Author: Bruce Mason

Published: 1988 (Reprinted 2011)

Publisher: Victoria University Press

Format: Paperback

Pages: 77

Suitable: Secondary

THE POHUTUKAWA TREE is one of a sequence of five plays on Māori themes which attempts to come to terms with a native people after a century of foreign occupation, and with a transplanted European European population after a century of settlement. The full sequence is published in "The Healing Arch"

"The Pohutukawa Tree" has at its centre Aroha Mataira, kaumatua of her tribe, who has adopted Christianity with a severity rare among Europeans, and who feels her commitment to the tribal land she lives on so strongly she cannot follow her tribe to their new home. She was described by James Bertram as 'the outstanding "big Part" hitherto conceived by a New Zealand dramatist', and by young Māori leaders as 'wrong but authentic'.

A classic of New Zealand theatre it has been produced over 100 times in four countries, has sold over 30,000 copies, and has been translated into German and Russian.