Tangihanga is a play that looks at death through a Māori lens

Kristyl Neho in her play Tangihanga. Photo / Supplied / RNZ
By RNZ
Hawke’s Bay theatremaker Kristyl Neho (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahungunu) grew up with more death around her than most people.
Neho was raised by her grandparents and her grandfather, whom she calls dad and her personal hero, was an undertaker. Mane Neho was, she says, an unconventional undertaker. He did everything from digging graves and doing headstones to driving up the motu picking up family members of the deceased.
“Sometimes he would rock up in the most hideous vehicles, just grotesque!” laughs Neho. “I mean he had hearses but anybody would think we were just these hard-up Māori, turning up in a rickety old van!”
Mane Neho was also a community hero she says and, growing up, Neho and her brother helped out with the business.
“That’s what I knew my whole life. We used to hang out at the cemetery – we called it the urupa – for like hours, because Dad used to do these brick tombs. Me and my brother would walk around… we’d take flowers and sing songs to those who looked lonely!”
Mane Neho died in 2009. So dramatic was his own tangihanga that Neho decided to bring it to the stage.
In her moving and often very funny new solo play Tangihanga, currently touring in the North Island, she plays no less than 30 whānau and family friends. It’s a work of dramatic bravado with much to reflect on in terms of the different cultural approaches we have to farewelling our loved ones.
“I’ve never been to a small Māori funeral,” she tells Mark Amery of Culture 101.
Neho reckons she’s attended more than 1000 funerals or tangihanga, but none were as dramatic as her dad’s.
“Because he was so prolific, well loved and well known for serving the community there were so many arguments about where he should be and what marae he should be on…. there were all these massive debates and discussions from marae to marae.”
And then there was the way it ended, with two aunties, says Neho, having a “punch up fight” during the funeral in the urupā. They become a composite ‘Aunty Margaret’ in the play.
“It was easily the most toxically epic one I have attended.”
It all reflects that a tangihanga occurs over many days and becomes more than just remembering the deceased. The point people are in their life often comes into focus. Unresolved things come to the surface between family members, and interactions occur that have, up to that point, been able to be avoided.
“Sometimes there’s not been a lot of sleep, and there’s been a lot of stress… It just heightens everybody’s emotions.”
That includes the “Aunty Margarets”.
“She’s that one family member who is slightly unhinged who feels like it’s her duty to be exposing every whānau secret…. and then does it at the most inopportune time.”
Not all of Neho’s whānau has seen the play yet, so she fully expects someone to do an “Aunty Margaret” at one of the future performances.
Growing up around her dad’s business Neho also came to realise the huge differences between Māori and Pākehā approaches to their dead.
“I’ve actually been to quite a few non-Māori funerals and [at first] didn’t realise that they were so short and sharp! Or like not understanding that bodies don’t go home.
“When I would turn up at the parlour when I was quite young… I’d say, ‘Who’sthat?!” And the person was just left at the parlour.
“I didn’t understand that was something people did. I just assumed people took their loved ones home or to a marae and that’s how the loved ones grieved.”
Tangihanga is currently on a North Island tour, playing the Whangārei Fringe,Toitoi in Hastings and then Tāmaki Makaurau’s Basement Theatre.
A Toi Whakaari New Zealand School graduate, this is one of a number of solo plays Neho has written and performed. But she’s also taken a leaf out of her dad’s book in working with the community.
Over 15 years, her company Maia Dreams has worked in more than 40 schools in the Hawkes Bay region running positive empowerment programmes.