Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Christopher B. Balme
Pacific Performances
Titles include:
Christopher B. Balme
PACIFIC PERFORMANCES
Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas
Judith Hamera
DANCING COMMUNITIES
Performance, Difference and Connection in the Global City
Joanne Tompkins
UNSETTLING SPACE
Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre
Forthcoming titles:
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction 1
Definitions 2
Mimetic capital and exotic commodities 7
Performance in Paradise 9
Fishing grounds 12
The passage 13
vii
7 ‘As You Always Imagined It’: The Pacific as Tourist Spectacle 174
The Polynesian Cultural Center and tourist performance 177
Staging Polynesian culture(s) 179
Mimicry and resisting the tourist gaze 181
Framing authenticity 186
Notes 218
Selected Bibliography 245
Index 251
ix
xi
xii
Christopher B. Balme
and practices that establish continuities over long periods of time.4 These
(dis)continuities are not to be understood in the traditional sense of motifs
or myths. Genealogies of performance are rather to be detected in a
particular combination of corporeal and perceptual practices determined
by a high degree of reciprocity. The body, perhaps the most labile and
complex site of reciprocal exchange, is the place where this transmission is
Definitions
a set of images and image making devices that are accumulated, ‘banked’,
as it were, in books, archives, collections, cultural storehouses, until such
time as these representations are called upon to generate new representa-
tions. The images that matter, that merit the term capital, are those that
achieve reproductive power, maintaining and multiplying themselves by
transforming cultural contacts into novel and often unexpected forms.20
Like the New World, the exploration of the Pacific in the second half of the
eighteenth century produced a rich stockpile of tales, images and, as this
book is determined to show, performances that contributed to the mimetic
capital of the region. The first explorers and subsequent visitors were struck
by the highly performative nature of the cultures they encountered. Wherever
they went, they were met with a succession of rituals, ceremonies, dances,
oratory, even dramatic sketches in which they themselves figured. So rich
indeed was this performative aspect of the islands that early visitors had
the impression of attending one long heiva (a Tahitian ceremonial gathering).
Mimetic capital operates on several levels, some of which will be studied
in this book. Of particular interest is the passage of the encountered cultural
forms through time as the exploring and then colonizing powers assim-
ilate and commodify them for a variety of aesthetic, political and economic
reasons. The initial basis of this mimetic capital was provided by the succes-
sion of official and the almost simultaneous unofficial publications that were
issued in the wake of the voyages. Louis de Bougainville’s Voyage autour
du monde (1771) marks the beginning of this process, followed by John
Hawkesworth’s Account of the Voyages successively performed by Commodore
Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Cateret, and Captain Cook (1773). This lavishly
The totally strange, if there can be such a thing, is not exotic because it
would lack some familiar element that makes it attractive to the viewer.
Neither can it be totally familiar because it would then cease to be attractive.
A handmaiden of colonialism, exoticism often functions to conceal or
disguise the brutal realities of colonial conquest and imperialistic control.
Today exoticism functions primarily as a commodity in the context of the
Performance in Paradise
Imagining the Pacific and its peoples has been an activity that Westerners
have followed with almost as much energy as they have invested in its colon-
ization. Immediately following the early exploration of the Pacific by Wallis,
Cook, and Bougainville and the publication of their journals, the ‘South Seas’
became invested with both desire and repulsion. In his important collection
of essays, Imagining the Pacific (1992), the Australian art historian and Pacific
scholar Bernard Smith diagnoses two broad tendencies within the visual
imagery produced in the wake of Cook’s voyages and representations of the
Pacific more generally:
Yet there is a tendency for the representations to coalesce into two anti-
thetical and yet mutually supportive images around which a high degree
of internal consistency develops during the nineteenth century; that
is to say, the Pacific as a kind of Paradise in which Europeans might find
heavenly bliss on earth, and an opposing image of the Pacific as a kind
of Purgatory from which the poor children of nature might be won for
a life of bliss in heaven. It was Dante who first placed purgatory in the
southern hemisphere.23
And in his conclusion Smith states unequivocally that ‘the imagery was a
component of the decision-making of those Europeans who would enter the
Pacific in their thousands and eventually dominate it.’24 Many, if not most,
representations of the Pacific in literature, painting, film, theatre and music
tend to position themselves within the coordinates outlined by Smith.
The Pacific as paradise is certainly the most overworked epithet in the
synonym and substitute for the obsolete term ‘South Seas’,27 it gradually
shifted its conceptual coordinates until by the late 1980s it appeared to be
located somewhere in the Far East. The Australian scholar of postcolonial
literature Paul Sharrad described this shift in 1990 in an article entitled
‘Imagining the Pacific’.28 Sharrad bemoans the fact that recent articles or
books featuring the word ‘Pacific’ turn out to be about Korea, Japan or Singa-
Until very recent times the Basin has been represented not as a political
sphere or an economic one in an active, productive sense, but as a passive
receptacle of observation, a space for European adventuring, an area of
natural science, history, anthropology and ‘development studies’.29
Fishing grounds
the one and Samoa to the other’.34 Two names, which will loom large,
are Marshall Sahlins and Greg Dening. Sahlins, the anthropologist turned
historian, and Dening, the historian cum anthropologist have both in their
individual geographical areas (Hawai‘i for one, Tahiti and the Marquesas for
the other) explored the dynamics of cross-cultural encounters of the past.35
Of the two, Dening has encroached deepest into the feeding grounds of
The passage
19
after our people have been on board about one glass, those from the 2
canoes begin to call out to us; in a gruff, hollow voice but [we] could not
in the least understand any of it, however [we] called back to them in
token of an answer, when they began again several times, but did not
come nearer than a stonepiece’s [small cannon] shot, blew also many
times on an Instrument which gave sound like the moors’ Trumpets, we
had one of our sailor’s (who could play somewhat on the Trumpet) blow
back to them in answer, those of the Zeehaen had their under-mate (who
came to the Land [East Indies?] as Trumpeter ) do likewise: after This
several Times was done on both Sides those in the vessels have finally
stopped and paddled away.3
This famous ‘first encounter’ took place in Taitapu (Golden Bay) on the
northern tip of the South Island. Anne Salmond interprets this musical
exchange from the Maori perspective as a combination of a ‘haka, a chant
for war, and the instrument played from the canoes was almost certainly
The plain trumpet duet of Murderers’ Bay was no match for the full-
scale song and dance act performed for (or on) the unsuspecting Tongans.
Trumpets, a flute and a fiddle provided back-up for a dancing sailors’ chorus.
The locals were evidently dumbstruck by this demonstration of a maritime
knees-up. In any event it was more efficacious than in New Zealand, as
intercourse between the Dutch and Tongans got off on a much better foot.
A pattern that was to repeat itself many times and ultimately become legend
in the South Seas began. The Tongans paddled out in their canoes; a brisk
trade in trinkets and comestibles ensued, which quickly shifted to other
kinds of traffic:
With the men came also many women on shipboard: these were all
uncommonly big: but among all stood out two frightful giantesses, one
of whom had a moustache [Marginal note: Giantesses fall in love with the
Hollanders] they both grasped the wound-healer Henrik Haelbos round
the neck: each desired fleshly intercourse: whereupon [they] assailed each
other with words. All had thick, curly and black hair. Other women felt
the sailors shamelessly the trouser-front, and indicated clearly: that they
wanted to have intercourse. [Marginal note. South-islanders what people.]
Compared to the French and English visitors a century later, the Dutch, no
doubt braced by their staunch Protestant upbringing, gave no sign (at least
no recorded account) of actually entering into this kind of exchange. The
visitors were not, however, averse to other kinds of entertainment and thus
began a practice that can be considered ‘structural’ in the context of cross-
cultural theatricality:
On the surface, we see here a fairly primitive kind of burlesque that was
endemic in cross-cultural contacts. To dress the other in one’s own garb
meant staging a kind of ‘mimic man’, perhaps the most infamous and ambi-
valent of colonial stereotypes, as V. S. Naipaul and Homi Bhabha have
argued. Whereas Bhabha and Naipaul describe practices of self-motivated
mimicry as the response to sustained colonialism, we observe in the old
Tongan decked out in Dutch attire a variant that cannot, however, be termed
colonial in the narrower sense. Relations between the encountering cultures
were still suspended in the moment of ‘wonder’ that Greenblatt has analysed
for the first contacts in the New World. Transformation by costume is, of
course, an integral part of theatrical performance, a mode to which the
Dutch here resorted to celebrate amicable relations. Unbeknownst to the
early explorers was the fact that for some Polynesian cultures, the exchange
of clothing was part of an elaborate reception ceremony. In this case, there
were indeed two quite separate cultural performances being enacted: the one
comic, the other probably more serious. This question will be discussed in
more depth at the end of the chapter.
The anecdote also demonstrates the unpredictability inherent in perform-
ative encounters. The inverted wineglass demonstrates how a planned mise
en scène complete with props – presumably an attempt to ply the Orangkaja
with ‘firewater’ – is thwarted by a flick of the wrist and transformed into its
parody. Theatrical properties are material objects, and as Nicholas Thomas
has argued, such objects change as they move between cultures; their
properties are not inscribed in them.11 The up-turned wineglass suggests
that – and this too is endemic to the theatricality of cross-cultural perform-
ances – both audiences are laughing at two different plays, although the
action may appear to be the same.
Returning now to Tasman’s trumpets, we can trace a veritable perform-
had on board ship a stock of fireworks, which, when combined with cannon-
ades from the ship’s pieces, never failed to strike awe or even fear into the
locals. On different occasions, Cook refers to how these demonstrations
‘astonished and entertained’ or even ‘entertained and frightened’ the indi-
genous audiences.16 The young German Georg Forster, accompanying his
father Johann on Cook’s second voyage, is more analytical in his diagnosis
In Tahiti, the island people made beaches the mythic meeting places
between Natives and Strangers. Their beach became enclosed in the ritual
space of their place of worship, consciously set between land and sea.
These temples, called Taputapuatea were theatres for the Tahitians’
deepest plays about the origins of their power and authority. They had
had such theatres long before the arrival of the European strangers in
1767.19
The beach in Tahiti was thus prefigured and defined according to a cultural
‘grammar’ based on a series of oppositions: ‘violence and quiet, sea and
land, stranger and native, politics and cosmology. No one met on the beach
at Tahiti without bending to that grammar.’20 What Dening identifies as
a structural principle of cross-cultural contact in Tahiti can be extended
to embrace any first-encounter situation in the Pacific. The deep structural
significance of the beach, and more specifically the first landings on it,
the initial moment of going ashore, was so fundamental, so loaded with
Shocking spectacles
Of all the myths surrounding the discovery of the South Sea islands, the
stories of sexual promiscuity were those that most interested and inflamed
the European audience back home. The apparent uncomplicated exchange
of amorous favours for iron nails was a transaction that, for the male public
In spite of all our precautions, a young girl came on board, and placed
herself upon the quarter-deck, near one of the hatchways, which was
open, in order to give air to those who were heaving at the capstern below
it. The girl carelessly droped a cloth, which covered her, and appeared to
the eyes of all beholders, such as Venus shewed herself to the Phrygian
shepherd, having, indeed, the celestial form of that goddess. Both sailors
and soldiers endeavoured to come to the hatch-way; and the capstern was
never hove with more alacrity than on this occasion.29
Most commentary of this scene has pointed to the classical allusions and
metaphors Bougainville employs, particularly the figuring of Tahiti in terms
of Greek mythology. Of interest is also the sheer theatricality of the scene.
While the girl’s act of divesting herself of her last (or only) piece of clothing is
itself spectacular enough, one should also focus on the spatial configuration
evoked. There are many onlooker positions and they function to reinforce
the intensity of the scene through focus and concentration. At least three
different groups of spectators can be identified. When the girl clambers up on
to the quarterdeck (a space usually reserved for officers), she is being viewed
by those sailors and officers on deck (including obviously Bougainville); by
the Tahitians waiting in the surrounding canoes; and lastly, and perhaps
most importantly, she is seen from below, from the hatchway where the
sailors are working and where they scramble to look up at the sight of
‘celestial’ splendour. By thus emphasizing a variety of intense, and clearly
erotically driven gazes, Bougainville is practising a kind of ekphrasis, the
verbal description of a picture, with his description deliberately echoing the
theatricality of rococo history painting.
There is another theatrical emphasis implicit in the scene if one
adds to it the account of the young volunteer on board the Boudeuse,
Charles-Félix-Pierre Fesche. He reports that the Tahitian Venus was not alone,
but accompanied by an old man and several other Tahitians. He stresses the
whiteness of her skin, ‘the envy of most Spanish women’; and instead of
standing in splendid isolation, as Bougainville suggests, Fesche writes that
the French:
came closer, looked, admired, touched; soon the veil was lifted, and truly
the Tahitians on shore changed their tactics, as George Robertson, the ship’s
master, recorded in his journal:
they soon found non of them was hurt and all returnd back to the Water
side, and brought a good many fine young Girls down of different colours,
some was a light coper collour oyrs a mullato and some almost if not
But our Young men seeing several very handsome Young girls, they could
not help feasting their eyes with so agreeable a sight this was observed
by some of the Elderly men, and several of the Young Girls was drawen
out, some a light coper colour oythers a mulatto and some almost White.
The old men made them stand in Rank, and made signs for our people
to take which they lyked best, and as many as they lyked and for fear
our men hade been Ignorant and not known how to use the poor young
Girls, the old men made signs how we should behave to the Young
women.34
Needless to say, this message was clearly understood on the other side of the
cultural divide and the English sailors communicated back that they knew
perfectly well what to do, which ‘seemd to please the Old men greatly when
they saw our people merry, but the porr young Girls seemd a little afraid,
but soon after turnd better aquanted’.35 It is worth noting how Robertson
stresses the various figures of seeing on the part of both cultures, which is
I was tould by one of the Young Gentlemen that a new sort of trade took
up the most of their attention this day, but it might be more properly
called the old trade, he says a Dear Irish boy one of our marines was the
first that began the trade, for which he got a very severe cobing [thrashing]
from the Liberty men for not beginning in a more decent manner, in
some house or at the back of some bush or tree, Padys excuse was the fear
of losing the Honour of having the first.36
The ‘Pady’ received his thrashing for exposing to European public view what
even the seasoned soldiers and sailors deemed unfit for visual consumption.
The young marine, for his part, sought to provide ‘ocular proof’ of his first
contact. That it was an Irishman, himself an outsider on an English ship,
might also suggest a subtle division within the monolithic ‘European’ view
and its implied binary.
In a sense the young Irishman had involuntarily ‘gone native’ by offending
the fundamental cultural opposition between public and private, which,
while by no means immutable in European culture, generally held sexual acts
to be an activity exclusively reserved for the private sphere. By ‘performing’
it in public, the marine had unwittingly crossed an important cultural
threshold for Europeans and Tahitians alike, which brought sexual perform-
ance into a theatrical perspective by rendering it spectacle. While both parties
of the cross-cultural encounter seemed to have perceived it, the semanticiz-
ation of the threshold was radically different.
