsals of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' with students of the Drama Academy Ramallah. Directed by Samer Al-Saber, with movement and choreography by Petra Barghouthi, the production premiered as a work in progress in Palestine before touring to Essen, Germany, where it was presented as part of an Intercultural Shakespeare Festival organised by Folkwang University. In this paper I draw on post-colonial theory to offer some observations about the various strategies of syncretisation that the production seemed to employ in order to localise, indigenise or ‘Palestinian-ise’ Shakespeare’s text. My analysis will attempt to illuminate some of the Palestinian cultural specificity introduced by the syncretic approach as well as offer some assessment of the potential and unintended impact that this approach might have engendered.
Studies in Theatre and Performance, Jan 1, 2011
This article examines the potential role that media technology can play in the presentation of do... more This article examines the potential role that media technology can play in the presentation of documentary material onstage. Using Théâtre du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravansérail/The Last Caravanserai (2005) as a case study, this article focuses on the ‘intermediality’ of the production and on the various media and digital technologies that are used in performance to both mediate and mediatize the accounts of asylum seekers that are transposed to the stage. By situating Le Dernier Caravansérail as an ‘intermedial’ performance, I am hoping to open up an interdisciplinary framework that draws on concepts from media studies and communication theory in order to provide a more nuanced discussion and analysis. Two concepts emerging from these fields that I focus on are the notions of ‘hypermediacy’ and ‘credibility’. Focusing on Théâtre du Soleil’s anti-realist aesthetic, I argue that the digital technologies used in the production not only work to highlight the artifice of the theatrical event by foregrounding the production’s own processes of representation and mediation, but they can also procure ‘hypermedial’ effects of propinquity and engagement. While ‘credibility’ has been theorized in the fields of media studies and communications for more than 50 years, it remains a particularly neglected concept in the fields of performance and theatre studies. Discussing credibility as a combination of trustworthiness and expertise, I argue that by engendering hypermediacy and credibility in the production, Théâtre du Soleil enlists the craft of make-believe, persuading audiences to take a closer look at those excluded and silenced by the state
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Conference Proceedings by Rand Hazou
Book Chapters by Rand Hazou
help bring about a more nuanced and critical understanding of solidarity as an expression of global citizenship
Journal Articles by Rand Hazou
help bring about a more nuanced and critical understanding of solidarity as an expression of global citizenship
I have often found myself rephrasing the quote above by the modernist American-Lebanese artist and poet Kahlil Gibran in order to argue that ‘traditions’ should not be an anchor that secures us to a nostalgic or idealised past. This has been especially useful in conversations about theatre or creative practice in the Middle East, where conservative and essentialist sentiments might often
valorise the need to stick to ‘our traditions’ or ‘our culture’, in arguments often pitted against progressive practices, ideas, or politics. Given the impact of Western cultural and political imperialism that is generally perceived as an ongoing project in the Middle East, it has often been important to argue that, rather than holding us back, traditions should carry us forward, helping us
to engage rather than disengage from others and the world. These sentiments and Gibran’s nautical metaphor also resonate with the main currents underlying the wonderfully engaging publication Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific, which charts the impact of globalisation in the region and maps the flow of economies, culture and the arts beyond defined geopolitical borders of the nation state.
Australia's shores seeking sanctuary and protection. This most recent wave of asylum
seekers to Australia consisted mainly of Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians, and has been referred to as the 'fourth wave' of asylum seekers to arrive in Australia by boat. The Howard Coalition Government's response to this group of asylum seekers was characterised by exclusionary policies, media censorship, and information control. As a result of restrictions placed on journalists seeking to report on detention centres, the Australian theatre has played a vital role in challenging the Government's censorship and propaganda by exposing details about the conditions in detention centres and by revealing the stories of those who have been imprisoned inside. As a result, the Australian theatre has witnessed a renaissance in political theatre and performance in recent years directly engaging with the plight of asylum seekers arriving on Australian shores. This thesis charts the Australian theatre's response to the asylum seekers of the fourth wave. The study presents a comprehensive catalogue of the contributions in the field of the performing arts dealing with the fourth wave of asylum seekers which have been staged in Australia over a five-year period from November 2000 to October 2005. Challenging the Government's policies of exclusion, the Australian theatre has emerged as an important socio-political practice geared towards including those who have been excluded by the state. In contrast to the Government's policies of media censorship and information control, the Australian theatre responding to the plight of asylum seekers attempts in various ways to return the theatre to its etymological and radical associations as 'a place of seeing' where audiences can contend with the experiences and stories of those silenced by the state. This thesis argues that the theatre responding to the plight of asylum seekers constitutes an important contribution and development in the field of political theatre in Australia.