‘Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking’ – A Journey of Memory, Mana and the Heart of Aotearoa
Auckland Theatre Company has delivered a deeply resonant and powerfully memorable season throughout 2025, one filled with works that challenged, delighted, and moved audiences to their core. Their final presentation of the year, Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking, stands as a profoundly fitting culmination to a year of stories that have celebrated who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going as a nation. A work of immense heart, reverence, and stirring emotional expression, Tiri invites audiences into a shared space of reflection: one grounded in our past, ever aware of our present, and urgently connected to our collective future.
A Voice That Speaks to Aotearoa
There are few authors who speak with the living voice of Aotearoa as clearly and poetically as Witi Ihimaera. His work has long articulated the essence of our collective experience: the landscapes we carry inside us, the weight of our histories and joys, and the powerful song of whakapapa. With Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking, Ihimaera again turns his gaze toward the foundational document of this nation, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, presenting it not as static history or a schoolroom lesson, but as a living, breathing and ongoing conversation.
This is not a retelling of events as they happened. This is memory, dream, aroha and reckoning, woven together through the life of Tiri Mahana, a 185-year-old matriarch born at the moment of the Treaty’s signing. Through her eyes, audiences witness the forging of a nation: its joys, its fractures, its hopes, and its ongoing responsibility to honour, to listen, to speak truly, and to carry forward what matters.
The play does not lecture. Instead, it invites. It asks. It opens space for reflection. What does Te Tiriti mean to us, right now? How does it guide the future we are shaping for the next generation? These are questions that linger long after the final curtain falls.
A Story Held in Light, Sound, and Breath
Director Katie Wolfe (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Toa Rangatira), whose visionary staging of The Haka Party Incident remains one of the defining moments of recent New Zealand theatre, brings an extraordinary clarity of purpose to Tiri. Working with translator Maioha Allen, the production unfolds in both Te Reo Māori and English, moving fluidly and confidently between the two, and offering audiences an experience rooted in the beauty and rhythm of our shared languages.
The staging is breathtaking in its simplicity. A near-bare stage, careful use of open space, and a palette of colour and illumination reminiscent of Rothko, layered, striking, dreamlike, creates a sense of ceremony and vision. Shadow and silhouette dance with bursts of full-bodied colour, conjuring both the natural landscapes of Aotearoa and the emotional resonances of memory. The result is a presentation that feels at times like a painting rising into motion, a wairua made visible.
The score, echoing like a heartbeat of land and people, supports this dream-space. Nothing overwhelms. Everything breathes. The production trusts its audience, and in doing so, earns their full engagement and presence.
Performances of Deep Connection
At the centre of Tiri are two remarkable and deeply felt performances from Miriama McDowell (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) and Nī Dekkers-Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Porou). Working together with an almost symbiotic energy, the two performers create a single living portrait of Tiri Mahana—her youth, her age, her memories, her battles, her joys and her profound grief.
McDowell carries Tiri’s gravitas, wisdom and emotional weight: a life lived long and hard, marked by both fire and immense aroha. Dekkers-Reihana brings the spark of the young Tiri, with all her mischievousness, idealism and spark. Together, they hold the audience in the palm of their hands.
There is also playfulness here. There is laughter, cheek, tease and warmth, something that feels so true to Māori storytelling. Just as in life, the light sits beside the heavy. The audience is welcomed, spoken to directly, and included, not merely as observers, but as participants in the shared story unfolding before them. Tiri breaks the fourth wall not as a device, but as a natural continuation of the tikanga of gathering and storytelling.
A Work of Heart, Whakapapa and Future
What Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking achieves is no small feat. It is personal and political, mythic and grounded, historical and immediate. It honours the Treaty, but more importantly, it honours the people whose lives have been shaped by its promises; kept and broken.
This is storytelling not just for the mind, but for the wairua. It is stirring. It is emotional. It is necessary.
By the time the final moments of the play unfold, audiences are left with a sense not of closure, but of continuation. Tiri has lived her years. She has walked far. Now her story is carried forward by those watching. The path ahead is ours.
A Theatrical Taonga
In every sense, Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking is a taonga; a treasure of theatrical storytelling that honours our shared history while looking with hope and determination toward the future.
It’s a production that moves you, challenges you, and invites reflection long after the lights fade. The play’s fusion of artistry, intellect, and emotion is a powerful reminder of what New Zealand theatre can achieve when it dares to blend cultural authenticity with bold creative vision.
As Auckland Theatre Company’s final production of 2026, it’s an extraordinary way to close the year, a masterwork of imagination and mana that speaks directly to the heart of this land and its people.
Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking is now playing at Auckland Waterfront Theatre until Sunday, November 23. Don’t miss your chance to experience this stirring and unforgettable work of Aotearoa storytelling at its finest.
Image: ATC