All the early explorers to Tahiti (as well as other islands) remarked on
the repeated efforts of the indigenous people to make hosts and guests
‘connect’ in public. By the time Bougainville arrived, the Tahitians from
Matavai Bay, the principle anchoring place for European ships, were well
acquainted with the propensity of sailors for Tahitian girls. Soon after the
spectacular tableau of the Tahitian ‘Venus’ before the Phrygian sailors, the
French went ashore. Bougainville relates how the ship’s cook was stripped
naked by the Tahitians and rendered a spectacle to their gaze. They also
Our people were daily walking in the isle without arms, either quite alone, or
in little companies. They were invited to enter the houses, where the people
gave them to eat; nor did the civility of the landlords stop at a slight colla-
tion, they offered them young girls; the hut was immediately filled with
a curious crowd of men and women, who made a circle round the guest,
and the young victim of hospitality. The ground was spread with leaves
and flowers, and their musicians sung a hymeneal song to the tune of their
flutes. Here Venus is the goddess of hospitality, her worship does not admit
of any mysteries, and every tribute paid to her is ‘a feast’ for the whole
nation. They were surprised at the confusion which our people appeared
to be in, as our customs do not admit of these public proceedings.38
We saw then how each of them took up a leafy twig and formed a circle
around us. One of those standing there took up a flute from which he
The first contacts between Europeans and Pacific peoples were, if they were
anything, contingent and ‘evenemential’ to the highest degree for both sides.
Neither culture had the prescribed cultural systems in place to deal effort-
lessly with contingent situations that happened on a daily basis: whether
they were breaches of tapu or offers to copulate in public. Sahlins argues
that the so-called permissiveness or promiscuity of the Hawaiians (and the
argument can be extended to the Tahitian situation as well) was in fact a
reflection of a performative economy whereby new phenomena were incor-
porated into the semantic systems and patterns of the island societies. As
Sahlins puts it: ‘[Hawaiian society] was performative: rather literally a “state
of affairs,” created by the very acts that signified it.’47
The famous traffic in nails initiated by the English sailors of the Dolphin
was perceived by them to be the introduction of the ‘oldest trade’ to the
unsullied isles. Conversely, one could speak, following Sahlins, not of the
implantation of a pernicious practice from the Polynesian point of view, but
rather of the incorporation and assimilation of the foreigners into the struc-
tures and cultural transactions of the host society. It could be argued that
Polynesians performed sex as an attempt to integrate the foreign beings into
an existing cultural state of affairs. However speculative such theories may
be, they at least proceed from the premise of indigenous agency as compared
to the older Eurocentric paradigms, which figure the Pacific peoples in the
passive role of victims of a ‘fatal impact’. Sexual exchanges constitute perhaps
the most striking example of the intertwining of material and performance
culture, where the payment of a nail for pleasure resulted for the one side
in the procurement of sexual favours (to the great detriment of the ship’s
woodwork and fastenings) and, for the other, in accruements of religious or
social status.48
Venus observ’d
Captain Cook recorded what was to become the most famous example of
the striking compound of sexual with other performative activities during
his first sojourn in Tahiti. It came to be known as the ‘Point Venus scene’,
less on account of the type of activities observed than because the place
This day closed with an odd Scene at the Gate of the Fort where a young
fellow above 6 feet high lay with a little Girl about 10 to 12 years of age
publickly before several of our people and a number of the Natives. What
makes me mention this, is because, it appear’d to be done more from
Custom than Lewdness, for there were several women present particularly
Obarea and several others of the better sort and these were so far from
shewing the least disapprobation that they instructed the girl how she
should act her part, who young as she was, did not seem to want it.50
Mrs. Hayes presents her most respectful compliments to Lord—, and takes
the liberty to acquaint him, that to-morrow evening, precisely at seven,
a dozen beautiful Nymphs, unsullied and untained, and who breathe
health and nature, will perform the celebrated rites of Venus, as practised
at Otaheite, under the instruction and tuition of Queen Oberea; in which
character Mrs. Hayes will appear upon this occasion.57
Mrs Hayes had certainly consulted these pages with uncommon attention,
and she concluded, that shame upon similar occasions ‘was only superin-
duced by custom,’ and being so much of a Natural Philosopher as to have
surmounted all prejudices, she resolved not only to teach her Nuns all the
Wanton dancing
time and that the practice is suspended once they ‘have form’d a connection
with a man’,59 the editor of his journal, Hawkesworth, seized on this passage
to provide significant embellishments:60
The comparison with the ‘best performers upon the stages of Europe’
provides an unusual example of hyperbole in reference to Tahitian perform-
ance forms in that they are framed within the discursive orbit of European
theatrical practice. More characteristic is the final comment, which draws
the reader’s attention to the link between performance and practice. The fact
that for Tahitian girls dance is a kind of propaedeutics of sexuality and that
they ‘realize the symbols’ of their performances suggests a shift from the
subjunctive to the indicative mode (to cite Victor Turner’s famous distinc-
tion) that stands in stark contrast to the European ontology of performance
which locates signs chiefly in the realm of the subjunctive. Cook does not
elaborate the exact nature of these signs. A more detailed description is
provided by William Anderson, a surgeon on the third voyage, who described
a dance involving ‘young women, who put themselves into several lascivious
postures’ and repeated stanzas of a chant:
At certain parts they put their garments aside and exposd with seemingly
very little sense of shame those parts which most nations have thought
it modest to conceal, but in particular a woman more advanc’d in years
who stood in front & might properly be calld the tutoress or prompter
of the rest, held her cloaths continually up with one hand and dancd
with uncommon vigour and effrontery, as if to raise in the spectators
the most libidinous desires and incite her pupils to emulation in such a
wanton excercise. The men flockd eagerly round them in great numbers
to see their performance and express’d the most anxious curiosity to see
that part just mentioned, at which they seemed to feel a sort of rapture
that could only be expressed by the extreme joy that appear’d in their
countenances.62
with adjectives that hint that the writer may have shared the ‘rapture’ that
the indigenous spectators and performers evidently experienced.
Less ambivalent was the reaction to the facial expressions that appeared
to have accompanied the Timorodee and which were captured in sketches by
Sydney Parkinson, the artist on board the Endeavour. Joseph Banks writes of
the dancers ‘setting their mouths askew in a most extraordinary manner’,63
Their attitudes and gestures were much varied, and sometimes might
admit of being construed into wantonness; but they were entirely free
from that positive degree of gross indecency which the chaste eyes of
English ladies of fashion are forced to behold at the opera. The only
action which gives offence to all our ideas of gracefulness and harmony,
is the frightful custom of writhing their mouths into the strangest distor-
tions, which it was impossible for any of us to imitate. They screwed their
mouth into a slanting direction, and at last threw the lips into a waving
or undulated form, which seemed to us to be performed by means of an
habitual and sudden convulsion.64
The ‘rites of Venus’ staged by Mrs Hayes with herself in the starring role of
carry him over, but before he always wade through the River without
any kind of ceremony. When he got across the River a great many of his
Country people came round him and he took great pleasure of showing
himselfe – but what became of this Jolly young fellow afterwards we know
not, as we neaver saw nor heard anything more of him.68
Tubourai was the Heiva, the three others and myself were to Nineveh. He
put on his dress, most Fantastical tho not unbecoming, I was next
prepard by stripping off my European cloths and putting me on a small
strip of cloth round my waist, the only garment I was allowd to have,
but I had no pretensions to be ashamd of my nakedness for neither of
the women were a bit more coverd than myself. They then began to
smut me and themselves with charcoal and water, the Indian boy was
compleatly black, the women and myself as low as our shoulders. We then
set out.74
his journal; he only flirted with the exterior signs of the behaviour. Yet, one
may be permitted to conjecture that under the protection of the subjunctive
mood of theatrical performance, its culturally sanctioned authorization to
dissemble, Banks was beginning to negotiate the dangerous ‘two-way street’
of colonial mimesis. His excursion into Tahitian performance culture evid-
ently tickled his antic disposition. Subsequent rumour and gossip in England
∗ ∗ ∗
Of all the myths surrounding the discovery of the Pacific islands, the stories
of sexual promiscuity were those that most inflamed the European audience
back home. The apparent uncomplicated exchange of amorous favours for
iron nails was a transaction that, for the male public at least, seemed to
encapsulate a sexual economy in which even the meanest sailor had access
to a seraglio. The spectacle of overt sexual overtures and their occasional
public consummation gave the term ‘theatre of love’ a new meaning. The
sexual trade was not, however, just an economic transaction, but a perform-
ative practice. It was spectacle for spectators in a situation of cross-cultural
exchange: to the Europeans ‘very shocking’, for the Tahitians, as far as it is
possible to reconstruct, very intriguing.
These first encounters in the Pacific clearly did more than upset European
notions of moral behaviour, they questioned perceptual practices. While
there was an established mode of representing places and peoples in theat-
rical metaphors, even in conceptualizing parts of the world as stages for the
delectation of the European viewer, the Polynesian practices of theatrical-
izing sex, not only of enacting sexuality in public but of framing it within
a formalized performance situation – through dance, music and spatial
arrangements – posed a genuine challenge for Western conceptual categories.
The European sailors certainly entered into the ‘economy’ that developed
around it, and in fact the first explorers could not conceptualize these activ-
ities in anything other than mercantile terms. What remained invisible were
the performative structures and transactions enacted on the indigenous side
47
(and indeed were). They also demonstrate that by the middle of the eight-
eenth century, this epistemic shift was basically achieved. Authenticity in
this context means material that is based primarily on eyewitness accounts
rather than other forms of textual authority.2 It is then perhaps no surprise
that the first theatre productions set in the South Seas, which were almost
invariably inspired in some way by Cook’s accounts, attempted to capit-
Queen Oberea and King Oamo, rulers over the people of Eparra, are at
war with Mathabo, chief of the Tiarrabou tribe. As the opera opens, Oamo
has been killed and Mathabo demands Oberea’s hand in marriage. She
refuses whereupon Mathabo kidnaps her son, Tirido. The queen despairs
for the life of her son and hopes that Captain Cook will return to help
her, as he did once before. Cook returns on board the Resolution: English
sea captain and Tahitian queen pledge eternal love to one another and
they resolve to rescue Tiribo. Thanks to a combination of subterfuge and
superior European fire-power the Tiarrabou are defeated. A second drama
unfolds as Cook, torn between love for the Tahitian queen and his duty,
resolves to set sail again. The opera concludes, as Oberea stricken with
grief, swoons on the shore.
Of the many liberties with ‘history’ taken by the Italian, the construction of a
love affair between Cook and a Tahitian was the most blatant. In comparison
to many of his officers, and certainly most of his sailors, Cook refrained from
When she [Oberea] was told that the boat was ready, she threw herself
down upon the arm-chest, and wept a long time with an excess of passion
that could not be pacified the queen, once more bade us farewell, with
such tenderness of affection and grief, as filled both my heart and my
eyes.14
child? His frightened face/ will move you to pity/ Look how he stretches
out his soft arms humble and entreating’ (29). Male savages are, however,
made of sterner stuff, especially when confronted by English marines bearing
muskets. Mathabo presents Cook with an ultimatum: depart or the boy will
die. For Oberea this means a choice between two loved ones: ‘Ah, what
a cruel moment/ I feel how my heart is torn/ between my son and my
Confused, oppressed
Unresolved lost. At least he shall see me
disconsolate on the shore amidst sighs and tears
Ungrateful as he is
He must see me die. (47)
For all its affective excess, Vassallo constructs dramaturgically a moral conun-
drum. Now it is Cook who has to weigh up ethical choices, as he says himself:
‘What barbarous torment/ In this cruel ordeal/ My values falter’ (49). It is
left to the confidants, Aldiva and Gore, to actually discuss the problem in a
kind of cross-cultural ethical debate:
Cook nonetheless heeds the call of duty, promising a hasty return and
exhorts the Tahitians to do what they do best: dance a cheerful and lively
dance with the English soldiers. The image remains somewhat ambivalent.
After the ‘joyful folk-dance’ watched by Cook, Oberea and Gore, the English
embark, while Oberea remains behind on the beach in a swoon. The operatic
convention of lieto fine, the compulsory happy end, prevents presumably a
worse fate, but within the dramaturgical requirements of opera at this time
she has been ‘sacrificed’ for the English captain: the demands of honour and
fame triumph over more basic desires.
If we return briefly to Hawkesworth, the intertext of Vassallo’s libretto,
we can better contextualize the image of the weeping Oberea. After
It is not indeed strange that the sorrows of these artless people should
be transient, any more than that their passions should be suddenly and
The message is clear. Oberea won’t remain disconsolate for long. In terms
of emotional expression, their total lack of dissembling brings them into
line with Rousseauian ideals. This is supported by the thesis that they dwell
in some way outside history, living in a perpetual present. The exploration
of Tahitian affective life remains, in the light of such statements, ambi-
valent. On the one hand, the propensity to tears brings them into a kind
of sympathetic communion with the Europeans, generating feelings of pity.
On the other, the rapid shifts in emotional states underline their savage
nature. Transient sorrows are not authentic sorrows it would seem.
While the spectacle of emotional turmoil acted out by Oberea (and to
a lesser extent Cook) remains the dominant drama, other Enlightenment
discourses are also played out in this unlikely inter-cultural encounter. As
already mentioned, Hawkesworth’s description suggested that an internecine
political struggle had taken place on the peaceful isles. Translated into the
idiom of pre-revolutionary Europe, it becomes a debate on the question of
tyranny on the one hand, and on the benefits of Enlightenment catchwords
on the other. Cook’s timely return to Tahiti prevents the ‘tyrant’ Mathabo
exerting his cruel will over the rightful heir to the kingdom of Eparra, Oberea.
As Cook phrases it: ‘We hasten to help my Queen./ Love, pity, reason be my
beacons, and may their triple radiance/ inspire this heart with courage’ (28).
He justifies his attack on Mathabo because the latter has transgressed, in
Gore’s words, not just against this ‘triple radiance’ but also against the ‘sacred
laws of humanity/ Which nature has planted in the heart/ of the most distant
inhabitant of this earth’ (27). We are close here to the inalienable rights of
man, which had already been enshrined in the American constitution. This
is ultimately Cook’s justification in interfering in the political affairs of the
Tahitians. Mathabo confronts him in the second act with this very question:
‘But you, who are you?/ Who has made you judge/ over the disputes of
a distant and unknown land?’ Cook’s answer is simple and ‘enlightened’:
‘Reason, justice, and duty’ (39). Ridding foreign countries of tyrants by means
of military force has become familiar again in our own times. The repeated
use of the word in the libretto testifies to its emotive appeal and of course
Vassallo asks that opera turn its sights to the exciting recent discoveries and
present them in a form corresponding to the actual practices and customs of
the strange culture. He demands a mise en scène based on principles of cultural
authenticity restricted only by the conventions of the operatic form itself.
