Decoloniality and Contemporary Asian Theatre in New Zealand

This essay 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 its analysis, the essay explores how these recent theatre examples challenge constructions of white settler colonialism by imagining and representing different relationships between Chinese migrants and Māori. White settler colonialism often situates Chinese migrants as wanting to “fit in” to political structures that continue to disenfranchise Māori. The essay argues that contemporary examples of Asian theatre in New Zealand employ decolonial strategies that disrupt colonial 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 are framed.