Tales Of An Urban Indian: Directed by Herbie Barnes, Te Pou Theatre -January 11, 2024

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Tales Of An Urban Indian is definitely theatre with a difference. When writers say things like “the drama took me on a journey,” this time it’s meant literally.

The 13th Floor’s Theatre Peter reports on opening night:

I went to the theatre, and I ended up on a bus. bFM’s Alice Canton reckons 2024 will be the year of theatre out in the wild. And if she’s right, the year’s theatre started for me the way it’s supposed to carry on.

TTales Of An Urban Indianales of an Urban Indian is one of three shows brought to Aotearoa by Toronto’s Talk is Free Theatre – so the titular Indian here in this solo show is North-American – which confused one family on the bus from the sub-continent — and the work itself is well travelled, quite literally, first produced in 2009 and having been performed in Canada, Australia, Chile and Surinam. And now West Auckland.

Said to have been rehearsed for a theatre space, the play’s 2009 premiere was moved onto a bus last minute “out of necessity.” And so it has continued.  But the telling is one thing, and the travel is another. Henderson is not Vancouver. And for our round-the suburbs commute to be more than just a gimmick, it needs to be more relevant than just parking outside a church as he mentions a chu­rch. Were we also supposed to take meaning from the factory we parked outside? Or the new housing subdivision? Or the frozen chicken factory we drove past? I couldn’t be sure.

The tales are told by “a contemporary Indigenous man who grows up on both the reserve and in ‘big-city’ Vancouver.” It’s a coming-of-age tale of displacement and a struggle for identity that, in essence, has been told before many times before (coming quickly to mind just from local offerings are Waiora: Te-Ū-Kai-Po from 2018 and last year’s masterful solo show Waiting by Shadon Meredith.)

Tales Of An Urban Indian

We start awkwardly, with an introduction from the quietly spoken Canadian at the front of the bus. I was still trying to decipher his well-meant acknowledgement to Marna Fi-NOO-a of TaMACKie MackaROW (I worked it out in the end) when a bouncing young fellow leapt onto the bus, eyeballed us all, and began talking loudly.

There’s a very old Jasper Carrot sketch about ‘the nutter on the bus.’ I tried not to think of that as he began. This was our actor, and as the bus drove on, he poured out his story of growing up, fucking up, and discovering himself in the end. My tale is “common, too common,” he said. There wasn’t a great deal of plot conflict to resolve.

It was a beautiful day for a magical mystery tour, and the dozen or so who joined the bus ride attended well, mostly avoiding the passing distractions outside – but there were distractions, even in Henderson, and it was sometimes hard to hear over the air conditioning (one downside of the warm day.)

It’s intimate, a performance like this. It’s hard not to feel sympathy when a fellow looks you in the eye and tells you about his friend’s suicide. Or a drug death. Or another tragedy in his young life. (At times it does feel a bit like a Jim Carroll song.) Hard, at times, to remember he’s an actor.

And Nolan Moberly, the actor playing our urban Indian Simon Douglas, is good. Very good in such an intimate space. Much of the material seems too personal to be played just by an actor – and since it hadn’t been well signaled, I felt unreasonably cheated once I realised he wasn’t the ‘real’ Simon Douglas. (Was there ever a real Nick? Or Janine?)

Tales Of An Urban IndianSo the novelty does add something new. And the small space adds that intimacy. But does the material coming all the way from Canada become relevant to us here in Aotearoa? I’m not sure. We were offered as touchstones Canadian-Indian icons like Buffy St-Marie and Robbie Robertson. I like them both, but I’m not sure they resonated here. And I’m not sure that jokes about Celine Dion work down here either, do they?

We all do find ourselves playing a part sometimes, based on our perceived identity. So we could sympathise with Nolan/Simon, I think, but not fully empathise – and perhaps that left us more untouched at the end than we’d like to have been.

We didn’t even have the catharsis at the end of a good loud clap, our hero jumping off the bus unexpectedly once he’d reached the end of his personal journey. For us, we still had some way to go.

Theatre Peter

TALES OF AN URBAN INDIAN is on until Sun 14 January, leaving afternoons from Henderson’s Te Pou Theatre.

More info here.

Tickets here.

Theatre Peter
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