He admits that his adaptation is only loosely based on historical veracity:
I admit that I have based my drama on historical facts and that I have
included a number of anachronisms. There are characters who are histor-
ical persons: Mathabo, Cook, Gore, Tirido and Oberea. The love affair of
that queen for an English captain is also true as is the latter’s affection for
that people. Another historical fact is the war that Mathabo conducted
against Oberea and the illegal annexation of the kingdom Eparra. These
events I have woven into the action and combined them with episodes
that make it more interesting. (4)
While Italy may have been the first country to stage the Pacific explorations,
the honour of the commercially most successful theatricalization must go
to the English in the form of a pantomime, produced by a team including
a Frenchman. The pantomime Omai, or A Trip round the World opened at
action, the ‘mort tragique’, required the genre of tragedy, which is reliant on
the spoken word, the very medium the genre of pantomime had to eschew.
The detailed descriptions of the scenario make clear that the performance
did its utmost to achieve a sombre and dignified tone befitting the tragic
subject matter.
An English version of La Mort du Capitaine Cook was billed at Covent
who repeatedly warned the English of the latter’s treachery. The duplicitous
Koah of the pantomime thus has some origin in the official accounts.22
An interesting textual feature of the French version is the use of italicized
passages, which refer almost certainly to direct citations from the travel
accounts. These passages document the creators’ concern with ethnographic
detail. For example, in an elaborately staged wedding scene in Part 1 the
These dances are very lively; they move their feet with surprising agility. The
dancers demonstrate considerable grace and dexterity in the way they move their
hands and their fingers, which they clap following the rhythm of the drum. A
singer also follows this same movement with vocal sounds or by clapping his
hands.24
What the French or English dancers actually did, we cannot tell. It will be
over a century before Richard Walton Tully includes indigenous Hawaiian
Two years before Captain Bligh was forced to paddle across the Pacific in
a leaky boat, a French explorer Jean François Galaup de la Pérouse had
disappeared without a trace. In 1785 he had embarked with two frigates on a
Pacific voyage which was later to be recognized as one of the most important
in the eighteenth century, rivalled only by those of Cook. Planned as a
French answer to Cook’s discoveries (and territorial acquisitions), he made
important contributions to charting the northern reaches of the Pacific. En
route to Kamschatka, La Pérouse was the first to safely navigate and chart
the Japan Sea. From there he went to Australia, arriving at Botany Bay just
hours after the arrival of the British with their first batch of convicts in the
(in)famous First Fleet. On the way he had explored Samoa, discovering new
islands. After leaving Australia, the expedition was never seen or heard of
again. Forty years later an English trader, Peter Dillon, visiting the Solomon
islands, discovered a piece of glass in a native’s nose which turned out to be
from the ship’s thermometer. It was presumed that the expedition had been
shipwrecked and killed by the natives.
The disappearance was reported throughout Europe. The French
despatched a search mission under the command of Count Bruny
d’Entrecasteaux. His unsuccessful voyage between 1791 and 1794 (among
other things he died before its completion) was also widely reported. On 20
April 1795, the widely acclaimed and frequently maligned German dramatist
Augustus von Kotzebue (1761–1819) read in the Intelligenzblatt der Allge-
meinen Literatur-Zeitung the following notice: ‘This much is known, that
throughout the whole voyage not the slightest trace or piece of news of
Monsieur Pérouse’s two ships was found. So it is now most probable that
he perished somewhere in the South Seas.’29 From the point of view of box-
office receipts, Kotzebue was by this time undoubtedly the most successful
living German playwright. His sentimental drama of adultery Misanthropy
and Repentance (1789) made him famous overnight and established the basic
in theatre the timely demise of one of the characters, usually a female one.
It is perhaps the most innovative aspect of the play that Kotzebue proposes
an unconventional solution:
When reading through Perouse my friends and I wept a great deal – but the
ending! The play as a whole creates the picture of an extraordinary youth,
Malvina: [To Perouse] I have prayed to your god as you taught me, prayed
with hot fervour, there where the bush with its bright fruit tempts your
boy. – See, there God awoke pious thoughts in me – and I stretched out
my hand for the fruit –.34
That the pious thought is suicide suggests that Perouse’s religious instruction
has been less than thorough. Clearly, however, the ending is emotionally
more satisfying. Somebody had to go and the death of the little native girl,
even with a child, would set the pattern for a succession of Orientalist dramas
and operas, in which native women would make the ultimate sacrifice for
their European lovers. As we will see in Chapter 6, the settings could be
Japan or equally Hawai‘i.35
Another point to be considered is the resolve to remain on the island and
begin a colony. The image of Europe is characterized by both decadence
(‘I am an European [sic!] and subject to hateful passions’ (32) says Adelaide
to Malvina) and moral chaos (Clairville mentions an encounter with an
Englishman, ‘who was taking petty thieves to Botany Bay, and had left the
greater in Europe’ (37)). Clairville, a mouthpiece of the politically conser-
vative author here, espouses anti-revolutionary sentiments, a point which
went largely unnoticed. The political resonances are overshadowed by the
provocative marital utopia of the first version which seemed paradoxically
to both confirm and refute the popular image of sexual promiscuity in the
South Seas.
Like Gl’Inglesi in Othaiti, La Perouse entered the circulation of mimetic
capital and underwent substantial transformations of both plot and genre.
once by shooting a hungry bear, and the second time from the predations
of (presumably equally ravenous) natives from a neighbouring island. When
Pérouse is wounded by a poisoned arrow, the chimp sucks the venom from
the wound. He is thus saved, not by a native woman, but by an animal.
He does become enamoured of a native girl called Umba, or rather she
becomes enamoured of him, whereupon he saves her from another bear.
In 1824 the British public was able to encounter the authentic Pacific in the
flesh and in the theatre. Since 1790 the Hawaiian or Sandwich islands, as they
were still known, had been ruled over by an indigenous monarch. Through
conquest Kamehameha I (c.1738–1819) had become ruler of all the Hawaiian
islands, which had been previously governed by warring chiefs. Although
he was cordial to the traders who visited the islands and encouraged the
introduction of their technology, he also insisted on the preservation of the
ancient customs and religious beliefs of Hawai‘i. This changed dramatically
His Majesty is of very gentlemanly appearance, and but for the darkness
of his complexion, which is of very deep copper colour, might pass for an
Englishman, having in every respect correctly adopted our costume. The
Queen is not so tall nor of so robust an appearance as had been repres-
ented. Her Majesty is certainly a fine full grown lady, but very little above
the middle stature; she is remarkably well made, possesses an open and
very agreeable countenance, not devoid even of sweetness and sensibility,
With ‘good eyes and teeth’ offsetting a deep copper colour and their partially
Figure 4 King Rheo Rhio [Liholiho] and Queen Kamehameha [Ka’ahumanu] delighted at
the performances of Punch (1824), lithograph, hand col., 29 × 37 cm
Source: By permission of the National Library of Australia.
The first public performance they attended was the Fantoccini, the puppet
theatre. This attendance, rather than the performance itself, was of such
interest that it occasioned a colour illustration, a number of which were
produced in connection with the stay (Figure 4) and a number of reports
in the press: ‘Yesterday morning they had another treat in witnessing the
performances of Ramo Samee, Black Billy, Harlequin, Columbine and Clown,
in the Fantoccini.’ Another reports: ‘A gratifying treat was yesterday afforded
them by the performances of Mr Punch and his family, whose merits they
acknowledged by an ample reward; they were also highly delighted by an
exhibition of the Fantoccini.’47 The illustration, a hand-coloured lithograph,
was probably first printed in the The Lady’s Magazine. Whatever its proveni-
ence, it commemorates a street performance of a puppet theatre outside
the Adelphi hotel where their majesties were staying. While the caption
Figure 5 The king and queen of the Sandwich Islands, and suite, at Covent Garden
Theatre (1824), engraving, hand col.; 91 × 13 cm
Source: By permission of the National Library of Australia.
∗ ∗ ∗
The funeral of the Hawaiian royal couple was the last major theatrical
event depicting the South Seas for quite some time. While the geographical
area continued to be explored, missionized and colonized, its artistic repres-
entation shifted away from the stage. Prose fiction became the dominant
aesthetic form with writers such as Melville, Stevenson, London and Loti
producing a rich literary tradition.55 The Pacific appeared intermittently
on the Parisian stage with various versions of the Perouse story and a
romantic ballet by Jean Coralli, Ozai (1847), featuring a love story between
a Tahitian princess and Bougainville, who finally makes an appearance as
a stage character.56 During the first half of the nineteenth century, the
most sustained and dramatic conflicts were being enacted on the islands
themselves between the islanders and the English missionaries who arrived
in the late 1790s to convert and save the savages. To do this, though, they
had to do battle with indigenous belief systems, which were based on an
intricate performance culture. This struggle between missionaries who were
suspicious of theatricality in any form whatsoever and the by now proverbial
When the English ship Duff put down anchor at Matavai Bay in March
1797, the local people had clear expectations of what was awaiting them.
European, and particularly English, ships had been visiting there for the
past 30 years. As we saw in the first chapter, such visits were framed by
predictable performance procedures. The local chiefs went aboard bearing
gifts, to which the visitors reciprocated in kind, who were then invited ashore
and entertained by a heiva. Indeed, the Duff was honoured by a visit from
the paramount chiefs of the district, including Tu (Otoo), now known as
Pomare, who had already made acquaintance with Captain Cook. In fact,
Pomare had, as Georg Forster related, developed a keen interest in bagpipes
and sailors’ hornpipes. After the formalities had been settled, which included
a gift of land to accommodate the new visitors, the ship’s commander,
Captain Wilson, related that Pomare desired some amusement:
the chief thought it was time to inquire after entertainments; and first
sky-rockets, next the violin and dancing, and lastly the bagpipe, which
he humorously described by putting a bundle of cloth under his arm, and
twisting his body like a Highland piper. When we told them that we had
none of these, they seemed rather dejected; therefore, to revive them, a
few tunes were played.1
Little did the Tahitians know, the vessel carried a very special cargo. About
to disembark was the first group of missionaries sent out by the Missionary
Society of London (later to be renamed the London Missionary Society,
LMS) to the Pacific comprising 26 artisans, four missionaries, six women and
three children. The Tahitians were soon to learn that these Europeans had
little time for sky-rockets, dancing or bagpipes. The pantomimic antics of
Pomare probably elicited hardly a smile from these first colonists. But most
portentously, the arrival of this small group presaged the beginning of the
74
end of the Tahitian religion and its related performance practices, which
were, as we shall see, inextricably entwined.
With the arrival of European missionaries in the Pacific, the relationship
between colonization and Polynesian performance took on a new dimen-
sion. While it is well known, indeed part of Pacific-European mythology,
that missionaries did all they could to ban ‘licentious dancing’, this propa-
the anti-theatrical fraternity. The South Seas become for the missionaries a
new testing ground for a doctrinal battle now being carried out in a new
theatre of war. The first section of the chapter will look in detail at the arioi,
the ‘comedians of the land’ as they were known, and the anti-theatrical
prejudice the missionaries propagated. It is one of the unhappy ironies of
Pacific colonization that an extremist fringe of Europe came to have such
Plato’s legacy
the personal recognition and affirmation of Christ having died for one’s
sins. The intense focus on individual experience of religion rather than by
collective upbringing is a distinguishing characteristic of the Evangelists. As
Gunson puts it: ‘The missionaries who went out to convert the heathens
were as much concerned with their own souls as with those of their coloured
brethren.’4
When the Duff arrived in Tahiti in 1797, the missionaries were under no
illusions as to the hard labour awaiting them. Some had, of course, read
Hawkesworth and Cook, and perhaps even Bougainville. They knew there-
fore that licentiousness was ubiquitous and by no means a preserve of the
stage or brothel but apparently a fact of public life. What they could not
immediately grasp were the complex interrelationships between perform-
ance and religious culture, both of which they had to contend with and
ultimately remove if they were to finally prevail in their self-appointed task
of bringing civilization and salvation to the Polynesian islands.
No institution of Tahitian society better encapsulated the need for salva-
tion and civilization than the arioi. A hierarchically organized cult, the arioi
paid homage to the god Oro by means of elaborate festivities combining
dancing, singing and dramatic pantomimes. Members could be of either
sex and they enjoyed considerable freedom in an otherwise highly strati-
fied society. They also embodied what the missionary John Williams termed
the ‘great’ and the ‘smaller evils’. The great evils were indisputably warfare,
cannibalism and infanticide. To these were added the minor although still
objectionable forms: ‘going in a State of Nudity or nearly so, cutting &
scratching themselves in seasons of grief – tatooing their bodies. Eating raw
fish, their lewd dances &c but the great Evils will requite your first attacks &
then the smaller.’11 With the exception of cannibalism, the arioi were guilty
on all counts. Infanticide, perhaps the most heinous of the ‘great’ evils, was
linked primarily to the fact that the members were forbidden to have chil-
dren. Yet, it was not a practice restricted exclusively to the arioi but carried
out throughout the Tahitian and indeed other Pacific islands as a form of
population control.
Ethnographers have reconstructed retrospectively the chief elements of
the cult, which did not, and could not, survive missionization. Since the arioi
infant charged about the stage dragging the placenta and trying to evade
capture by the midwife.
Another interlude witnessed at Huahine featured a girl from Raiatea who
was actually in the audience. She had eloped to Tahiti in the company of
an arioi – who had subsequently left her – and was now returning to her
parents on board Cook’s ship. The satire was evidently so effective that the
Upon the whole, this circumstance gives us a very good idea of the nation
in every respect: If we consider the poor girl, who was thus exposed,
her bashful behaviour and her tears are certainly irrefragable proofs of
her modesty and repentance. She became the object of indelicate, but
sharp and salutary satire, and gave by her tears ample testimony of the
immorality of her behaviour, and that she felt herself aggrieved under
self-condemnation, and was not unwilling to become a fair warning to
a whole croud of young persons of her own sex. Lastly the whole
audience deserved in my opinion, likewise to be commended; If we
reflect upon the want of feeling in the frequenters of our theatres, their
indolence and inattention, and I may add their shameless effrontery, we
must give the palm to the O-Taheiteans, who, like the true children of
nature, have a sympathizing tear, and unrestrained feelings, the tribute
and glory of humanity, in readiness on all proper occasions.21
political power-broking, it becomes clear that for the missionaries the arioi
were a, if not the, force to be broken if control over Tahitian souls was to be
attained.
