Roma Potiki

Roma Potiki was born in Lower Hutt and was educated at Wainuiomata Primary School, Woodhatton Primary School, Wainuiomata College and Wellington High School. Roma began writing as a child when she wrote poetry and her first play at primary school. In 1978 she acted in Rore Hapipi’s (Rowley Habib) play Death of the Land. The play was performed by Te Ika A Maui Players, a group which Rore founded with the assistance of Jim Moriarty. Roma was a member of the group, which is considered to be one of the most influential in the development of what we now know as Contemporary Māori Theatre. She studied New Zealand literature at Auckland University for a term and then toured with the Māori theatre Maranga Mai in 1979 and 1980. Their play Maranga Mai toured widely to critical acclaim and in some quarters infamy. It was banned from schools by the then Minister of Education, Merv Wellington. Maranga Mai was a watershed development in Māori Theatre. Roma coordinated a performance programme at Rotorua Art Gallery for one year. In 1983 she organised a three-night series of poetry readings and waiata by Māori and Pacific Island Artists at the Depot Theatre in Wellington entitled "Māori Writers Read". This included installation work by Darcy Nicholas and Matt Pine. In 1984 she helped script her leading role in Te Tutakitanga i te Puna -Theatre of the 8th Day directed by Paul Maunder. In 1985 she and Eugene Van Irven co-ordinated the Aotearoa Tour of the Philippine Educational Theatre Association. In 1987-88 she lectured in women’s studies and drama at Victoria University and in 1988-89 read her work at the 54th World Congress of P.E.N. in Canada.

In 1989 Roma formed He Ara Hou Theatre Māori Incorporated and began leading workshops. She worked on the collectively-devised play Whaungarongaro which was premiered at the Depot in 1990, toured three times and was performed at the Adelaide Festival in 1991. In 1989 she led a workshop on the whakapapa of Māori theatre, the training needs of Māori drama, and the plans for the continuation and expansion of an indigenous theatre network at the “Making Connections” Combined Australian and New Zealand Conference on Drama in Education held at Auckland College of Education. Roma is currently free-lancing in the arts and enjoys work in the arts management, gallery, touring and event management fields.

Roma continues to write and exhibit her fibre, multi-media and installation art works. She is a multi-media artist whose primary basis is writing but she also works in the visual arts as a director for theatre and as an administrator and trainer. Roma has worked as an actress on stage and on radio and has had a leading female role in the radio play The Land of the Moa and Shadbolt’s Season of the Jew in 1991. She played the lead role in Nga Wa O Te Tau - Seasons from a story by Patricia Grace which was produced by Gibson’s Films in 1985. She has been active in the Māori women’s art movement and has exhibited with Karanga Karanga in 1986 with a major piece called “Taranga”, a collective artwork with Patricia Grace, Robyn Kahukiwa and Kowhai Grace. She also had a show at the National Library Art Gallery and her large cloak “Hinewai” refers to the white crests of the waves that break as they come onto the shore. It is now housed in the Dowse Museum. Roma was a major contributor to the meeting house Hineteiwaiwa which was part of the Mana Tiriti Exhibition held at the Wellington City Art Gallery in 1990. Her published work has appeared in a number of publications including Broadsheet, Landfall, Mothertongues [in Canada], New Poets, Yellow Pencils, Penguin Contemporary Poetry, and Anthology of N.Z. Poetry Vol. 6. She was featured reading one of her poems on a Marae programme profiling IWA. She has done script editing for a parenting video. Roma was writer in residence with the Death Defying Theatre (now called Urban Theatre Projects) in Sydney in 1996. During this time she worked with Māori and Pacific Island people in Western Sydney, listened to their stories. During this time, she wrote the play Going Home which was directed by Lani Tupu for the Pacific Wave Festival in Sydney. Roma states: “I write about the things I know. In my writing I seek a place for myself in relation to the world and within that world I include my taha Māori. My writing gives me one of the few spaces I feel I can inhabit fully.” In 1998 Roma read her work in The Age, Melbourne Writers’ Festival as the Book Council Exchange Writer. Earlier that year she read in London to support the Inia Te Wiata Tribute Exhibition of Contemporary Māori Art and the British Museum Exhibition Māori. Some of her earlier poetry was written under the name Janet Potiki. Some of the annotations have been provided by Roma; these appear in quotation.

Biographical sources

• Interviews and correspondence with Roma Potiki Aug. 1992, 20 Aug. 1, 3 and 14 Sept. 1998.
• Poetry NZ 6 (1984). No further details.