Don Selwyn
When Don Selwyn passed away in April 2007, memorials to his talent and mana flooded in from Māori and Pākehā alike. Speaking at his tangi, Ian Mune described Selwyn as "the bridge between our two cultures". Elsewhere Mune wrote that Selwyn had "mana in and knowledge of both worlds, and the skills to find the pathway between".
Selwyn championed Māori drama. TV executive Caterina De Nave put it like this in 1995: "He's talked for many years about the need for a Māori film and televison industry and he's gone and done it with little recognition, on the smell on an oily rag". Aside from Selwyn's own work in front of and behind the camera, he was a mentor to many Māori actors, writers and directors — among them Temuera Morrison, Rena Owen, Joanna Paul, and a number of future key personnel at TVNZ, TV3 and Māori Television.
Don Selwyn — later nicknamed the Don — was born in Taumaranui on 22 November 1935. His acting career began by accident when he was teaching at an intermediate school in Wellington, after theatre director Nola Millar heard his bass baritone voice. Selwyn found himself doing Shakespeare in tights and a tutu, causing no end of laughter from rugby mates who were watching in the audience.
Later he talked of having realised early that Māori already had their own tradition of theatre. He was thinking of the marae, and how speakers need to get their message across in a disciplined way. Touring in a 1964 season of Porgy and Bess, he was inspired by the professionalism of singer Inia Te Wiata. Selwyn then formed the Māori Theatre Trust with some of his fellow cast members, including George Henare and Wi Kuki Kaa. Acting and singing would take him from Wellington to Russia, Europe and Expo ‘70 in Japan.
One of Selwyn's earliest television roles was in New Zealand's first weekly drama seres, Pukemanu. In 1975 television producer Tom Parkinson, surprised that Māori working at Avalon television centre numbered in single digits, enlisted Selwyn for programme Clobber Shop, fronting a weekly comedy sketch set in an imaginary Māori television station. Selwyn's long association with Parkinson would see him joining comedians Billy T James, David McPhail and Jon Gadsby, and working with Parkinson on the warrant application for TV3.
Selwyn's role on popular building site drama Moynihan (1976) saw him playing what appeared to be one of the only Māori chippies in existence. In the same period he played one of four roles he is said to have had on soap Close to Home, and was a violent boyfriend in the controversial Big Brother, Little Sister episode of TV drama Winners & Losers. He also starred as a Māori doctor having to choose between old ways and new in bicultural thriller Epidemic. The role could be seen as a precursor to his role as peacemaker Wiremu Tāmihana in episodes four and five of widely-seen historical epic The Governor.
Selwyn was a vital force behind the scenes on the series — he was a vital link between races, taking part in consultative hui, encouraging Māori to get involved, and helping draw out oral histories which fed into the project in a myriad of ways. Where possible key Māori figures were played by people from the same iwi, which was part of the reason Selwyn was reluctant to play Tāmihana. But it was difficult for him to back out once Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the Māori Queen, okayed it.
Prime Minister Rob Muldoon attacked The Governor for wasting public money; but Selwyn felt Muldoon's real worry was that it might reopen "the whole issue of race relations". Selwyn believed that the show influenced the land protests of the late 1970s. Author Trisha Dunleavy has noted how "unnerving parallels" can be found between the land confiscations seen in The Governor, and 'Day 507' at Bastion Point, "when Māori activists were subdued by baton-weilding police".
Policemen were a Selwyn staple, even though the actor failed to meet the regulation height to join the force. The best known was Sergeant Bob Storey, one of the lead characters in long-running 80s rural drama Mortimer's Patch. Selwyn also played policemen in features Goodbye Pork Pie, The Lost Tribe, and Mauri. He got the role of a small town bookie in classic comedy Came a Hot Friday after reminding director Ian Mune that his father had been a bookie.
Since at least the early 70s, the former teacher had been nurturing young Māori keen to work in film, television and stage. As he once said, "knowledge is important but only if you freely pass it on." Following a short-lived SPATS training course in the early 80s, Selwyn ran the film and TV course He Taonga i Tawhiti (Gifts from Afar) for many years. The course provided more than 100 Māori and Pacific Islanders with the technical skills to bring their own stories to the screen.
When the course ended, Selwyn helped found He Taonga Films — the aim being to move training into the world of making. Among other things the company produced Nga Puna, a series of one-off dramas, which saw newcomers and industry veterans working together. Selwyn directed some, and produced others. One of them, Koro's Hat, the story of the bond between an old man (Bill Tawhai) and his granddaughter, won Selwyn the Best Director award at a Canadian Indigenous People's Film Festival.
Selwyn's directorial debut had occured six years earlier, on 1989's Variations on a Theme, part of the landmark Maori anthology series E Tipu E Rea. Selwyn also directed an adaptation of Hone Tuwhare story 'Don't Go Past With Your Nose in the Air!' It was awarded Best Foreign Short Film at the 1992 New York Festival.
In 2002 Selwyn finally brought his dream project to the screen: The Māori Merchant of Venice (Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weneti). It was the first feature film made entirely in te reo Māori. The movie was based on a Māori language translation of Shakespeare's play which he had directed for the 1990 Kōanga Festival. Among other enthusiastic reviews, The Listener's Philip Matthews praised the film's "unexpected synergy": "a good old-fashioned costume drama that crashes cultures together in an intriguing, souflul way".
In the role of Shylock, the moneylender who demands his pound of flesh, Selwyn cast Waihoroi Shortland, who would win an NZ Screen award for his work. Assistant Director Tony Forster recalled that Selwyn rehearsed the cast so thoroughly that for at least two weeks they managed to shoot "without a single line fluff during any rehearsal or take".
"When I was going to school they brought Shakespeare in to colonise me," Selwyn told Herald writer Michele Hewitson. "Now I've put it into Māori language I've colonised Shakespeare."
In the same period Selwyn acted in teleplay Irikura, made as part of te reo drama series Aroha.
Selwyn also worked extensively as a casting director. His casting resume includes both Once Were Warriors films, and small town drama Jubilee (2000). He was also part of the cross-cultural TV melange that was Greenstone. As both a cultural advisor and associate producer, he id what he could to ensure that this ambitious colonial drama tried "to attain some historical dignity in a fictional genre".
Don Selwyn died on 13 April 2007, leaving a huge legacy to a wealth of young talent he had nurtured over the years. He was 71.
In 2021, Māori Television screened Don Selwyn - Power in Our Hands, an hour-long documentary profiling his life and legacy.
Moe mai e te rangatira, moe mai.
Profile updated on 31 March 2022
Sources include
Annabel Cooper, Filming the Colonial Past - The New Zealand Wars on Screen (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2018)
Trisha Dunleavy, Ourselves in Primetime - A History of New Zealand Television Drama (Auckland University Press, 2005)
Michele Hewitson, 'Man who colonised Shakespeare' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, 19 November 2005, page A30
Tom Hyde, Interview with Don Selwyn - Metro, August 1995
Peter Kitchin, 'Selwyn bullied into acting' (Obituary) - The Dominion Post, 19 April 2007
Philip Matthews, 'A Wretch for all cultures' (Review of The Māori Merchant of Venice) - The Listener, 9 February 2002
Ian Mune, Mune - An Autobiography (Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing, 2010)
Various writers (including Tony Forster), 'Don Selwyn 1935 - 2007' (Obituary) - Onfilm, June 2007, page 18 (Volume 24, number 6)
'Don Selwyn' (Profile) The Arts Foundation website. Accessed 31 March 2022