A solo show about identity, humour and heritage is hitting Nelson Arts Festival this spring, and it says a lot about where New Zealand's Pasifika and Māori stories are heading — on stage and on screen.
Bailey Pooching brings his award-winning one-man show, Doing Great, to the Nelson Arts Festival from October 22 to November 1. Written as a challenge to himself — if he were sitting in the audience, what story would he want to see? — the show sits right at the centre of an argument he's making publicly: that real representation for Pacific and Māori creatives means more than simply being seen. It means story sovereignty, the freedom to tell a story in whatever form the artist chooses, rather than filling in the familiar stereotypes audiences have come to expect.
Pooching points to the artists who shaped him as proof of how far the canon has already come. Taika Waititi's film Boy struck him for the way it used deflecting, avoidant humour to deal with historical trauma too heavy for straight-faced sincerity. Oscar Kightley's early-2000s 'bro' comedies looked simple on the surface, but carried sly commentary on what life was actually like for Pacific Islanders in Aotearoa New Zealand at the time. Both, he argues, deserve real credit — and both should be treated as a starting point rather than a ceiling.
That's the space Doing Great occupies. Rather than calling for new kinds of Pasifika stories from the sidelines, Pooching set out to write one himself, in his own voice and on his own terms. His framing of his own place in the movement is endearingly honest: he's not sure he's fully 'on the waka' yet, but he's swimming hard to catch up.
For travellers, the timing is good. Nelson Arts Festival runs across late October and early November, a season when the top of the South Island is warming up and the summer crowds haven't arrived. Nelson itself is a natural festival base — a compact, sun-loving city ringed by three national parks, with Abel Tasman National Park's coastal track an easy day trip away. Pairing an evening of contemporary New Zealand theatre with a few days of beaches, markets and wineries around the Tasman region makes for a well-rounded South Island detour.
It's also a genuine way to engage with local culture beyond the postcard version. New Zealand's Pasifika and Māori creative scenes — theatre, music, film — are producing some of the country's most interesting work right now, and festivals like Nelson's are where that work meets its audience. Seeing a show like Doing Great is a very different experience of Aotearoa than a hangi dinner or a haka performance; it's contemporary, self-critical and funny, exactly the kind of storytelling Pooching argues the mainstream still doesn't make enough room for.
If your dates line up with late October, book a ticket, then spend the daylight hours walking the coast. The show runs until November 1 — details and tickets via the festival's website.
