A new Witi Ihimaera play about the Maori contingent in World War I opens next week at Wellington's Circa Theatre.
Tanemahuta Gray from the Takirua Theatre company says All Our Sons is a powerful work, with director Nathanial Lees bringing the best out of the cast.
He says Ihimaera wrote the play because he was concerned the contributions of Maori and Pacific soldiers were being overlooked in the commemorations of the war's centenary.
"It hits strongly off those themes and the challenges our whanau, our mothers, our grandmothers who were letting their sons, their grandsons, their husbands go as well so it sees that side of the ledger as well and the challenges that happened in 1860 when we had the land wars, we've come out of that period and then those grandparents are going 'We were fighting against each other, now we are expected to fight shoulder to shoulder with each other,' and that's where the challenge was for the older generation," Grey says.
All Our Sons opens today at Circa Theatre in Wellington.
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