Theatre Country: Treatment of the Land in New Zealand

Geoff Park’s essay ‘Theatre Country’ proposes interesting ideas on the way the view of landscape has changed historically and how these ideas have been performed in New Zealand. Park sees New Zealand landscape treated as a tradable commodity and this is shown in both a positive and negative light. The historical treatment by the British of New Zealand Maori is not shown as diplomatically and Park obviously finds many of the tools used by the imperial power demoralizing.


New Zealand Maori have a physical and reciprocal relationship with the land and the introduction of the opposing British values of the ‘picturesque’ or ‘nature as scenery’ is historically discussed in the article and Park attributes it to the obvious – colonalisation and an overwhelming British desire of ownership – “spiritual possession followed and reinforced material possession.”


The Claude Glass was used by the English as a means to visually capture a scene, was one of the first inventions to that allows an individual to possess scenery. This desire for ownership is developed in Park’s exploration of the concept of conservation. Conservation ideas are shown differently than the common traditional views of this practice. He shows how conservation of the land can create a different logic in our interaction with the land and this logic is not entirely favourable. One of the foundation concepts of conservation is the treatment of landscape as something to look at rather than having a deeper more physical relationship. This is alienating and can have us become a viewing audience rather than an active part of the land. While the idea to preserve and protect the landscape is extremely valid and honourable, (especially in our current global environment) it raises the questions as to who has the right to section off a part of the earth and who has the right to experience the landscape once it has been deemed a conservation state.


A contemporary example of a conservationalist idea that magnifies this problem is shown in Metro Park, Los Angeles. In the early 1990s city authorities created a new kind of public space, a “picturesque oasis of landscaped flower beds and shade providing trees”(Rugoff 12) but because of the threat of drug users and homeless people the park remained closed at all hours behind a locked security gate. Visitors could only experience the park from the outside, forced to enjoy it as a virtual display rather than a physical space. This idea of a desire for an idealised image over a problematic reality is echoed in the history of New Zealand where parts of the country were “emptied of rival human presences and ‘returned … to their primaeval grandeur’.”(Park 127)

“the turn-of-the-century scenic urge that cut Maori out of nature and cast them as pillagers.”(Park 126)


The idea of the landscape as a theatre and us as its audience is alluded to frequently throughout the essay and obviously in the title and this metaphor is useful when thinking of the way in which British artists manipulated New Zealand landscapes like a director, and how this influenced both Maori and the public of homeland Britain.


English immigrants arriving in New Zealand had a mental image of the beauty that awaited them because of such literary and artistic figures who presented idolised images of New Zealand to prospective travellers.
“[William] Wordsworth’s forging of the nineteenth century English passion for natural scenery, which crossed the world with colonisation schemes, lead New Zealanders ‘preserving’ theirs in a process that forced human life and indigenous nature apart.”(Park 119)
The inherently British way of presenting the New Zealand landscape in paintings can be seen as a tool used by the imperial power to gain more control over the Maori, “asserting authority over the symbolic as well as the literal.”(Park 126)


Although the historical political climate of New Zealand is woven through the essay Park asserts responsibility to the artist for some of the corruption of the treatment of the landscape. While this may not seem justified, he makes valid points concerning the way artists displaced ideas of British scenery to New Zealand and how colonial painters showed New Zealand in an essentially British way. This made New Zealand landscape be seen as a tradable commodity and contributed to the depressive treatment of Maori.



Park, Geoff. “Theatre Country.” Theatre Country: Essays on landscape and whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. 113-127.

Rugoff, Ralph. “Bubble Worlds.” Small World. Ed. Toby Kamps. San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000. 12-16.