Award winning and acclaimed comedian Hayley Sproull of Ngāpuhi shares her bicultural heritage in her theatre show Vanilla Miraka. Her struggle with her Māori identity has been at the forefront of her work.
Vanilla Miraka explores what it is like to be a disconnected, quarter-caste Māori, with white skin and no clue what is happening on the marae.
“I wrote a theatre show about it sort of about my inability to really feel like I can claim to be Māori or really say that I am Māori and the anxiety that I sort of feel around that. How I felt when my Nana passed away and sort of felt like my connection with being Māori passed away with her. This show is a result of that.”
“I like to think that this show is quite an approachable way to get into this sort of world of Māori theatre or have a different way to look into this culture.”
Vanilla Miraka is the latest work from an award-winning Wellington actress and comedian.
“In this show, I use a little bit of stand-up comedy some pretty straight forward story telling directly to the audience I use the sketch, I use songs I write original music for it so I'm trying to use all these sorts of different forms to tell this story. I like to think it makes the show feel quite peopled because we're not sort of looking at one person talking at us for an hour. I'm kind of doing all sorts of different things to try to explore the story of this show.”
The performance is a hilarious personal investigation into her bicultural New Zealand heritage.
“I love to share this with people who have maybe lost their connection in other parts of New Zealand.”
You can catch Vanilla Miraka at the BATS Theatre in Wellington on 27 September.