Rawiri Paratene

Ngā Puhi

From playing gangmembers and Māori elders to impersonating Winston Peters, Rawiri Paratene has won a reputation for the versatility of his acting. But the versatility does not end on screen - Paratene has also directed for radio and screen, won a Robert Burns Fellowship for his writing, taught drama and spent six years as deputy chair of the New Zealand Film Commission.

At school Paratene initially struggled at reading and writing, but after leaving high school went on to become the first Māori student to graduate from the New Zealand Drama School. His hope was that acting would help his development as a writer. Earlier, at the age of 16, Paratene had halted a promising rugby career in protest at the 1970 All Black tour of South Africa. He joined Māori youth movement Ngā Tamatoa at high school, and later became president of the Wellington branch.

Paratene had a small part in historical television epic The Governor. Aged 21, he won the role of Koro in early Kiwi sitcom Joe and Koro (1977), a chalk and cheese tale of a university educated Englishman and a young Maori who works in a chip shop. Amidst an extensive run of acting for stage and radio, Paratene later began a six-year stint on longrunning pre-school show Play School. He is still recognised for the show today.

In 1983 Paratene won a Burns writing fellowship at Otago University. A number of the projects worked on in this period would later find their way to television screens, including the drama Erua, and hour-long Montana Sunday Theatre piece Dead Certs. Erua, the tale of a relationship between a European artist and a Maori boy, won him 1989's NZ Television award for best writer. Paratene would also go on to win a Best Actor award for playing racecourse addict Hare in Dead Certs.

Paratene's big screen career began in the mid-eighties. He plays the poet/musician Riki, who spends time on a hikoi in the underrated romance Arriving Tuesday (1986). The movie was filmed partly in the Hokianga, for many years Paratene's home base. He also provided the voice of Rangi in the animated version of Footrot Flats: The Dog's (Tail) Tale.

The nineties saw Paratene winning attention on the comedy front. After the makers of shortlived skit show Laughinz came to him in search of material, Paratene gave them the fastcracking Hohepa Public ,a Hokianga bushman who Paratene described as "a blatantly political character". Paratene's showstealing Hohepa monologues led to him joining the team on skit show Issues. Paratene would appear in five series, alongside noted comics David McPhail, Jon Gadsby, Rima Te Waita, and Mark Wright. But it would be two later roles that cemented Paratene's place in New Zealand screen history. In 1999 he played Mulla, the gangmember trying to go straight in Once Were Warriors sequel What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? The role often required six hour make-up sessions, as fake tattoos were applied to Paratene's body. His director was Dead Certs collaborator and mentor Ian Mune. According to Paratene, a childhood spent partly in South Auckland meant he had some familiarity with the world portrayed in the film.

In 2003 Paratene travelled to film festivals around the world to publicise the hugely-successful Whale Rider, in which he plays fiercely traditional grandfather to Keisha Castle-Hughes's Pai. "I don't believe I've ever wanted a role as much as Koro," said Paratene. "Koro is absolutely honest to his tikanga - his understanding of Maori culture and customs. But with that honesty comes stubbornness and pride, and that's what trips him up."

Paratene's own directing career had began back in the late eighties, with Te Moemoea, an episode in Maori anthology series E Tipu e Rea. It was based on a Patricia Grace short story about a rural couple who are inspired to place horseracing bets after a dream. Unusually it was made entirely in te reo Maori, and similcast on National Radio in English.

Paratene also wrote the script for another episode in the E Tipu e Rea series. Variations on a Theme is based partly on his own school experiences, and deals with issues of Māori education.

Paratene has also directed for language learning programmes Korero Mai and Whanau, a documentary on a New Zealand visit by Kiri Te Kanawa, and co-directed forties-era short film Needles and Glass, working alongside Miranda Harcourt.

In the nineties, Paratene spent four years as deputy chairman of the New Zealand Film Commission, and later relcocated to Wellington to start three years teaching Drama School Toi Whakaari.

In recent years he has completed a fellowship at England's prestigious Globe Theatre, and appeared in American comic strip movie Man Thing, and Kiwi drama Jinx Sisters. In 2008 he won a NZ Film and Television Award for best actor for starring in short film The Graffiti of Mr Tupaia. A personal highlight remains Children of the Sea, which began as a series of theatre workshops in Sri Lanka for survivors of tsunami and civil war. The play won four awards at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival.

Paratene has also done acting stints on soap Shortland Street, and appeared in episodes of Mataku, Duggan, Xena: Warrior Princess and TV mockumentary Love Mussel (2001). His other writing work includes hit musical Blue Smoke, and radio play The Proper Channels, which won him a Mobil Radio Award.

 - information sourced from NZOnScreen (www.nzonscreen.com)