One of the earliest missionary responses to the arioi was published in
the periodical Transactions of the Missionary Society, under the heading
‘Otaheitean Journals’. In the entry for 10 February 1801 we find the following
It is clear from this report that these English spectators derived little if any
aesthetic pleasure or moral edification from the performances. Considering
that the missionaries had been in residence for some four years and were
reasonably proficient in Tahitian, their perception of the performers as ‘a
herd of swine, grunting in concert’ cannot be ascribed to linguistic incom-
prehension, but rather to fundamental opposition to the performances as
such. In a curious alliance between lower-middle-class missionary and aris-
tocratic arioi, the anonymous writer cannot help adding that ‘the higher
class profess to despise the actors, and speak of them and their performances
in a contemptuous manner.’ Indeed, this attitude of contempt was soon
assumed by the missionaries themselves. After the initial shock had worn
off, missionary reports quickly fall silent and contain very few descriptions
of performances of any kind. This silence was less a sign of actual eradication
than a strategy to document success for the home readership. In actual fact,
conversion proved to be a long and arduous process that was beset with
numerous setbacks.
Recognizing the highly stratified nature of Tahitian society, the mission-
aries focused their attention first on converting the chiefs, many of whom
were arioi. They first attacked the practice of infanticide and then the
performances. Forbidding these activities effectively deprived the arioi of
their raison d’être and Tahitian society of one of its central pillars of
belief. Without suitable performances, the god Oro was rendered effect-
ively obsolete and could be replaced by the Christian competition. With
the conversion of Pomare II in 1819 and the automatic Christianization of
all his subjects, the dissolution of the society was rapid. The missionaries
also noted frequently that the arioi proved to be willing and able converts.
There is some evidence to suggest that they in turn aided the rapid spread
of Christianity in the Society group.24
The interrelationship between performance and religious culture charac-
teristic of the arioi in Tahiti was, however, by no means unique to the Society
The whole arrangement and process of their old hulas were designed to
promote lasciviousness, and of course the practice of them could not
flourish in modest communities. They had been interwoven too with
their superstitions, and made subservient to the honor of their gods, and
their rulers, either living or departed and deified.26
Baptisms of royal or aristocratic personages were crucial events for the success
or failure of the early missions, for God’s work did not just have to be
done; it had to be seen to be done. Nowhere was this more spectacularly
demonstrated than in the ritual of baptism. The passage from heathenism to
faith was one that could be shown; and was not just a private affair between
the believer and his or her God. Ocular proof of God’s progress was also
needed back home to keep the sponsors satisfied. To provide evidence of
their success, the missionaries staged large-scale idol-burning ceremonies in
front of the new converts as well as the undecided, or they had the idols
ceremoniously packaged for removal back to England, with unintentional
echoes of Roman trionfi where vanquished enemies and their spoils were
exhibited. In both cases, we can discern clear reliance on theatricality on
the part of clerics who were doctrinally opposed to the concept in all its
manifestations.
Baptism as a form of mise en scène had a history, particularly within the
context of colonialism. The Spanish missionaries in Mexico had perfected the
theatricalization of baptism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with
large-scale passion plays culminating in the mass baptism of the indigenous
the King and his subjects did not go unnoticed and was of crucial import-
ance for the whole missionary undertaking. Although strictly at variance
with Protestant teaching which sees the Christian religion as a relation-
ship between the individual and God, the LMS missionaries were in such a
case expedient enough to be somewhat more Catholic in their attitude to
conversion.
usual characteristic of idols: ‘In general the idols of the heathen, however rude,
have been designed to bear a resemblance to something but these convey
no idea whatsoever of an animated being, and we are totally at a loss to account
for their form.’ The only satisfaction he can provide is through a citation from
a fellow missionary, Samuel Marsden, (who later gained prominence in New
Zealand). In a letter to the directors of the Missionary Society on 31 October
spectator with “amazement at the weakness and folly of human nature”.’ While
the interpolated quotation is scriptural the context is contemporary.
A year later, the same periodical published another title vignette in which
the theatrical demolition of the Tahitian belief system is depicted in the
conventions of a crudely manufactured history ‘painting’ (Figure 6). Rather
than focusing, however, on one pregnant moment within the dramatic
Mr Williams replied, that as the Romish priests were on their way to the
islands with electrifying machines, and other philosophical apparatus,
by which they expected to impress the natives with their preternat-
ural power, he thought he might legitimately, if it were necessary, turn
their weapons against themselves; and as he intended, on the voyage, to
translate Fox’s Martyrology, he should like to illustrate it by the magic
lantern.35
however, had no such scruples, He used the magic lantern to great effect in
Samoa, as he reported in a letter to his son:
I may here inform you of the prodigious interest the exhibition of the
magic lantern produces. At the natural history slides they are delighted;
the kings of England afforded them still greater pleasure; but the Scripture
A ‘general sobbing’ was also the reaction of the missionaries and their
supporters back in England when news arrived of Williams’s death. In 1839
he and another missionary were clubbed to death and then probably eaten
in Erramanga, today Vanuatu, and, as shown in Chapter 1, the scene of an
already unhappy landing attempt on Cook’s second voyage.
The legacy of John Williams, the entrepreneurial messenger of God,
however, lived on. By the late nineteenth century the LMS used his memory
for fund-raising, particularly to finance a succession of missionary ships
named after their illustrious and peripatetic hero. LMS records show that
children in Sunday School were targeted to donate money and fund-raise
for the organisation using the name and story of their idol. To this end the
society gradually began to employ dramatic and theatrical means to publicize
their activities. Despite the general Evangelical suspicion of the theatrical
medium, it could also be put to effective use within carefully circumscribed
limits. One genre was the so-called ‘demonstration’. The ‘Demonstration
for Boys’ Ship Ahoy!: The Story of the Missionary Ships John Williams I. to
IV, published around 1895, has a rudimentary dramatic form, in as much
as dramatis personae make appearances.40 However, even here the LMS
remained true to Platonic rather than Aristotelian principles, for diegesis
dominates over mimesis. The action consists mainly of a succession of char-
acters who narrate the history of missionary undertakings in the Pacific and,
in particular, the efforts to raise money to build the different ships. The
playlet ends with an injunction to the audience: ‘And may the children of
the Sunday Schools still continue the noble work of providing the means by
which this great labour of love can still be carried on.’41 Why the genre was
termed a ‘demonstration for boys’ remains unclear – perhaps the graphic
description of John Williams being clubbed to death and then eaten was
considered too strong for impressionable young girls. The term ‘demonstra-
tion’ is, however, clearly designed to demarcate a distinction between it and
normal dramatic forms.
Such demonstrations continued well into the 1930s and 1940s as the LMS
archives demonstrate. Apart from hagiographic depictions of Williams and
his exploits, popular topics included the first expedition of the Duff, and the
story of its cabin boy. In fact the LMS offered a series of ‘media packages’
on the topic of John Williams and his eponymous ships. These included a
‘South Seas Week-End: A fascinating week-end for a whole Church to include
a Cruise, Film, Tableaux, Games etc.’, as well as dramatized dialogues and
lantern lectures.42 The material could be hired from the LMS for a fee.
The most complex of these offerings was a theatrical presentation util-
izing the form of a living picture or tableau vivant entitled ‘The John
goes off to get the square. Chief picks up the wood and keeps looking it
over. Mrs. W. comes back, hands the square to the Chief, then follows in
‘dumb’ show, gesture suggesting the following dialogue.
‘Stay, daughter’ he said, ‘how do you know Viriamu wanted this’? ‘The
chip told me’ replied Mrs. Williams. ‘I did not hear it say anything’ said
Chief hurries back holding the square in one hand and the ‘chip’ in the
other, hands the square to J.W. and holding up the ‘chip’ he points to it
round his neck and struts about with an air of great importance.44
∗ ∗ ∗
95
Performative metonymy
The locus classicus of the connex between metonymy, theatricality and colo-
nialism is Edward Said‘s Orientalism. In a much quoted passage Said defines
orientalism as a mode of representation:
In 1897 the German medical officer, and later Polynesian ethnographer and
physical anthropologist, Augustin Krämer undertook an extended tour of
the island of Maui, one of the larger Hawaiian islands. Although he and his
travelling companion had their minds set on ‘bones’ (the skeletal remains
of the ancient Hawaiian dead, concealed in caves), the urge to see a ‘real’
Hawaiian hula was equally strong, the opportunities, however, apparently
rare. Krämer records the following encounter:
place of the performance, the remote little house secluded yet beckoning in
a grove of Kukui trees, has strong connotations of the romantic haven, far
from the madding crowd. Yet, it turns out that the performers themselves
are not from the little haven in the forest, but from the nearby town and
have also made the journey out to the wilderness to meet the expectations
of the, so they assume, affluent European spectators.
By the time Krämer made his journey into the Hawaiian countryside, hula
as it had been practised in pre-contact times was a thing of the past. It
had already in fact become an object of research and revival on the part of
European folklorists on the one hand and Hawaiian artists and politicians
on the other. While the two groups pursued different agendas in terms of
their interest, both were united by the common goal of reconstructing the
form as it had ‘once been’. The foremost scholar among the Europeans, the
Hawaiian-born doctor and folklorist Nathaniel Emerson, published a major
work on the subject in 1909 under the significant title Unwritten Literature of
Hawai‘i. Hula in pre-contact Hawai‘i he defined as:
Emerson’s account of the hula is structured around its texts and chants. As
the title suggests, it is an attempt to ennoble the oral tradition by rendering
it in written form, complete with the scholarly paraphernalia of philological
commentary, a strategy made even more apparent by the frequent analogies
with classical Greek tradition and nationalist, romantic ideals. This attempt
to litarize hula leads Emerson to a very clear hierarchization of the various
expressive modes employed in the pre-contact form. For him hula attains its
aesthetic status on the basis of its poetry rather than its kinaesthetic forms:
‘For the purpose of this book the rating of any variety of hula must depend
not so much on the grace and rhythm of its action on stage as on the
imaginative power and dignity of its poetry.’10 When Emerson says ‘poetry’,
he is referring to the chants (mele) that are an integral part of hula. The
texts are highly metaphoric, often couched in arcane language, and treat a
variety of subjects ranging from celebrations of nature and love-making to
self-reflexive comments on hula itself.
Although all accounts of the hula, both past and present, are deeply
embedded in various discursive agendas, certain elements of the aesthetic
and institutional place that hula occupied in Hawai‘i’s highly stratified pre-
contact society can be reconstructed with a fair degree of accuracy.11 The
first important point to note is the high degree of institutionalization hula
enjoyed. It was practised by trained performers who received instruction and
tradition of studio-produced studies for the tourist market.27 The floor has
been retouched to give the appearance of sand. The costumes depicted here
are also characteristic of one image of hula that was to persist throughout
the nineteenth century. The wide cloth skirts, tightly buttoned blouses, fibre
anklets bear little resemblance to the image of scantily clad hula maidens
that would soon dominate the popular imagination. This picture was taken
crown lands. From the 1850s onwards foreigners could purchase property
easily – which they did in large quantities, laying the foundations for the
huge sugar and pineapple plantations. With the plantations came inden-
tured labourers from China, Japan and the Philippines and the foundation
of Hawai‘i’s famous multicultural society. The nationalist revival initiated by
Kalakaua was, however, aimed at the indigenous population and was more
In Kalakaua’s court all these influences converged and at his jubilee celeb-
ration in 1886 a famous Hawaiian dancer appeared in a hula accompanied
by ukulele and steel guitar. The new music was sanctioned by the King,
teachers, and performers, and loved by the audience. Soon most new
compositions were in this style. This new idiom is now known as
‘Hawaiian music.’ In truth it has little indigenous Hawaiian music in it,
but is uniquely Hawaiian in that it was developed in Hawai‘i by Hawaiians
out of a combination of Western music ideas available to them in the
second half of the 19th century.34
The last image to be considered here (Figure 12) also dates from the late
1890s. It is a snapshot of hula being performed in a backyard, probably some-
where in Honolulu. Although this performance would certainly not have
met with Krämer’s approval – the urban setting alone would have been a
great disappointment – it is ‘authentic’ to the extent that it appears to be an
indigenous performance context. With the exception perhaps of the photo-
grapher, there are no European spectators. The dancers are clad in simple
to imperial sovereignty by the royal family after the death of the Empire’s
most important figurehead.
While the reception of the royal party on the part of the white settlers was
presumably never in doubt, – ‘a thousand miles of loyalty’ in the words of
the official historian of the tour38 – the same could not necessarily be said of
his majesty’s Maori subjects.39 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Maori
participation was focused almost entirely in one place: a three-day ‘carnival’
of Maori performance culture in Rotorua from 13 to 15 June 1901. This hui,
(the Maori term for a ceremonial gathering) brought together representatives
from all the major tribes in Aotearoa, who provided the royal party and
each other with an unprecedented display of indigenous performance forms.
The choice of Rotorua was not surprising. The town could already boast
an established touristic infrastructure dedicated to presenting Maori culture
to European visitors. The local people, the Arawa, were also famous, or
infamous, for having kept out of the Maori/European wars in the 1860s, or
rather for having deliberately sided with the settlers. The planning for the
hui was in the hands of a Maori committee under the chairmanship of the
Minister of Native Affairs, James Carroll, himself half Maori. The result was
a gathering on an unprecedented scale with over 6000 Maori from all over
the country in attendance.
The resulting meeting provided ample evidence of the dialectics of spec-
tacle: that is, the mutual desire to see and be seen in an aesthetically
controlled environment. While the Maori were certainly on display to the
Europeans, the latter, especially the royal party, were equally on display to
of the present. During the preparations for the arrival of the royal party,
Loughnan describes the appearance of the Maori in the informal situation
of the camp:
There was a curious mingling of the old and new. Deeply tattooed
warriors, some of whom had witnessed a cannibal feast, rubbed noses
While the quotidian, informal dress codes reflected indeed the cultural
syncretism characteristic of most ‘times of transition’, the formal perform-
ances revealed much tighter control and conscious fashioning. Not only did
each tribe adopt a special dominant colour, but most tried to emulate within
the bounds of Christian propriety the traditional past that was eagerly sought
after by European and Maori alike.
The extent of this ‘conscious fashioning’ can be illustrated by comparing
two photographs. Figure 14 shows the performance of a haka by members
of the Ngati Kahungunu tribe of the East Coast region of the North Island
to welcome guests at a wedding. The photo is contemporaneous with the
The carnival had not lasted more than an hour. But for the spectators
who saw it for the first time how many impressions had been crowded
∗ ∗ ∗
tourist gaze. At the same time they continued to fulfil important func-
tions in their indigenous context. With the arrival of the royal party in
1901, the Maori were called upon to present themselves to the European
guests in a theatrical mode. Dancing and singing and brandishing weapons
of pre-European origin, they were induced to present a staged version of
an earlier period of ancient vigour untainted by European influence. Both
In the Zoological Garden there were not just the animals but there was a
music pavilion and occasionally exhibitions of exotic tribes, of Samoans
and Senegalese. Whether it is the memory of it or simply the condens-
ation of things long past – even today I associate with the beat of a
kettledrum the name Tamasese and at the same time: the drum is played
on his prisoners’ heads, or it is the pestle in which the savages cook
human flesh.1
122
By the end of the nineteenth century the Pacific, and especially the Poly-
nesian triangle, had been largely distributed between the colonial powers.
