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Call for Papers: ADSA Conference 

Manaakitanga: Performing Welcome, Care and Respect

Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington, Aotearoa
1 – 5 December 2025

Opening of Ngā Mokopuna at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, 2024. Credit: Image Services THW. 

Manaakitanga is a concept from te ao Māori (the Māori world) which is often translated as “hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others” (Te Aka). Manaakitanga is embedded within the ways we practice and form relationships in theatre and how we, as performers, producers, designers, and storytellers, host an audience as if we were bringing them into our own homes. Manaakitanga “combines the notion of process (-tanga) with manaaki, or sharing of mana” (Mullen and Te Rongopai Tukiwaho 4) where mana refers to “prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma” (Te Aka). As Mark Harvey explains, Manaakitanga “involves the uplifting of mana or reaffirming the mana of others through actions of generosity that include kindness” (142). Recent discourses around care, accessibility, mobility, and respect have brought attention to the role of the host and questions around their responsibilities to spectators and participants. We invite you to consider the intersections between performance, hospitality, care, and respectful exchange as we negotiate our own roles as ‘hosts’ and 'guests’ in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, in December 2025.  

Manaakitanga is a critical practice of care, drawing attention to and awareness of our social and cultural responsibilities to all communities invited to work within our spaces. This relates to notions of accessibility, mobility and consent, and negotiating the health and safety policies and protocols of diverse institutions. Manaaki relates to reciprocity and shared responsibilities in blurred contexts, such as the role of an audience in immersive and participatory performance practices. We also consider the role of a physical space as ‘host’ and in the ways we might be received within and transformed by scenography: how we experience the terrain in all its “overlaps, echoes and distinctions” (Murray and Keefe 126).  

Performances can enact manaakitanga through creative process, dramaturgical structure and within the frames of storytelling. An account of the interactions between Māori soldiers and their Italian hosts in World War II, Strange Resting Places (2012) by Rob Mokaraka and Paolo Rotondo is described by David O’Donnell as “an outstanding example of manaakitanga in action (Hyland and O’Donnell). The performance literally starts with an act of hosting, with the cast welcoming the audience into the space, sharing espresso coffee and pastries, followed by a waiata performed by the cast. At the end of the play, a cleansing ceremony is incorporated into the dramaturgy as a ritual act to release the audience from the troubling spaces of war and history, while food and wine are offered to the audience to close. Strange Resting Places is bookended not only with manaakitanga by the host/performers but also follows the pattern of poroporoaki in securing the safety (physical/spiritual) of the manuhiri, or visitors, as they encounter representations of historical trauma. 

Indigenous hospitality is at the core of many First Nations performance practices but also precedes many contemporary gatherings: as Land Acknowledgements and in performances of ritual and ceremony. However, this can sometimes seem “performative” rather than shared or reciprocated. Rauna Kuokkanen (Suomi) asserts First Nations hosts are often “eager to welcome the other because they [want] to learn from the stranger, to be open to the other and to be taught. This kind of hospitality is infinite or radical hospitality that exceeds invitation and thus consists of receiving, welcoming without invitation” (Kuokkanen 72). We invoke this theme as a provocation: questioning the ways we are all interacting with our First Nations partners in the context of our shared, often contested histories. We also seek to interrogate who is being excluded from our performance spaces – and why - as well as consideration of invisible or ‘unwelcome’ audiences. 

We offer the following provocations as starting points for responding to this conference theme: 

• Performing kindness, care, and respect 

• Performance and mobility, migration, refugees, asylum seekers, border closures 

• Hosting events, host responsibilities and spectator relationships 

• Performing welcome: rituals and ceremonies from daily rites to Olympic Opening Ceremonies 

• Kai/food in performance or the performativity of food/cooking – dinner theatre, cooking in theatre 

• Generosity in research, debates around open access and dissemination of performance research 

• Domestic spaces in performance, whanau/family, and intergenerational praxes 

• Travel and touring – forming global connections and maintaining regional relationships through performance exchange 

• Facilitating and celebrating LGBTQIA+ spaces and events 

• Respect and care in representations of gender and sexuality in performance 

• Creating accessible, inclusive, and culturally safe venues and performance spaces 

• Interrogating terminology such as “holding space” and “self care” and the weaponisation of these ideas in performance 

We invite abstracts of 250 words responding to these questions, or other scholarly or creative provocations raised by our conference theme, to be submitted via this form by Friday 28 March 2025. We invite proposals for 20-minute paper presentations, artistic research presentations and performances, workshops and roundtable discussions, as well as any other formats that might suit the diversity of research and practice in our field. 

Working Groups  

Working groups are invited to convene at the 2025 ADSA Conference, and we invite members to nominate their working group or express their interest in joining one as part of their proposal.  

Each working group sets its own working practices, and descriptions of the groups and details about their meetings can be found on the ADSA website. In all cases, members are welcome to attend working group meetings without presenting; additionally, any proposals not able to be accommodated within working groups will automatically be considered for inclusion in the wider conference sessions.

Harvey, Mark. "Manaakitanga Me Te Kōrero: Helping Hands and Conversations: Conditions of Possibility in Kindness in Live Art and Performance-Based Art." Knowledge cultures, vol. 9, no. 3, 2021, pp. 139-57, doi:10.22381/kc9320218. 

Hyland, Nicola, and David O’Donnell. Taki Rua + Weaving Stories (Wellington: Huia, forthcoming). 

Kuokkanen, Rauna. “What is Hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30 (2008): 60–82. 10.1080/10714410701821297.  

Moorfield, John C. Te Aka Māori Dictionary, 2024, https://maoridictionary.co.nz/.  

Murray, Simon, and John Keefe, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016). 

Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, Bōni, and Molly Mullen. “Taurima Vibes: Economies of manaakitanga and care in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, ed. by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 43-55.