Kōrero with Miriama McDowell

Actor, director, playwright

Creativity, campaigning, and channelling Kahurangi (Dame) Whina Cooper– the kōrero was compelling between Miriama McDowell and Stacey Morrison on a cold winter’s night at Samoa House.

Miriama – actor/director/writer and intimacy coordinator – is on the board of Equity, the actors union. “Our work is to make actors’ lives better – I love the simplicity of that kaupapa,” she says. Current project: campaigning to change the law so that international productions shooting in Aotearoa NZ have to hire a certain percentage of local actors. Thanks to such a law across the Tasman, Australian actors “have life-changing opportunities to work that do not exist in this country.” And the NZ industry clearly needs it – only 4% of actors here work at any time.

When it comes to activism, Miriama (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) is guided by wide cultural principles – as well as lessons from one of her most iconic roles as Whina Cooper. “As Māori, we understand the collective has power; that in working together we make change; it’s not about the individual … a great Rangatira is only great if they are looking after and expressing the values and the hiahia (hopes) of their people.” From Whina, she has learned “fearlessness to not be liked”: “If you truly believe in something, and you truly want to fight for something, you have to let go of that idea that everyone will like you. …There’s something so freeing [in that] – thank you my friend Whina, for teaching me that.”

Miriama (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) most often uses that new-found fearlessness to advocate for Māori interests in her life. “It’s often in creative spaces and it’s with very well-meaning Pākehā artists who feel like they’re saying the right things and doing the right things [but who are not taking care of mana Māori] … Something happens in my gut and I feel like I have to say something. … I have those conversation more and more and more and they become less scary.”

Even outside the need for such conversations, part of being a Māori actor is “understanding that every decision you make is political” whether you want it to be or not. “I think that’s quite hard for non-Māori to understand … Every role you take, every audition you take – even when you get asked to audition for a role that’s not for a Māori – even that’s a political moment. So I represent my people no matter what I do. That’s a great honour, that’s a great responsibility.”

With experience as a sole parent to two daughters, aged 12 and 6, Miriama (recently married) is also passionate about making her industry more parent-friendly, to create pathways for mothers, such as enabling children to be on set. “If you want experienced actresses …, then you have to make it work for us. … if you want us to be on stage from 5[pm] to 10[pm] you have to give me extra money for childcare.”

Ah yes, childcare. Miriama talked about “the creativity that is required when you are a solo parent” to work out all the logistics of who’s picking up who from school, and who’s looking after who when – especially when she had to be on set at 5am: “Thank God I have a creative brain because that’s about 80% of how I did it.”

And that’s only one of the many tasks of sole parenting. “One of the big things about being a solo parent is that all of the work in unseen, so you’re just working so hard all the time and it’s invisible in a way…. [now] I can really see solo parents, how much work it is, how hard it is to get to school every day, all the things that they achieve on their own.” She’s grateful to friends who gave her Mother’s Day presents during the challenging years. “To be seen in that way was very very significant for me.”

Particularly as she experienced discrimination due to her parenting status. “I literally had a landlord say to me ‘we don’t give houses to solo mums because they have parties.’”

She brought some of her experiences to a web series called Whānau Matters, which she co-wrote and acted in with Pio Terei, and which she describes as like “food in a minute” but with intergenerational whānau: “whānau in a minute”. An example – in which Miriama enjoys acting with her own daughter, Talanoa – is “Hikoi”, about ways to support mental wellbeing.

Mental and spiritual well-being is something Miriama has clearly thought a lot about, and she has a number of wise strategies to keep things well – at home, she might visit the ngahere (the bush), but while living in London where it was harder to access wild places, she visited Catholic churches instead, soothed by the rituals. She draws huge strength from te ao Māori: on a personal level, her tupuna have sometimes visited her when she’s taken on a heavy role, and on a shared level, “as Māori we’re really lucky, because we have practices, cultural practices, to keep us safe so I don’t need to invent those things – those things already exist [such as] karakia: starting a process in the right way and ending a process in the right way.”

She plays a mother who sees her children killed in the “very dark thriller” Coming Home in the Dark. “Very early in the process, I said to the production team ‘it’s such a heavy thing to carry. To come to work and put that korowai on. I need some support for that.’ So, we’d have a minute’s silence at the end of every day. Crew and cast, you could do your own process to whakanoa [come back out of the work], but [it was] a shared and held moment.

“That felt revolutionary – for crew to stop for a moment to look after their mental and spiritual health.”

A kaupapa that Miriama continues to work towards – and inspires the rest of us to do so as well.

Intimacy Coordination – Feminism in Action: “the most amazing work”

Among Miriama’s many pōtae is “intimacy coordinator”: choreographing intimate work for film, TV and theatre so actors can do their job in safety – much like a stunt coordinator. There’s a lot of technical detail – the length and pressure of a kiss, for example, may be given on a 1-5 scale, or described as “feather-like” or “muscular”. “People think we’re the sex police, [that we say] ‘No no, don’t put your hand there!’,” says Miriama. But actually it’s the opposite: “you are giving actors power, and helping directors meet their vision in a way they’re often too scared to ask for… It is the most amazing work; it is so beautiful.”

The rapid uptake of intimacy coordination over the last few years is feminism in action – a direct and positive response to the #MeToo movement: “It was suddenly very clear there was a power imbalance in storytelling,” Miriama explains. So part of the mahi is inviting actors to talk about their past (and sometimes distressing) experiences of intimate work, to ensure the current work isn’t triggering. “There’s healing in that, being able to hold space for people to talk about when things didn’t go right.”

At the same time, “it’s also really weird and really funny!” Because the work is so new, the small group of intimacy coordinators in Aotearoa (which also includes Jennifer Te Atamira Ward-Lealand and Tandi Wright) advise each other. “The things you are talking about – it’s hilarious: ‘I’m in the middle of a cunnilingugus scene – what would you use as a cushion in between?’ ‘oh, I’d get a yoga mat and stick it on with some gaffer tape!’”

…the beautiful, slow, never-ending reo journey…

Miriama spoke fluent French and Spanish decades before she started her full immersion reo Māori course last year – playing Whina inspired her to enrol, as did wanting to support her children’s own reo (a language of instruction for them both at school).

“I thought: ‘I’ve got a language brain so I will be ok’. No no no no no! I’m in my 40s, and the pathways in my brain are not working like they used to. It’s been a very slow journey and still is a beautiful slow journey. And what I do is I give myself aroha around that and say: ‘Ā tōna wā do it in your own time, how you do it.’ I don’t put too much pressure on myself.”

Studying te reo, she now understands that knowing a language is “not binary, ay, it’s a journey… People often say: ‘You’re matatau now? You’re fluent now?’… No, I will always be on this journey – and I never really understood that until I got on that waka.”

At Samoa House, we were privileged to see Miriama perform not only an amusing five-minute excerpt of an autobiographical play she’s written in te reo (including performing her and her twin brother in the womb!) but also a self-penned rap in te reo. “The best way to keep building and learning my reo, is to keep making it creative for myself…. If I can make it fun, I will keep learning the language structures.”

– Ends-