While there was no single ceremonial carving up to rival the infamous
1884 Berlin conference on Africa, Pacific island territories were nonetheless
gradually acquired and redistributed in a succession of deals and plays of
Their habits of mind, their love of physical sports, their preference for
head decorations made up of flowers and wreaths are very reminiscent of
the descriptions Tacitus provides of the way of life of our ancient German
forefathers. The Samoans are not ashamed of their brown skin colour. The
full strong colour is admirably suited to the lively colours of the tropical
world.6
Particularly the final sentence, in which the people and their skin colour
are perceived as a naturalized component of a tropical (stage) setting, draws
attention to a recurrent topos in European writing about the South Seas and
to the Samoans in particular. Not only are peoples and places aestheticized
and theatricalized to a large degree, they exist primarily as extras on a stage
or theatre set, where the human beings and the surrounding foliage are part
and parcel of a unified Gesamtkunstwerk.7 As we shall see, this image was
literally staged in the tours of Samoan troupes in Germany after 1890.
Anthropological anxieties
important locale for the Völkerschauen. In fact many zoos set aside special
areas or arenas to cater for the shows.
The Samoan troupes remained in Germany and Europe for periods ranging
from several months up to two years. They visited all major German
cities and many smaller centres besides. The unique aspect of the Samoan
performance troupes was, apart from their continuing long-term presence, an
After the lecture the Samoans sang first some traditional songs, then
danced and fought, whereby the confidence and power of their move-
ments manifested themselves admirably. Finally Manoje [the leader of
the troupe] demonstrated some highly dangerous skills with a long knife
which he spun into the air and caught again etc. (ZfE, 1890: 392)
At the conclusion of the performance, a heated discussion broke out over the
racial purity of the Samoans in question. Richard Neuhaus, doctor, photo-
grapher and amateur ethnographer, expressed the opinion that the speci-
mens in question had been adulterated with Melanesian blood. Virchow
countered in the same pejorative metaphor that the question of whether
present-day Samoans ‘have suffered adulteration with Melanesian blood’ is
not really the question since this is an accepted fact. The only question of
interest for Virchow was whether the people present corresponded to the
current Samoan ‘type’ which he was able to affirm. The attendant ques-
tion of whether Samoans were Polynesians could also in Virchow’s mind be
confirmed but he was conscious that the present performers might have left a
less than ideal impression. He continued: ‘One must not be deceived by mere
fashions, for example in the dancing, or by artificial hair-dos. Wigs such as
that worn by Manoje are also known in Tahiti, and no-one would claim that
the Tahitians are Melanesians. All natural traits of the Samoans belong to the
typical characteristics of the Polynesian race’ [emphasis added] (392). Clearly
the genre of performance was not conducive to serving the interests of an
empirical science. Nature was at war with culture here. The latter represented
metonymically by performance, that most ‘unreliable’ of cultural forms with
its penchant for costuming, make-up and unrepentant borrowing. Virchow
It was not until 1895 that Carl and Fritz Marquardt organized a second
visit by a Samoan troupe. During the 1890s Hagenbeck had largely with-
drawn from the Völkerschau business so there was considerable scope for
rival impresarios. A former journalist from Berlin, Fritz Marquardt had been
variously a shipping clerk, military advisor to Tamasese and chief of police
in Apia while his brother Carl was an amateur ethnologist and collector
of ethnographic curios. Altogether the Marquardt brothers organized five
tours with Samoan troupes before the First World War.14 During this 15-year
period, however, the ‘conditions of production’ altered dramatically. By
1910 it had become practically illegal to import troupes from German
colonies, and the final tour was made possible only under the guise of
A race that combines such great physical merits with a great abund-
ance of natural grace and stamina is in itself one of the most remarkable
phenomena in the history of the development of the human race. The
persons selected by Mr Marquardt display these characteristics to a high
degree. I can only hope that many Europeans will see and appreciate these
natural wonders.15
Figure 16 Programme for the 1901 tour. It reads, ‘Our new compatriots. Samoa
Exhibition’
Source: Photo: collection of the author.
colonies.18 This legislation was also enforced in the new German colony
of Samoa, which required that the tours which subsequently took place be
framed in a new way.
Following their successful tours of the mid-1890s the Marquardt brothers
resolved to capitalize on Samoa’s status as a German colony. Their ‘exhib-
ition’ of 1901 was promoted under the heading ‘Our New Compatriots’.
This letter is a significant document for two main reasons. First, it emphas-
izes with programmatic clarity the importance of a symbolic and ephemeral
act – the flag-raising ceremony and its attendant festivities – for reinforcing
colonial rule. Second and perhaps more importantly, Solf articulates in the
second sentence the double-edged function of colonial ceremony: its specific
aesthetic nature and its clear political mandate. With the phrase ‘a summa-
tion’ (zusammenfassend), Solf stresses further the particular efficacy of this
Colonial ceremony
The specific importance of theatricality as a theoretical construct lies in its
interactive, interrelational nature. Human actors in a broad range of activ-
ities are organized by means of staging procedures for perception by others.
Understood in this broad sense, ceremony can be regarded as a particular
form of theatricality. Anthropologists usually distinguish ceremony from
ritual. Although many of the outward signs may be identical, ceremonies do
not necessarily require the transformative efficacy that characterizes ritual
in its narrower sense. In Victor Turner’s felicitous phrase: ‘Ceremony indic-
ates, ritual transforms’.22 Ceremonies are a particularly complex form of
‘public events’, which conform to a number of anthropological principles
and, according to Don Handelman, function as ‘mirrors and models’ of the
societies that stage the ceremonies.23 Social and cultural practices are not
just mimetically imitated but are also refashioned to present an idealized
model of the society in question. In the colonial situation this twin func-
tion frequently became doubled, as the colonial powers instantiated their
ceremonial protocols in their new territories while often adding and even
incorporating the ceremonial practices of the indigenous peoples. More than
just adding ‘local colour’ to European displays, the integration of indigenous
performance forms demonstrated to the colonial rulers native acquiescence
and it was hoped that the same message communicated itself to the domin-
ated peoples.
The German colonial administration in Western Samoa provides a partic-
ularly fruitful field of inquiry for examining the interrelationship between
colonialism and theatricality. First, it was sustained with a minimum of
direct force. There was no continuous military or even police presence in
the colony. Police duties were carried out by locally trained Samoans (Fita
Fita) under German command. German military ‘might’ was underscored
by visits from the cruiser Comoran, which toured the German colonies in
the Pacific. Second, as we have seen, Western Samoa and its indigenous
inhabitants were themselves subject to aestheticization to a high degree.
Since the economic potential of the islands was limited to say the least,
the German colonialists prided themselves with possessing, if not the most
lucrative, then certainly the most aesthetically appealing colony. This partic-
ular German attitude to Western Samoa then fed into the wider European
discourse of South Sea paradise, which, while it had centred mainly on Tahiti,
had by the end of the nineteenth century extended its scope to include the
Samoan islands. One particularly efficacious way of fusing the necessity of
power demonstration with the desire engendered by the South Seas myth
was by the staging of elaborate ceremonies incorporating the insignia of
German colonial rule and the aesthetics of indigenous performance forms.
The particular strategy employed in Samoa by German officials was to incor-
Meer.
Sami.
Sea.
Band. Ehrenwache
Municipalitaet.
Eleele Sa.
Municipality
Fale o le Kavana.
Flagge
Samoaner
Schulen.
MULINUU
Schools.
Samoans
A‘oga.
∗
Fu‘a.
Flag
Missionen.
Missions.
Faifeau.
Deutsche und fremde Einwohner
Samoas.
Papalagi.
German and foreign residents of
Samoa.
Strasse.
Ala.
Road.
Opposite the Samoans are the schools and missions: two groups which are
made up of Samoans and Europeans.
The Kaiser’s proclamation was read out in German and Samoan and the
flag then raised. This was followed by speeches from the bishop of the
Marist mission and the representative of the London Missionary Society.
The ceremony was continued with a prayer and a song from pupils of the
German school:
A rousing cheer went through the whole population; the natives, who
behaved superbly during the ceremony, joined in the cheers of the Whites
in Samoan fashion with long drawn out, powerfully swelling sounds. After
it died down all the schools sang the German national anthem together.
Then Mataafa stepped up to the flagpole and held an appropriate speech
in which he thanked the powers for finally solving the Samoan question.25
Mata’afa’s speech was followed by one from Tamasese who reiterated in his
oration the same loyalty to the German flag he had pronounced during
the Kaiser’s birthday celebrations a month before. The actual ceremony was
followed by festivities including separate receptions for the ‘non-coloured
population’ and the Samoan chiefs, a garden party for the school children,
a procession and performances organised by the missions (presumably of
Samoan song and dance), a feast for the Samoan chiefs, and an evening
dance for the white population.
In this carefully orchestrated performance proclaiming the assumption of
colonial rule, we find in nuce both general and specific principles. General,
because flag-raising ceremonies in the German South Seas colonies followed
basically the same script, especially in regards to integrating indigenous
the celebration of a German church service in Apia and from all three
organisations church services in the outlying areas, ‘in order to impress on
the natives as well the significance of this day’. Here we can see quite expli-
citly the reliance of the Germans on the missions as cultural brokers for
their administration, a question to which we shall return below. The other
general principle is that of the effect of ceremony outside the circle of those
That the English commentator perceived Governor Solf as the leading figure
in a ‘political drama’ was more than borne out in the dramaturgy and
staging procedures of the commemorative celebrations. The actual activ-
ities extended over five days from the 26 February to 2 March 1910 and
culminated in a solemn ceremony on 1 March. Indeed, the sheer length of
time involved suggests that indigenous practices were being followed where
ceremonial gatherings frequently involved several days.27
The official Vorspiel was marked by the arrival of the German cruiser
Comoran on 26 February, carrying Samoan chiefs from the island of Savai’i to
Apia. They were greeted the next day with a large ta’alolo. In the course of the
day numerous village groups gathered at the ceremonial space around the
flagpole on the Mulinu’u peninsular adjoining Apia. At 3 p.m. the German
government party took its place in the fono house. After the distribution
Throughout the ceremony the pupils of the LMS school had been
concealed by the Fita Fita. On a sign, the latter stepped aside to reveal to
the spectators a spectacular sight: the pupils were dressed and arranged to
depict the German flag. As they sang ‘Wir sind nun Deutsche’ (Now we are
Germans) the individual schools, each of which formed a strip of the flag,
waved hand-held flags in rhythm to the music. At the end of the ceremony,
Mixing ceremonies
and Etiquette’ of the German colonial administration, one gains the impres-
sion that ta’alolo were veritably ordered by the administration. Because of
the importance attached to the ta’alolo ceremony within Samoan culture –
it was by no means an everyday event but normally reserved for person-
ages of high standing and for special occasions – it was eagerly used by
the German colonial administration to enhance its own standing.34 Apart
The poula referred to here is a generic term for night dances performed on
festive occasions. Soa is defined by Krämer as a very old dance performed
outside by over a hundred dancers on important ceremonial occasions. Quite
apart from the terminological differentiation, the important issue raised by
Krämer is that the Samoans had already adapted their dance forms into a
synthesized version catering to European tastes. Even the indigenous word
itself has two discrete referents, meaning different things in the Samoan
context specifically as a dance song) and for the Europeans as a synonym
for Samoan dance.
The function and perception of the siva for the Europeans is well illustrated
by a newspaper article published in January 1910, announcing preparations
and plans for entertaining the German sailors and marines during the flag-
raising ceremony:
It has been mooted from several sides to give the ‘men-of-wars’ men a
Samoan ‘taumafataga’ and ‘siva-faa-Samoa’ on the afternoon of February
28th, in order to give them an opportunity of learning something about
Samoan customs and life Without doubt the Samoans themselves will
do their best to give the bluejackets a glimpse into the secrets of Samoan
culinary art.39
The sailors’ encounter with Samoan ‘customs and life’ was thus to be
presented in the concentrated form of Samoan dance. At the same time,
though, the dances were enjoyed by the Samoans themselves in an evident
spirit of intense competition, each village trying to outdo the other in skill
and presentation. What we see here is once again the basic pattern of colo-
nial theatricality whereby indigenous dance and song is required to assume
a metonymic function, concentrating and encapsulating cultures as a whole.
∗ ∗ ∗
146
Liat and the equally exotic because displaced racial bigot with a heart of
gold, Nellie Forbush from Little Rock, Arkansas. Seen chronologically, the
three works kept the Pacific on the mainstream American stage or in the
cinema continuously from 1912 until the early 1960s. Because of their heavy
reliance on music and dance, The Bird of Paradise and South Pacific make
a significant contribution to what now can be called the commodification
Richard Walton Tully’s Broadway and West End success The Bird of Paradise
is set in the early 1890s, the period in which the Unites States annexed
Hawai‘i and forced the native queen into house arrest until her death. Its
background is eminently political, although the main theme is romantic
Tully was so closely associated. The play became famous, however, not for
its evocation of the smell of kelp but for its authentic rendition of Hawaiian
dance and music and for a stunning volcanic eruption in the last act.
The Bird of Paradise was premiered on 11 September 1911 in Los Angeles at
Oliver Morosco’s Belasco Theater. Morosco, an erstwhile acrobat and one of
the leading theatrical impresarios of the day, had worked with Tully before,
In spite of the entire dissimilarity of the two plays in theme and story
there are many similarities in detail. Perhaps this is inevitable in two plays
about Hawaii. The very name Hawaii seems to suggest to Americans the
hula dance and the sport of swimming; flowers and sunshine and music.
It suggests too the dread disease of leprosy.9
right through their performances in the play that they recorded for the
phonograph company Victor the play’s incidental music, which sold well
into the 1920s.11
The appearance of Hawaiian popular music via Tully’s play and its fore-
grounding of ‘real live’ Hawaiian musicians resulted in a craze for the new
music and its icon, the ‘Honolulu girl’ in songs by Irving Berlin such as
Figure 19 Sheet music cover featuring Laurette Taylor. A photograph of Taylor has
been superimposed on the background picture. The song is ‘Mai Poina Oe’ (Forget me
not), composed by W. A. Aeko with English lyrics by Arthur Denvir
Source: John Franklin Music Co. 1912. Photo: collection of the author.
‘My Bird of Paradise’ issued in 1915, a ragtime parody of the play and the
Hawaiian craze engendered by it. By the end of World War I, Hawaiian
recordings were the biggest selling records in the United States, especially
acoustic steel guitar and vocal recordings.
