After a decade of performing in musicals and cabarets across the world, Rutene Spooner finally brings all of himself onto the stage.

You might not have heard of Rutene Spooner, but you’ve probably heard his voice. He’s performed in musicals across New Zealand and Australia for over a decade, including Chicago, Billy Elliot, Jersey Boys, and most recently Jekyll and Hyde in Sydney. He has performed with the highly successful and critically acclaimed Modern Māori Quartet, several times. He even sang back-up for Adele at Mt Smart in 2017.

Now he’s poured that experience into a show of his own, Thoroughly Modern Māui, which opens in Wellington this week before going on tour around the country, including to the Auckland Live Cabaret Season. Fronting a four-piece band, Spooner channels Māui-Tikitiki-A-Taranga (Māui for short) into an entertaining hour of songs and comedy about the issues that Māori face today, including racial profiling and the challenges of code-switching. 

“I’ve always been thinking, How does a Māori man make contemporary cabaret?” Spooner says. “How do we use our traditional forms and our tikanga to inform how we make cabaret?” Having seen a number of cabaret shows overseas while touring with the Modern Māori Quartet, he says he realised that cabaret performers could explore social issues while also putting on a wildly entertaining show.

“It’s a great chance to tickle the heart, visit those issues and then punch the gut,” Spooner says

Rutene Spooner was born in Wellington and spent his teenage years in Gisborne, where he lived with his aunt and immersed himself in tikanga Māori, became an avid performer of kapa haka, and developed an interest in musical theatre.

By the time he went to the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art in Christchurch, Spooner was more than ready for the stage. He’s rarely been out of work since. He’s had major roles in productions of Broadway shows on either side of the Tasman and was a mainstay of the Shakespeare productions at the Pop-Up Globe. He also wrote and performed in his award-winning solo show Super Hugh-Man, a tribute to Hollywood star and Broadway leading man Hugh Jackman.

During rehearsals for that show he remembers discussing with his director Jennifer Ward-Lealand an article about a Māori man who clapped back after being racially profiled in a shop. Ward-Lealand found the description of the profiling the man had experienced shocking, Spooner says, but he saw it as a reality of life for brown kids.

He told her that being racially profiled was an everyday occurrence “to the point where I don’t own plain black hoodies, and won’t go out in a plain black hoodie, won’t even put my hands in my pockets,” he remembers. The discussion had started as casual rehearsal room banter, but to his surprise he found himself tearing up. “I had no idea that I’d conditioned myself to go into a shop and essentially tell the security guard, ‘I’m OK, don’t worry.’”

He realised that those were the sort of things he wanted to write songs about. That specific conversation ended up being the genesis for his song ‘Goodie in my Hoodie’, a playful way of exploring a form of prejudice that remains sadly endemic in Aotearoa.

That playful side of Spooner is something many of his collaborators respond to. Miriama McDowell, who has directed him in two shows and is in development on a third, calls him a true artist. “He’s deeply curious, playful, intelligent, bilingual and such an amazing singer,” she says. “He’s one of those actors that I would put in every show I ever make, ‘cause he’s so bloody good.”

“Plus, he teases me a lot which I need!”

Spooner has had particular success in the world of musical theatre, which has undergone its own cultural shift in the past decade. When Spooner opens Thoroughly Modern Māui, he’ll have just finished up a stint at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre in Jekyll and Hyde. He’s understudying the very British lead role, one he almost certainly wouldn’t have been considered for back when he graduated from drama school.

While musicals like Jekyll and Hyde draw on the same theatrical skills as Thoroughly Modern Māui, Spooner says they require different approaches. “I live in, and come from, this very Māori world, and have been very blessed with te ao and tikanga Māori, but I essentially work in a world that isn’t predominantly Māori. This show is probably a product of that.

“At the end of the day, whatever, the show is. I’m still a Māori actor. I’ll be Māori actor in Jekyll and Hyde, and I’ll be a Māori actor in this.”

Spooner says he’s excited that musical theatre in this country is changing the way it sees its talent. Companies are starting to value and honour the people they work with – whether they’re a performer or a behind-the-scenes creative – and everything they bring with them. It’s a huge change, he says. “When I first started, there was nothing. There were very few Māori and Pasifika actors in the commercial realm of musical theatre, and almost none in the cabaret world.”

While he’s been looking overseas for inspiration for his show, he says his team has been focused on learning from Māori forms of performance. “Our show isn’t structured like a typical contemporary cabaret show, but it’s using the same frameworks as whai korero as our step through.”

The show is, ultimately, a reflection of the way that Māori are perceived in a country built on the foundations of te Tiriti. Spooner’s taking the show around the country, to small towns and rural centres, and he says he’s looking forward to reaching audiences, and talking about race, in a relatively light and accessible way. “I hope in the long game that this whole piece is a conversation for both sides. We’re not changing the world with this show, but what we do need to do is start a conversation.”

He goes back to the show title: Thoroughly Modern Māui, a reference to the concept that Māui the demi-god – half human, half god – is a personification of Māori. “The traditional Māori idea is that we are as powerful as these Māori gods,” he says. “We talk, potentially from a Pakēhā point of view, about wanting to be like these heroes. But at the end of it, it’s an affirmation that we are as powerful as these heroes.

“We are as powerful as Māui, even today.”

Thoroughly Modern Māui tours across the country from September through to October. You can buy tickets here.