Undertow

29/06/2024

🙌🙌🙌

05/02/2021

This Waitangi Day, we are pleased to announce the arrival of an incredible publication: THE UNDERTOW, in print!

All four chapters of Helen Pearse-Otene's critically acclaimed plays are now available as a beautifully designed and bound book. Get your copy here: http://bit.ly/BuyUndertow

Performed in repertory by Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu Trust in 2017, critics describe the quartet as deeply moving, generous, lyrical, poetic, confronting, visceral, insightful and visionary.

📷 Fay & Walter Design

31/10/2020

A year ago today, The Undertow premiered on Maori Television. All four chapters of the epic series are available online, free to watch – titiro mai whānau!

Four plays, six years in the making.
28 performances, 35 performers.
One whānau, one whenua, 200 years of history.

(AO) Te Rākau brings an electric Theatre Marae experience. On Demand available to viewers in New Zealand.

24/02/2020

Delivered to the printers today... and coming soon THE UNDERTOW scripts published.
Designed by the amazing

27/11/2019

27/11/2019

Watch any UNDERTOW episodes ondemand at https://www.maoritelevision.com/shows/undertow !

Simply signup to watch for free :) Check out a preview below...

19/11/2019

The final chapter of UNDERTOW premieres tomorrow night at 9.30pm on Māori Television. Make sure you catch Chapter Four: The Landeaters live!

Entangled in the roots of a beloved willow tree
- where the ancient ones reside -
somewhere just between today and tomorrow
an old man and his roots
are digging in against
The Landeaters

18/11/2019

UNDERTOW is available on demand from Māori Television, when you sign up for a free account! Check out this preview from Chapter One: The Ragged...

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=953549961690416

15/11/2019

If you're a New Zealand Listener subscriber, you may have seen the recent article covering UNDERTOW in the television section!

"A bold theatre concept tracing the effects of colonisation is adapted in bite-sized chunks for television," writes Fiona Rae.

UNDERTOW premieres on Māori Televisions every Thursday at 9.30pm this month.

https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/new-zealand-listener/20191021/281625307072549?fbclid=IwAR2fwfVzB_N1XScHLBgkglNSi8s5065GgyXsCF7j4bOLZKEEJW0wvkyPQk0

12/11/2019

Undertow Chapter Three: Public Works premieres on Māori Television at 9.30pm tomorrow night!

1918 and home calls to our boys in No Man’s Land
- the space in between, where anything is possible -
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
Dumb, black bastards stuck in the mud.
Theirs’ or someone else’s, it’s all the same.

12/11/2019

Massey University recently wrote an article about the "urgent, passionate and thrilling" stories told in UNDERTOW, which took more than six years to develop.

The epic new TV series has a special relationship with Massey’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, which has hosted Te Rākau as its ‘Māori Theatre Company in Residence’ since 2014, supporting UNDERTOW's stage and screen development.