Apart from recordings, sheet music of the songs was also published and
satisfied a huge demand for merchandizing and spin-off products. The sheet
Figure 20 Poster for Federal Theatre Project presentation of Bird of Paradise at the
Belasco Theatre, Los Angeles, showing a woman wearing a bikini top and skirt,
standing next to a palm tree. The poster was produced under the auspices of the
Federal Arts project, like the Federal Theater Project, a division of the Work Projects
Administration, a New Deal programme of the US Government
Source: By permission of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster
Collection (POS - WPA - CA.01.B549, no. 1).
occasions for singing, (but does not contain exact titles or lyrics), subsequent
developments of the production included more and more numbers, pushing
the play closer to ‘opera’ or ‘musical’. Owing to the growing prominence of
Hawaiian music and popular songs, it is perhaps not surprising that ‘The
Bird’ was revived – and quickly flopped – as a musical in 1930 under the title
Luana. The original play was also presented under the auspices of the Federal
Racial imperatives
US imperial ambitions on the one hand, and race debates on the other,
form the ideological framework for the play’s success. The play’s treat-
ment of the native Hawaiians oscillates between sympathy and antipathy.
Tully is a clear proponent of the ‘salvage paradigm’, to use James Clifford’s
term, whereby anthropological, or in his case theatrical representation,
Rain
Two years before ‘the Bird’ came off the stage for good following Fendler’s
successful lawsuit in 1924, New York audiences were to be privileged to what
could be termed the final chapter in the drama of anti-theatrical prejudice
in the South Seas. We have already noted that many Europeans viewed
missionary activities with considerable disparagement. This opposition often
had straightforward mercenary motives: traders and missionaries had very
different ideas as to what suitable dealing with the local people entailed.
Perhaps the most severe critics were visiting writers, a tradition that begins
with Herman Melville and continued into the twentieth century culmin-
ating as we shall see in W. Somerset Maugham’s most famous novella ‘Miss
Thompson’ (1921) and its various adaptations for stage and screen.26 By the
time he published the story, Maugham was generally considered to be one of
the most successful writers of the century. Although he began as a novelist
with the publication of the autobiographical Liza of Lambeth in 1897, in his
lifetime Maugham was best known as a playwright, in which capacity he
dominated the London stage from 1903 to 1933. In the course of his career
he travelled to most parts of the world, and visited the remotest outposts
of the British Empire. These experiences invariably found their way into a
huge output of stories, novels and plays.
When Maugham embarked on the SS Sonoma in December 1916 at
Honolulu en route to Sydney, the ship’s passengers included a certain Miss
Thompson and a missionary with, as Maugham noted in his notebook, ‘a
look of suppressed fire’.27 The ship called at Pago Pago, the main port of
and his wife, are returning to their mission on a remote island after a sabbat-
ical. They are forced to take up lodgings in Joe Horn’s general store, where
they are joined by Sadie Thompson who identifies herself as a ‘singer’. Both
women immediately take exception to Sadie’s raucous behaviour and evident
lack of social graces. Davidson surmises that she is a prostitute escaping
from Honolulu and intent on pursuing her profession in Apia. Coexistence
A native girl enters from down R., on the veranda. She wears the lava lava,
the native costume of the South Seas, and carries on her head a basket
of pineapples. She crosses indolently and gracefully to L., and enters the
store. She is followed by a native boy, and an old man, also wearing
the lava lava. The boy carries fruit and the old man a basket of toys
and ferocious masks of Kanaka workmanship. They are all chattering and
The model for this exotisistic procession was probably Maugham’s own play
East of Suez, which had premiered in New York two months earlier. Its famous
Mrs Davidson (to Dr Macphail): Well? I hear that Mrs. MacPhail has been
telling you some of the things about these islands which I couldn’t,
even though you are a doctor.
MacPhail suggests that in terms of function they are probably little different
can be explained by the fact that the audience recognized that the drama
being acted out was one of local significance rather than exotic distance.
John Gassner terms Rain an ‘early anti-puritan melodrama’ and regards it as
evidence of ‘the new generation’s assault on Puritanism.’38 According to this
reading, Rain, like The Bird of Paradise, is a drama of displacement. Internal
cultural conflicts – in this case the tension between the ‘liberated’ Charle-
Historians of the Pacific are unusually united in their evaluation of the events
of World War II on the region. No other chain of events since the initial
Western exploration and colonization produced more disruption than the
Japanese invasion of the islands and the ensuing war by the Allies against
Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. All three versions
have earned themselves acclaim for different reasons,41 but together, the
stories, play and film must be regarded as perhaps the most important Amer-
ican treatment of the Pacific war in fictional media of the 1940s and 1950s.
And by extension, this ensemble of media texts must be regarded as one of
the seminal contributions to the history of Western representations of the
Mary would grin, not understanding a word of what they were saying,
but after they came to see her for many days in a row the old miracle of
the subdued races took place again. The yellow woman learned dozens of
white words but the white man learned not one yellow word. When she
had mastered their vilest obscenities, they made her an honorary Marine,
emblem and all.47
In the stage version, this translates into a slightly less obscene exchange but
the mimicry is retained:
She mimics the Western other parrot fashion, but this mimicry can also be
Then Mary would scream at him, thrusting her nose into his face, ‘Bullshit,
brother!’ She wasn’t quite sure what the words meant, but from the way
new men would jump back in astonishment as if they had been hit with
a board, she knew it was effective. And so she used it for effect, and more
men would come back next week and say, ‘Four bucks for that? Not on
your life!’ just to hear the weathered old Tonk scream out some phrase
they could report to the fellows in the saloon back home, ‘and then, by
God maybe those guys would know us guys was really seein’ somethin’
out here!’50
in the film and play the meeting ground with ‘local culture’. Besides the
shrunken heads, which move Luther Billis to part with $100, Mary has a
most eclectic assortment of objects with which to ‘represent the Pacific’:
‘her merchandize, laid out in front, comprises shells, native hats, local dress
material, outrigger canoes and hookahs. Several grass skirts are hanging up
around the kiosk.’ Her stage costume is metonymic of the cultural mixing
inhabitants on the island, whereas the inhabitants are a spectacle for the
Americans who stand in for the gaze of the cinema viewers. This moment of
first encounter on the beach is, of course, a stock situation in the history of
the theatricalization of the Pacific, where two cultures meet one another, if
not for the first time, at least, it seems, always in a situation of heightened
expectation. Michener’s story emphasizes the theatricality of the situation
Then came the girls! There were native girls with breasts, and red sarongs
about their hips. There were inquisitive Chinese girls who were pulled
back by equally inquisitive Chinese mothers. Tonkinese girls, as yet
unmarried, stood close to their distinctive white and red shacks. And in
the distance, properly aloof, a few French girls demonstrated their inher-
ited superiority by looking with disdain upon the entire proceedings. They
wore white dresses, and you could not discern whether their breasts were
conical or flabby.55
As it happens, Cable is not much interested in the French girls and their
breasts, surrounded as he is by 30 native girls wearing only sarongs and
offering him a selection of native fruit. At one point even the sarong slips
awry and Lt Cable is ‘unable or unwilling to look away. Like the jungle,
like the fruits of the jungle, adolescent girls seemed to abound in unbeliev-
able profusion.’56 Michener intensifies the theatricality of the scene even
more by adding a further observer or spectator perspective. While Cable is
looking at topless pubescent girls whose sarongs occasionally fall ‘awry’, this
scene is being observed by the Melanesians on the neighbouring island of
Vanicoro: ‘And from the hills of Vanicoro the watchers looked at the boat
and then at one another! It could not be believed that for a few pineapples,
for some papayas, and such little papayas, one could get cloth!’57 Evidently,
the same spectacle is being read from two different perceptual and economic
perspectives.
The scene is also noteworthy for the importance attached to cultural
differentiation: Polynesians, Melanesian, Chinese and Europeans – all are
described and valorized. While the ‘brown’ Polynesians are held up as being
almost acceptable, the Melanesians occupy their traditional place in the
Pacific’s discursive history: the men are semi-savage cannibals – see the Boar’s
Tooth dance, whereas the women seem to epitomize ugliness, so much so
that the soldiers send home pictures to placate their girlfriends and fiancées
that they are not being tempted. One soldier produces ‘a horrendous picture
of a Melanesian woman with frizzled hair, sagging breasts, and buttocks like
a Colorado mesa. She was wearing a frond of palm leaves. “Look, Cable!”
one officer cried “The real South Seas!”.’58
Meanwhile Lt Cable has experienced the erotic side of the ‘real South Seas’
through his affair with Liat, Bloody Mary’s daughter. The stage play renders
this act of cross-cultural coitus with all the climatic and allusive means that
1940s American theatre had at its disposal:
(The music builds in a rapturous upsurge. CABLE gathers LIAT in his arms.
This cultural hybridity is echoed on another level in the play, but not
in the stories. The theatricality that we have been tracing throughout this
book resurfaces in the musical version with a vengeance. Semiotically this
hybridity is located in the figure of the business-minded Seabee Luther Billis.
Dramatically, he is responsible for the comic business the musical genre
demands. In terms of our performance genealogy he can be seen as a nodal
(Now BILLIS enters, dressed as a South Sea siren in a straw-colored wig, long
lashes fantastically painted on his eyelids, lips painted in bright carmine, two
coconut shells on his chest to simulate ‘femininity’ and a battleship tattooed on
his bare midriff. The girls are dressed in home-made costumes representing
island natives. The materials are fish-net parachute cloth, large tropical leaves
and flowers – anything they could find and sew together.) (342–3)
∗ ∗ ∗
and curios was, it seems, complete by the end of World War II. It reached its
‘apotheosis’ in 1950s America with a fad for Polynesian kitsch that decorated
bars, restaurants and motels from California to New England. The number of
establishments labelled Tiki, Hula Hut and Bali Ha’i increased exponentially,
only to disappear by the late 1960s.60
As the Pacific as a space of imaginative geography slowly sank under
174
Although each of these three levels can be analysed discretely, they can
in fact also be viewed as three interlocking performance complexes, which
build on each other to provide a cumulative effect in the course of a visit.
The whole complex is thus arranged according to precise dramaturgical and
theatrical principles: it is, in the words of the anthropologist Terry Webb,
‘highly structured tourist art’. Webb comments: ‘In the night show, the
unaffected, clever villagers are presented as polished performers, reputedly
superior to any other Polynesian troupe in the world. Simplicity is trans-
formed into excellence.’6
The PCC is ‘a complex work of tourist art’, as Webb argues, demanding
interpretation and exegesis in terms of its aesthetic structures and not just
The PCC terms itself a ‘cultural theme attraction’ and fits broadly into the
first category.7 Theme parks and living museums are certainly the most
widespread examples of recreated and staged realities, which often include
within their programmes a number of performances in the narrower sense,
such as song and dance demonstrations.8 The PCC, especially in the early
period of its operation, stressed its museum function as a preserver of Poly-
nesia’s ‘cultural heritage.’ Cultural villages such as the PCC, also known as
ethnic theme parks, distinguish themselves from living museums in so far
as the workers do not perform roles from the historical past, but supposedly
represent their own cultural identity. Although the Polynesian Cultural
Center is the most famous and longest established example of the ethnic
theme park, this is a fast-growing area and similar undertakings can be found
in many parts of the world, where ‘the performative primitive’ (to use Dean
MacCannell’s term) allows itself to be staged and commercially exploited.9
The PCC provides an increasingly rich offering in performances fitting
the second category, so-called hotel entertainment or ‘port folklore’ as it is
known in the Caribbean. The term is understood here to mean perform-
ances, usually song and dance, but sometimes decontextualized rituals such
as Fijian fire-walking or Brazilian candomblé, designed specifically to enter-
tain the cultural tourist. Such performances do not necessarily have to
take place in a hotel, but very often do, because they must be located in
the touristic space. Hotel performances seldom contain a didactic element.
Mainly because of its entertainment and commercial bias hotel entertain-
ment is associated with the most negative aspects of tourism. It has come
We are happy to have you all here. There is so much to do and learn
today. At the Center we have seven different islands. We also have seven
different cultures and seven different languages, so we don’t understand
each other. That’s why we have to speak English. (laughter) Any questions,
talk to me. All of us that work here are from Samoa. The culture of Samoa
is strong because Samoa is still controlled by chiefs. So the chiefs make
the rules and they tell you what to do. Whatever they say, we do it, so
it’s good to be chief. (laughter) People of Samoa are known as the happy
people of Polynesia: ladies and gentlemen we are the happy people. (looks
sad) Please be happy. Are you happy? (audience: Yeah!!) Me, too (looks sad).
Korea, are you happy? (translates the question into Korean) Every time
we cook, we use the ground-oven. When I go back some day, I’m going
to take a microwave oven. Allow me to share with you one of the most
important parts of cooking: making fire. You can make fire by rubbing
two sticks together. While you flick your bic, we rub our sticks. It’s very
simple: it takes about five and a half hours. (demonstrates; applause) Do
you want to see how we put it out? It’s not what you’re thinking. Any
questions about making fire? You can do this anytime you want, because
any wood works. Make sure the wood is dry and the two pieces come from
the same tree. You know the name of this wood? Firewood. (laughter)
Now I’m going to show you how to open a coconut. Get a coconut. Look
for the ripe ones. This one is ripe; you can tell by its color. It turns brown
like me when it’s ripe, which tells me that some of you are not ripe yet.
That’s a joke. (laughter) Husk the coconut using this instrument. We call
it ‘mele’. Please say ‘mele’. (audience responds) Come on everybody: mele!
(audience responds) English: Sharp Stick! (Audience: ‘Sharp stick!’ He says the
word in Korean and Spanish) First kill the coconut. (demonstrates husking) I
was doing that in slow motion for your convenience. On the islands this
is one of the competitive sports: record for the men three seconds; ladies
two days. That’s why we men cook. To crack it you have to hit it between
the eyes. You can use hammers, knives, screwdrivers, dynamite. (cracks
the coconut and pours the juice) This is not the milk, some people call it the
milk. It’s the juice. It’s good to drink – we call it seven-up because there’s
no caffeine – never had it? Never will. (he asks spectators to come up and
sample the juice) You don’t like? Drink it! Drink the whole thing.
(He demonstrates how to remove coconut meat using a sharpened stick. The
Figure 22 Tourist drinking coconut milk while being filmed by Samoan chief at the
Polynesian Cultural Center, Hawai‘i
Source: Collection of the author.
they assume the tourists bring with them. The empowerment is achieved
through a situation of discrepant information distribution with the Samoan
performers knowing more than the spectators.
Audience participation provides the necessary means by which the tourist
gaze can be best exposed to other tourists. It also allows for a greater differen-
tiation among the spectators, particularly along national and or ethnic lines.
drumming climax with the Korean holding his own, thus re-establishing
a harmonious tone which is characteristic of the PCC as a whole, where
conflict and disharmony are not permitted.
