Staging Proposal

The original novel is narrated through the perspective of the first person, the uncle of the main character, Kahu. However, I feel less comfortable to develop insights into the story through first person perspective other than that of the main character because the whole story is felt less complete and the emotions of some characters in some periods of time were blur. Therefore, if I will stage the novel, I will show the performance through third person perspective to the audience like the film. The Whale rider is not simply about the growth of Kahu from a little child to the leader of the Maori tribe, but also a story showing the collision between the old tradition and the new modern world and the conflict between Kahu's will to be recognized as a capable girl by Koro and Koro's unwillingness to view her as an equal candidate of the tribe leader due to he being limited by the tradition. I will highlight the transition of Koro's attitude to Kahu. In the novel, I feel like the transition of Koro is a kind of abrupt and he suddenly change from dislike Kahu to respect her and view her as “rightful leader” once she is able to communicate and rider the special whale with the scared tattoo. The love of Koro to Kahu is absent in the perspective of the uncle; therefore, I will choose the scenes in which Koro is so depressed to know that his oldest son will have a girl as his first child and angry when Kahu sneak into his lessons to young male students and meeting with elders. Later, I will add some plot into the original one and stress the fact that Koro discovers Kahu’s talents in learning the traditions of Maori tribe, becoming nicer to Kahu and still refusing to let her attending the lessons to raise future leader due to her identities as women. The last scene would be Koro’s wakening to the truth that Kahu could definitely be the leader of the tribe no matter what her gender is.

I would not add actual appearance of whale into my play, but I will add whale sounds into the play and the scene in which whales are dying on the beach. I will show the degree of this disaster through the dialogue between Kore and the uncle with the background music of thunder. In the final scene , however, Kahu will pretend to see the ancient whale and communicate with it. Besides, in order to show the tribe was facing the point in which the leader need to decide whether they need to embrace the new modern world with all those fancy outside ideas or just preserve their old tradition and stay in their homeland, I will show the two different groups of within the tribe. Elders like grandma Flowers and Grandpa Koro are the representation of the conservative group and second generations like Porourangi who left the hometown and went to Germany.  Elders might wear in conservative traditional Maori costume with deep color while others wear in colorful modern sport shirts.