You did it! Thank you all so very, very much. I am truly humbled and grateful for your support and generosity.
I am so excited to have reached this point and I will keep you all posted when the book is published.
Aroha,
Marianne
Hello all. We're down to the final stretch now. My book is almost complete and will sent to the New York publishers this week. I just received final permission for a front cover image and I am so excited. It is held at the Rotorua Museum. They have granted permission but I also have asked a surviving sibling of Frederick Bennett- and he has given me his blessing, so I am very happy looking forward to seeing this image spread around the world.
Please share my post. If I do not research my target amount I will not received any funds,so every little bit counts now.
Thank you so much. I am so excited to have my research published.
Performance of the opera Hinemoa, 1915. Composer, Percy Flynn. Performed in 2013 by Benson Wilson and Ella Smith
Hello, I am in the final stages of editing and securing images and permisisons. This week I was very excited when I obtained permission from a family member to have their ancestor on the cover. However the Museum rights holder now requires more money to allow this as a cover image. Also, I have a cartographer making a map for me so that international readers will be able to visualize and place NZ in an global context. SO- what all this means is that I have bills to pay related to the completion of this project. Since I have not received any grants for this book I really need your support- please spread the word so that I can reach my target. Thank you.
Just letting you know about my other publishing opportunities that have arisen. I have a chapter included in the upcoming Peter Lang book- The 'Exotic' Body in Nineteenth-century British Drama and an article in the next issue of Theatre Journal, published by Johns Hopkins University.
Chapter 1- Prologue/Introduction
On a warm Manhattan September evening in 1909, the 5,000 strong Hippodrome opening-night audience eagerly anticipated the ‘trifoliate theatrical triumph’, the latest in a long line of Hippodrome spectaculars. After the thrill of seeing a life-size ship appear in A Trip to Japan and the lushness of the Ballet of Jewels, the massive curtain of the gigantic stage cascaded to reveal the opening scene of Inside the Earth; a ‘Maori Village’ complete with thatched huts and 40 performers dressed in revealing ‘native’ costume. Written and directed by Hippodrome stalwart R.H. Burnside, with music composed and conducted by Manuel Klein, and scenic effects by Arthur Voegtlin, the ‘drama with music’, featured Oxtacelex, the Inca, Dan Willoughby, the owner of Willoughby mines, David Allen, a partner in the Willoughby mines, and Kiwi, the Maori chief of a tribe of Maori villagers. For 30 minutes the ‘bronze-tinted’ men and women provoked thunderous applause with their enactments of the ‘home life and customs of savage people in distant climes’.
With the prediction that ‘it will probably not be very long before the Maoris will become a fad,’ New Yorkers clamoured to get tickets to Inside the Earth to witness genuine South Pacific natives in the flesh. The New York Times assured readers that the Hippodrome had surpassed itself with this spectacle, especially with the introduction of the ‘extraordinary dances’ of the Maori. At once intriguing, precisely choreographed and threatening, the display from the Maori performers was a crucial element to the storyline of Inside the Earth. Combining danger, exoticness, passion and vitality with talent and skill, the ‘harmony of frenzy’, manifested through performance, introduced Maori corporeal expression to audiences in America. In the wake of other theatrical events that combined ethnography with entertainment, the Hippodrome spectacular is but one example of the cultural hybridity that developed in the field of entertainment, with the mingling of performance styles and forms from diverse and contrasting origins. Removed from their natural settings, the songs and dances from the South Pacific created a vision of New Zealand and its inhabitants on the world’s largest stage. The Hippodrome spectacular also gave the Maori performers licence to embellish and alter their ‘traditional’ cultural expression.
How have cultural and racial identities been performed? Who has manufactured cultural expression? These, and other questions of agency and representation run throughout the chapters that follow. Examining corporeal expression of indigenousness from an historical perspective, Performing Indigenous Culture on Stage and Screen: A Harmony of Frenzy highlights the development of cultural hybridity via the popular performing arts, contributing new understandings of racial, ethnic and gender identities through performance. While the focus of this book is on representations of Maori (indigenous New Zealander) and Pakeha (non- Maori New Zealander), other indigenous peoples including Native American, Hawaiian, and Australian Aboriginal make their appearance. This book examines the intercultural exchange experienced throughout colonial, imperial and settler territories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries via music, dance, theatre, spectacle and film. In chronological case studies presenting a variety of people, performance events, compositions and choreographies, Performing Indigenous Culture reveals the relationship between indigenous cultures, imperialism, colonization, settlement, assimilation and appropriation, in particular between Maori and Pakeha, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By centralizing performance in historical inquiry this study presents a detailed examination of forms of embodiment that led to formations of identities and new cultural expressions.
© Marianne Schultz 2015
Thanks to everyone who has donated to my book. I am truly humbled by your support. I just found out that one image that I REALLY want to include, held at the Museum of Natural History in NY, will cost $500, so please share my page with anyone who you think might be able to help.