These examples make very clear that the tourist gaze at the PCC is not
predicated on a cultural binary of Western versus Polynesian. In economic
and cultural terms, Asian tourists, mainly Japanese and Koreans, are espe-
cultural situation.17 The cultural forms are therefore carefully guarded and
treasured; presumably they are regarded as too fragile to be subjected to the
rumbustious processes of self-irony and play that the Tongans and Samoans
practice.
Framing authenticity
The notion of authenticity implies a fixed point of reference for final veri-
fication, which, in the Western logocentric tradition at least, presupposes
archival knowledge. This contradistinction is ultimately irresolvable because
it stems from the aporia of the tourist gaze which, on the one hand, appears
to demand authenticity and, on the other, works to deauthenticate anything
which comes into its field of vision.
discussion at the PCC. Whereas the main ‘actors’ of the cultural presenta-
tions are in the most cases actually from the islands being ‘explained’, the
back-up members are not necessarily so. The BYU caters not only to Poly-
nesian students but also to Americans and other Mormons, so it is quite
normal for tourists to be poled along the canal by a Korean or a Filipino
or a blond-haired young Mormon from Utah.25 The Marquesas village poses
[M]y impression was that the Polynesians who work there were comfort-
ably ambivalent about the overlap between (a) their given performing
identities as Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians, etc.; (b) the faux identities
that they often take on as performers – Tongans playing the part of
Marquesans, because of the shortage of Marquesan students, Samoans
playing Hawaiians just for the hell of it, and Filipinos playing the role
of Polynesians in the night show, because sometimes any brown body
will do on stage (Maori, a little too haole in appearance and accent, are
something of a problem).27
This flexible and eclectic practice suggests that something close to a ‘generic’
Polynesian underlies the idea of authenticity at the PCC. While this may be
an inappropriate basis for establishing any kind of authenticity for objects,
it is evidently quite practicable for performance. This discrepancy between
the two modes of perception may be explained in terms of the semiotic
difference between the material and performative sign. The performative sign
is understood to embrace both clearly fictionalized forms of presentation
(such as ‘Ancient Legends of Polynesia’) as well as the cultural presentations
that are not clearly framed in a theatrical mode.28
Authenticity in performances for tourists results in especially contradictory
framing procedures because of the potential slippage between sign and
referent, a potential which is fully exploited by the Samoan and Tongan
performers as I have tried to demonstrate. Distinctions between staging and
authenticity, fiction and reality – at the heart of Western aesthetic theory and
theatrical performance – do not usually pose any phenomenological prob-
lems for the analyst, but tourist performances, as the examples examined
suggest, raise basic questions of epistemological framing by continually
disrupting the binary oppositions that habitually define performance.29
The shifting frames of authenticity in touristic performances can be illus-
trated by a further example from the Pacific. Although from Papua New
Guinea rather than from the PCC or another Polynesian site, this example
is especially illuminating because it allows us to extend the investigation of
obviously staged ‘hotel entertainment’ to those fictionalized real encoun-
ters that present themselves initially as spontaneous discoveries. Frederik
Although the initiation ritual was ‘genuine’ in the sense that the Chambri
were doing it for themselves – the initiates went through an efficacious rite –
the presence of the tourists (and two anthropologists) meant that the ritual
attained a certain quality of self-reflexivity: this became quite clear when
onlookers were asked to become spectators by applauding. This not untypical
example from the field of tourist performance helps to refocus my earlier
posed central question about the putative opposition between ‘staging’ and
‘authenticity’. The force of Errington and Gwertz’s argument rests on the
idea that the two concepts are basically self-excluding. The tourists, at least,
appear to agree, but the actions of the Chambri and their attitude to their
own rituals suggests a less dichotomous way of thinking.
In the specific situation of performance, the discourse of authenticity
becomes most prone to deconstruction. As the account of the Chambri
ritual demonstrates, the performance was paradoxical because it confused
two frames. The request for applause drew attention to the position of the
tourists. Various observer positions would be possible here, depending on
the frame: among them are spectator, witness or bystander. In the theatre,
spectatorship is carefully framed by the generic expectations, but the tourists
at the Chambri ritual thought that they were witnesses rather than spec-
tators of the ritual and thus they assumed the fiction of non-presence. The
Chambri, on the other hand, did not allow this fiction. Instead, they broke
the illusion of the fourth wall by inviting the ‘non-present’ tourists to make
their presence felt in an explicitly theatrical way (i.e., in accordance with
∗ ∗ ∗
191
Pacific diasporas
that Honolulu offers a creative mix, not just of Polynesian cultures but of
other ethnic groups as well. As most islands have very fragile economies,
the pressure to travel and work in these centres is very great indeed. In the
case of New Zealand, the major immigrant groups stem from Samoa, Tonga,
the Cook-Islands and Nieue.7 Whereas the Maori in New Zealand began to
articulate themselves through the medium of theatre in the 1970s,8 Pacific
Writer: In the huts, those villagers who owned mirrors covered them with
cloth – especially if there was a moon – for the glitter of glass, especially
moon-struck glass, brought the dead out of their graves, searching for
their human images – us – their children – their grandchildren’s chil-
dren – their otherness which is themselves. In the old days, this
was a time for prayer, appeasing them. In my boyhood, we gathered
in our thatch-roofed Samoan hut across the road, by the seashore, for
vespers.9
Neither his American father nor his well-educated Samoan mother have any
part in these or the official vespers, preferring to remain home and read.
David receives religious instruction from a young Catholic priest, Brother
Patrick: No gravestone – but a little boy’s grave. Davey spoke to it. I was
too far away to hear. Then he would listen, sort of. And, of a sudden, he
would laugh. Then listen. And speak. And listen. And laugh. And so it
went, for almost an hour Then he came home. (a longish pause)
I’m that worried about him. (15)
David’s best friend turns out to be the spirit of a dead boy called Veni. At
the end of the second scene Kneubuhl gives the boy Veni a voice, which
turns out to be that of David’s alter ego, the narrator-writer. By conflating the
spirit of the dead boy with the narrator-writer, Kneubuhl creates a complex
representational form. It is neither a ‘mask’, the usual sign and convention
for spirits (although one without any grounding in Samoan performance
traditions) nor a disembodied voice. It is rather David’s alter ego manifested
as an acoustic figuration who speaks only Samoan in his direct interaction
with the boy:
Writer: He sat on the ground instead of the bench. I sat beside him
David: Veni
Writer: (Always softly) ‘Oa’u. [It is me]
David: ‘E mafai ‘ona tāō? [Can we go?]
Writer: ‘I fea? [Where?]
David: ‘I le mea na ‘ē sau ai. [From where you came.] (50)
identity conflicts. These, however, run across rather than along ethnic lines.
Irreconcilable differences between the parents, submerged until this point,
surface and lead to their separation. The American father devotes himself to
fighting for Samoan rights before the League of Nations, whereas his Samoan
wife wants no involvement with the issue whatsoever. She refuses to channel
her deep personal loss into any kind of political commitment. The identity
Ritual reincorporation
There is a pe and he’s flying around and around and under the wing of
the pe, he’s carrying his children. And when he’s flying in the trees or
crawling on the ground, the children is under the wing so it can protect
the children, because that is what he is doing all the time. He is always
looking after the young one. That is what Daddy is always trying to do to
you, he is always trying to protect you.13
(pe), the second to the expression ‘la ta sau pe’a’, ‘You must get yourself a
tattoo’. The flying fox is the fruit bat found throughout the Pacific. It has
a special place in Samoan mythology as it symbolizes protection – females
envelop their young with their wings – as well as strength. The wings of the
flying fox are therefore incorporated into the upper half of the tattoo, where
they have the same symbolical significance:
as a social outsider. The Samoan initiation ritual, on the other hand, has
precisely the opposite function. It enables an individual to be fully socially
integrated. Applied to the situation of Samoan diaspora in New Zealand,
it means that the son is prepared to assume responsibility for himself and
Samoans in New Zealand. It symbolizes the assumption of responsibility for
the comunitas in the diaspora.
Every Friday or Saturday night somewhere in the Pacific Rim cities of Auck-
land, Sydney, Honolulu, but also in the local centres such as Apia in Western
Samoa, Pago Pago in American Samoa, in Nuku‘alofa, capital of the Kingdom
of Tonga, one can encounter a performance of a special kind. Young Poly-
nesian men dressed as glamorous women will swish along the catwalk to
catcalls and cheers of encouragement in what can be regarded as a particu-
larly Polynesian performance form. These ‘beauty pageants’ or in some cases
fashion shows go under names such as Miss Galaxy, Rosa Pasifika, or Style
Pasifika. Alternatively, similar performances can be found in nightclub and
cabaret acts such as Cindy of Samoa or Diva Siva. Wherever they take place,
these performances are transgressive and ironical, as they play outrageously
with popular clichés regarding the Pacific and especially Polynesian women.
Many Polynesian societies support a category of male persons who not
only comport themselves, and frequently dress, like women but identify with
the female sex to the extent that they seek relationships with ‘normal’ men.
This identification with the opposite sex frequently begins before puberty
and such individuals are often labelled as such by their extended family or
village. Local terms include māhū in Tahiti and Hawai‘i, fakaleiti in Tonga
or fa’afafine in Samoa. The latter translate literally as ‘in the fashion of a
woman’.16 Both emic and etic commentators are in agreement that Western
labels such as homosexuality or transvestism cannot encompass the Poly-
nesian categories, although overlap certainly exists. Fa’afafine may indeed
cross-dress but many do not. They have little or no interest in sexual contacts
with other fa’afafine. Sex changes are rare, but this may be due to economics
and opportunity rather than a fundamental opposition to such a permanent
alteration. Some fa’afafine actually relinquish the identity later in life when
they assume important social roles.17 From the earliest contacts Europeans
were fascinated and repulsed by an overt behaviour that seemed to openly
condone ‘sodomy’. As Polynesia was Christianized the behaviour seemed to
disappear from Western discourse (but presumably not from the societies
themselves) only to reappear in the late twentieth century.
The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in popular
media attention paid to transgendered people in Polynesian societies. From
New Zealand to Germany, France to Australia, documentaries, short stories,
This is the earliest reference to the special connex between māhū (the Tahi-
tian equivalent of fa’afafine) and performance. From the earliest contacts,
we also find, however, a construction of the Polynesian body in feminine or
androgynous terms on the part of Western travellers. Even Johann Forster,
the German naturalist on Cook’s second voyage whose prose is tersely
scientific, described Tahitian men as ‘beautifully feminine’.20 Recently,
scholars have begun to reread the classic texts of South Seas cultural
encounters such as Melville and Gauguin to rediscover previously overlooked
homoerotic structures of desire.21 Most other references in the early contact
literature are to the sexual implications of the category, to what early visitors
and particularly missionaries saw as overt sodomy.22 It is no doubt due to
the influence of the latter that there are, as Niko Besnier has noted, very
few records of fa’afafine in the post-missionary years. The category does not
really resurface until the post-war period.
In the late 1970s, Polynesian transgenderism began to slowly emerge as a
performative phenomenon. Locally, fa’afafine, it seems, had always been part
of family structures, but their sexual proclivities of course had not endeared
them to the missionaries and then later to local churches. Anthropologists
had been aware of the category but not accorded it much attention. The
first detailed discussion was provided in the early 1950s by Bengt and Marie
Daniellson in their now classic perpetuation of the South Seas myth, Love
in the South Seas.23 In 1978 they co-authored an article in the Pacific Islands
Monthly that explicitly documented the transition from a covert domestic
category to an extroverted performance phenomenon.24 In Tahiti, Tonga
and Samoa the authors observed fa’afafine increasing their public visibility
through beauty pageants but also nightclubs. Until the mid-1990s fa’afafine
were a local phenomenon or present on the fringes of Pacific island diasporas
in larger cities such as Auckland, Sydney or Los Angeles. This situation
changed within a few years as fa’afafine literally gained centre stage in a
number of high profile stage and media productions.25
In 1995 the International New Zealand Arts Festival commissioned Pacific
Underground writers and performers Oscar Kightley and David Fane to write
a play about fa’afafine in collaboration with the Samoan actor and director
Nat Lees, who had attained prominence with his much-lauded production of
John Kneubuhl’s Think of a Garden. The result, A Frigate Bird Sings, premiered
in March 1996 in Wellington during the festival. In 16 scenes, A Frigate Bird
Sings develops the story of Vili ‘Atafa, a Samoan fa’afafine in his mid-thirties
and eldest son of a Samoan family living in Auckland. The play revolves
It is clear that the ambivalent mythological figure of the frigate bird functions
as a metaphor for the fa’afafine in the diaspora. The double figure of a
‘blessing and a curse’ is mirrored in Vili’s final acceptance of his own role, not
in unitary terms but in the realization that he lives in a state of doubleness.
The final words of the play are a reprise of his opening speech but with the
addition of female roles: ‘I am Vili ‘Atafa, son and daughter of Tapili and
Siana Atafa, brother and sister of Sione. I am fa’afafine.’28
It is to the play’s credit that it eschews an exclusionary focus on the histri-
onic dimension of the fa’afafine, although this is also present in the figures
of Dejavu and Shaninqua, who represent the extroverted theatricality of the
drag queen. Vili, on the contrary, is primarily a character in a conventional
diasporic drama that characterizes much of the work of Pacific Underground.
Yet this ‘kitchen-sink’ drama is only one layer of what in production became
literally multi-layered in visual terms. Director Nat Lees set out to create
programmatically a ‘Pacific Island’ theatre. This pan-Polynesian concept was
reflected in the set, lighting and costume design. In place of the usual clutter
and appurtenances of box-set domestic drama, the story was enacted in the
round on a circle of sand, which also acted as textured screen for lighting
projections. Apart from a few rocks the actors performed in a totally ‘empty
space’. This spatial concept, however, had only accidental parallels with the
playing areas of Peter Brook’s Paris productions. As Lees explained in an inter-
view, the set (designed by Michael Tuffery) was conceived as a counter-model
to palagi theatre. Its central principle was influenced by Pacific Island cultural
practices, mainly the village meetings and kava ceremonies: ‘here everyone
has input, even those watching; their energy is part of the performance.’29
The translation of Pacific Island cultural practices into theatrical signs was
echoed in the costuming as well. With the exception of the extroverted drag
queen fa’afafine, the all-male cast all wore lava lavas, the skirt-like cloth worn
hospitality business sets up a bar and brings in waiters and waitresses are
hired, discjockeys secure and test sound systems, organizers decorate the
hall, and workers set up seating for several thousand people. For several
weeks before the two-day show, families and friends assemble and fit the
contestants’ often elaborate outfits while contestants rehearse individual
performances, group songs, and dance steps.30
besides. But we also see a folkloristic Maori costume – this being a kind of
inner Polynesian or pan-Pacific reference not immediately recognizable to
the non-Pacific outsider. More subtle are the variations on Tongan tradi-
tional costume which are only decodable for the local audience.
Even more striking and potentially subversive are the various performance
routines. An example is of a Tongan war-dance accompanied by the
the other hand, the Christian discourses have extreme difficulty in accom-
modating the sexual activity that fa’afafine also imply. It is now safe to say
that Christianity in the Pacific, or at least in the Polynesian, context is also a
traditionalist discourse, representing ‘society’ as do the ruling and economic
elites. It stands usually for strong family and tribal cohesion. Within this set
of values, the fa’afafine are both in and out. Their liminal position is thus
With great ado he pushed and twisted at imaginary knobs and gadgets
on it to satisfy himself that it was ready for the first shot. He then tripped
daintily to where I sat and contorted himself into every position imagin-
able, getting from the crowd a twitter of ill-concealed giggles, before he
pressed the trigger of a big bamboo clapper, flattened on one side that was
supposed to be the shutter release. It went off with a bang like a firework,
and the clown fell down backwards as if he had been bowled over by the
kick of a double-barreled shotgun. The crowd roared with laughter, and I
joined in too, laughing till my sides ached.39
highlights from the previous three. The fifth addition, Naked Samoans Go
Home (2003), creates a new set of characters while exploring the same them-
atic concerns. The latter focuses on the Pacific Island experience in the
diaspora garnished with an irreverent attitude to inter-racial conflicts. Racist
Indian shopkeepers, sacred Maori ceremonial protocol as well as the usual
European prejudices against ‘dark’ people receive equally satirical treatment.
from ‘the beautiful islands of New Zealand’, but ends with the characteristic
Maori grimace of poked tongue ferocity. The ‘climatic climax’ is a botched
rendition of the famous Samoan fire-dance (‘please do not try this at home;
try it at someone else’s home’). In place of the dangerous burning sticks,
the brothers can only manage a pole with red cellophane, which finally
falls off.
The second half of the show takes place in Auckland, New Zealand, mainly
at a downtown Auckland building site. Sione has failed to make the rugby
team, has lied to his brothers that he is studying medicine, whereas in fact he
is now a labourer. The other workers are Pacific Islanders who are bullied by
a cricket-bat wielding Maori foreman played by Oscar Kightley. The humour
changes focus to highlight inter-racial prejudice. It alternates between the
eschatological (Sione’s dialogue with his deceased parents) and the scato-
logical as one character is forced to wear brown, soiled underpants over
his shorts. Mainly, however, the comic attacks revolve around redefining
older clichés in new configurations of power. Familiar European prejudices
regarding the ‘lazy Maori’ are refocused as the Maori foreman excoriates
the lazy ‘coconuts’ for their idleness and lack of education. In these scenes
the Naked Samoans live up to their reputation of performing transgressive
humour that is ‘fearless in the face of race, sex, political correctness and
good taste’.41
Dystopic paradise
Equally fearless, but more in terms of radical artistic vision, is the New
Zealand-based Mau ensemble, founded in 1995 by Lemi Ponifasio. Mau (the
name derives from the Western Samoan independence movement Mau,
which in Samoan means ‘vision’ or ‘belief’) was set up with the intention
festival in Amsterdam the audience sat on benches or on the floor and a bar
had been set up behind. The performance began with a Maori powhiri, the
ritual of welcome consisting of chants, dances, oratory and rubbing noses.
The audience were figured as manuhiri or guests who are required to undergo
a ritual of tapu removal before entering the space of the hosts (tangata
whenua). In the performance I saw, the vice-chancellor of Amsterdam Univer-
night caused by the seamless embrace of Rangi the sky god and Papa the
earth goddess. Their son Tane forced them apart and caused light to stream
into the world. Into this world emerge semi-human shapes represented
by near-naked dancers trailing between their legs an umbilical cord-like
appendage (Figure 25) The umbilical cord evokes associations of the whenua,
the afterbirth that in Polynesian cultures is always buried near the child’s
∗ ∗ ∗
The plays and productions discussed here represent only a small cross-section
of contemporary Pacific performance. They are nevertheless representative
of significant trends in what we have termed here ‘diasporic theatre’ and
demonstrate that a Pacific consciousness is being explored through the
medium of performance in its widest sense. On a formal level, Pacific theatre
follows the general trend towards syncretism in postcolonial theatre. It incor-
porates traditional indigenous cultural texts into the framework of European
theatre to achieve a bi- or multicultural communication situation. On a
thematic level it focuses on the characteristic diasporic concerns of memory,
cultural loss and disorientation, and at the same time outlines strategies of
redress and reincorporation. Although the diasporic nature of Pacific theatre
will remain, it is clearly reformulating what has traditionally been seen as a
situation of lack and loss into a new cultural space with considerable creative
and recuperative potential. Located within global transmission processes,
Pacific performances are re-entering the international circulation of cultural
signs and texts.
In terms of the overall argument of this book, contemporary perform-
ances, especially those practised by the fa’afafine and comedy acts such as
the Naked Samoans, but also the more avant-garde groups such as Mau,
provide continuity with what I have defined as cross-cultural theatricality.
They understand that cross-cultural experiences, especially those defined
within the power structures of colonialism and its neo-colonial extensions,
are encapsulated as much by performance practices as by written texts.
While all the groups mine the mimetic capital that has accrued since the
first contacts between Europeans and Pacific Islanders, their performances
do not just cite the European histories of representation. They demonstrate
that the cultural equation has become more complex. Imitation and citation
are fundamental to these processes but they are now being deployed within
Introduction
218
18. See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures,
trans Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1987); Niklas Luhmann,
The Reality of the Mass Media, trans Kathleen Cross (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2000).
19. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991), 91.
20. Ibid., 6.
38. Anne Salmond, Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans, 1642–1772
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991), and Between Worlds: Early Exchanges
between Maori and Europeans, 1773–1815 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,
1997).
39. See N. Thomas, In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories (Durham, NC: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 1997), and Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 190 and 207.
17. George Forster, A Voyage round the World, ed. Nicholas Thomas and Oliver Berghof
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000), i. 375.
18. James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean; Undertaken by
Command Performed under the Direction of Captains Cook, Clerke, (London:
T. Cadell, 1784), iii. 174.
34. Robertson, Discovery, 166. Bougainville records some months later almost exactly
the same scene in almost the same turn of phrase: Bougainville, Voyage Round the
World, 217–18.
35. Ibid.
36. Robertson, Discovery, 180.
37. Bougainville, A Voyage Round the world, 219.
38. Ibid., 227–8.
12. See Das weinende Saeculum: Colloquium der Arbeitsstelle 18. Jahrhundert, ed. die
Arbeitsstelle 18. Jahrhundert Gesamthochschule Wuppertal (Heidelberg: Winter,
1983).
13. Umilissimo Vassallo, Cook o sia Gl’Inglesi in Othaiti Dramma per Musica (Naples:
1785). All page references to quotations from the text will be given immediately
afterwards in brackets. Translations are mine.
14. Hawkesworth, Account, ii. 479.
25. James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (London: T. Cadell,
1784), 172.
26. Marshall Sahlins, How ‘Natives’ Think, 85.
27. The Mutiny on the Bounty was also the subject of a pantomime, The Pirates, Or
the Calamities of Captain Bligh, produced only seven weeks after Bligh’s return, on
3 May 1790. For an account, see Greg Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion,
Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
century. Their ‘progress’ has many parallels to that of the Hawaiians. See Eric
Hinderaker, ‘The “Four Indian Kings” and the Imaginative Construction of
the First British Empire’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 53:3 (1996),
487–526; and Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circumatlantic Performance (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1996), ch. 4, ‘Feathered Peoples’.
46. Unidentified newspaper clipping held by the National Library of Australia, acces-
sion number s8467. Citations from this source will be marked NLA.
12. The best summary of the ethnographic material is still Douglas Oliver, Ancient
Tahitian Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1974), ii. 913–64.
13. See Edward Handy, History and Society in the Society Islands (Honolulu: Bishop
Museum, 1930), 62. The feather girdle became an object of considerable import-
ance in internal Tahitian politics. It incorporated the pennant Samuel Wallis
presented to Oberea, and later the hair of Richard Skinner, one of the mutineers
of the Bounty. Its possession gave Pomare I substantial power when he finally
27. Ambrotype was one of the earliest photographic procedures and involved printing
on glass a positive image on a wet plate collodion. It was superseded by negative
plates and film.
28. Barrère et al., Hula: Historical Perspectives, 41.
29. Rose, Hawai‘i: The Royal Isles, 1980, 187.
30. Kaeppler, Polynesian Dance, 23.
31. For an in-depth study of the touristic context of hula, see Jane C. Desmond,
and Jost Hermand (ed.), Deutsche Feiern (Wiesbaden: Athenäum, 1977); for the
Sedan and Kaiser’s birthday celebrations, see Fritz Schellack, ‘Sedan- und Kais-
ergeburtstagfeste’, in Öffentliche Festkultur: Politische Feste in Deutschland von der
Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Dieter Düding et al. (Reinbek: Rowohlt,
1988), 278–97.
31. Most of these monuments (except the Bismarck memorial) are still extant on the
Mulinu’u peninsular in Apia and have been joined by Samoan additions.
Hawai‘i and the Islands of the South Seas, rev. edn (New York: W. Sloane Associates,
1948). Jane C. Desmond provides a brief analysis in her study of hula, Staging
Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1999), 65–6. For a more detailed discussion, see my article ‘Selling the
Bird: Richard Walton Tully’s The Bird of Paradise and the Dynamics of Theatrical
Commodification’, Theatre Journal, 57:1 (2005), 1–20.
4. Richard Walton Tully, ‘A Bird of Paradise: An American play in three acts’,
W. LeBaron. It was filmed again in 1952, directed by Delmer Daves, and featuring
Louis Jourdan as a French sailor who falls in love with the sister (Debra Paget) of
his Polynesian friend (Jeff Chandler). The similarity with the original is again the
volcanic sacrifice.
19. For the term ‘salvage paradigm’, see Chapter 7, note 18.
20. Tully, ‘The Bird of Paradise’, 1.
21. For an account of the coup d’état, see Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the
34. For an account of moral ‘backsliding’ among the missionaries, see Niel Gunson,
Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas. 1797–1860 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978), 152–9.
35. Colton’s only other notable success was the melodrama The Shanghai Gesture
(1926), which was filmed by Josef von Sternberg in 1941 with Gene Tierney in
the leading role.
36. Morehouse, Matinee Tomorrow, 196.
see Elisabeth Buck, Paradise Remade: The Politics of Culture and History in Hawai‘i
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
18. See James Clifford, ‘Of Other Peoples: Beyond the “Salvage” Paradigm’, The
Politics of Representations, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1987), 121–50;
here 121.
19. See Webb, ‘Highly Structured Tourist Art’, and Stanton, ‘The Polynesian Cultural
Center’, who both note the use of anthropologists from BYU.
9. John Kneubuhl, Think of a Garden and Other Plays (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 1997), 23. Page references to further citations will be given in brackets.
10. For the production in Wellington, the Samoan-born director Nathaniel Lees won
the prestigious Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for Best Director.
11. It’s mission statement reads: ‘Pacific Underground’s aims and objectives include:
to use the entertainment industry to tell the stories of Pacific Islanders who live
here to create an awareness of issues facing them, to promote the talents of young
24. Bengt Danielsson et al., ‘Polynesia’s Third Sex: The Gay Life starts in the Kitchen’,
Pacific Islands Monthly, 49:8 (August 1978), 10–13.
25. There is no space to chart the wider story of media representations of fa’afafine.
Apart from a spate of magazine articles, two longer film documentaries contrib-
uted to publicizing and popularizing fa’afafine among television and film audi-
ences: Fa’afafine: Queens of Samoa, directed by Caroline Harker, was first broad-
cast on New Zealand Television One, on 29 September 1995. For a critique, see
41. Laurie Atkinson, ‘Crazy Samoans Pack a Punch’, The Dominion Post, 26 September
2003: http://www.nakedsamoans.com/reviews.html. Last accessed 24 April 2005.
42. There is still little scholarly discussion of Mau. See their website: www.mau.co.nz.
43. The use of Maori rituals of encounter in performance was pioneered by the Maori
theatre movement in the 1980s. See my book, Decolonizing the Stage, especially
chs 2 and 7.
Secondary sources
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, 4th edn (London: Verso, 1987).
Arago, J., Souvenirs d’un Aveugle. Voyage autour du monde par M.J. Arago Ouvrage enrichi
de soixante Dessins et de Notes Scientifiques (Paris: Hortet et Ozanne, 1839).
245
——, Narrative of a Voyage round the world in the Uranie and Physicienne Corvettes,
commanded by Captain Freycinet, during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, on a
scientific expedition undertaken by order of the French government. In a series of letters to
a friend (First pub. London 1823; repr. Amsterdam: N. Israel & Da Capo Press, 1971).
Bal, Mieke, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2002).
Balme, Christopher B., ‘Selling the Bird: Richard Walton Tully’s The Bird of Paradise
——, A Voyage round the World, in His Britannic Majesty’s Resolution. Commanded by
Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5, ed. Nicholas Thomas and Oliver
Berghof, 2 vols (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000).
Forster, Johann, Reinhold, Observations made during a Voyage round the World, ed.
Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettelbach (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 1996).
Furnas, J. C., Anatomy of Paradise: Hawai‘i and the Islands of the South Seas, rev. edn
McConachie, Bruce, ‘The “Oriental” Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the
War in Southeast Asia’, in Marc Maufort (ed.), Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism
in American Theatre and Drama (New York: Peter Lang, 1995).
Meleisea, Malama, The Making of Modern Samoa: Traditional Authority and Colonial
Administration in the History of Western Samoa (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies
of the University of the South Pacific, 1987).
Melville, Herman, ‘The South Seas’, in The Piazza Tales and other Prose Pieces, 1839–
——, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 1992).
Smith, Vanessa, Literary Culture and the Pacific. Nineteenth-Century Textual Encounters
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Taillemite, Etienne (ed.), Bougainville et ses compagnons autour du monde 1766–1769:
Journaux de navigation, 2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1977).
Taussig, Michael, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York:
251
Cook, Captain James, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, Evangelical movement (see missionaries),
14, 19, 20, 36, 38, 43, 49, 79, 105, exoticism, 8–9, 47, 61, 155,
216
as a dramatic character, 51–5, 57–60 fa’afafine, xiii, 17, 192, 200–10, 211, 243
A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 58 passim
A Voyage towards the South Pole, 25 fa’a Samoa, 207
death, 60, 218, 221 fakaleiti, 200, 205
Seddon, Richard (NZ premier), 115 and perception, 4–5, 29, 170
Sherwin, J. K. (artist), 27 and sexuality, 29–35, 38, 201, 204,
siva (see Samoan dance) 205, 208
Smith, Bernard, 9–10, 12, 27 Thomas, Nicholas, 13, 22–3
Society Islands (see Tahiti) Timorodee (see also dancing and
Solf, Wilhelm (colonial governor), 125, sexuality), 39–40, 41, 81, 223
133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140 Tonga, 21–3, 124, 242