In September 1909, a triple bill opened: A Trip to Japan, Ballet of the Jewels, and Inside the Earth. It was the Shubert brothers’ third show, and stage manager R.H. Burnside’s second. When I started reading about the New York Hippodrome, I ran into two scholarly articles that talked about this season, the Hippodrome’s sixth. In “‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: Political Spectacle, Spectacular Politics, and the American Pacific,” performance studies scholar Margaret Werry talks about the first and last shows on the bill as they bring to life an ideal of the American dominance in the Pacific. She sees the shows doing the same kind of cultural work as Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet,” [eyeroll] of sixteen new battleships that started their journey in the Atlantic, rounded the tip of South America, made a bunch of stops in the Pacific, and then completed their journey around the globe. A Trip to Japan and Inside the Earth both featured American guys going to Pacific Rim countries to do assertive things (keep submarine blueprints from being stolen, mine for gold) and bring white American women home. Werry talks a bit about the Māori performers who participate in Inside the Earth, mostly considering how their tours of New York City venues like Coney Island create another kind of spectacular performance of indigenous identity. The second article, “A ‘Harmony of Frenzy’: Māori in Manhattan, 1909–10” by Marianne Schultz, focuses on those performers, their travel and reception in New York City, and the participation in the Hippodrome shows. Mostly what interests me are the ways the stories of these performers challenge expectations and offer an appealing alternative to U.S. norms.
Performers in the souvenir program for 1909-1910 Hippodrome season, my collection.
I wish I knew more about indigenous art styles at the time so I could tell if the background has any relation to the performer’s culture. Weirded out by the phrase “specially imported” in their caption, but I guess it does make the performers’ role as exotic commodities clear, doesn’t it?
The performers belonged to the Te Arawa tribal confederation, and they traveled from the city of Rotorua in New Zealand. They sailed on the S.S. Mariposa, debarked in San Francisco, then split into three groups and traveled 7500 miles cross country to Grand Central station. After reuniting with other members of their party, they reportedly boarded two open cars and toured the city. (I probably would have wanted to go crash at the hotel first.) The sight-seeing party was meant to be a sight themselves: they followed another car where a brass band played. The coverage of this publicity stunt reveled in the contrast between “savage” and “civilized” that the sight-seers embodied:
At intervals, as they proceeded along Broadway, they shouted their war cries and shook war clubs and spears at the surprised inhabitants of Manhattan. Their amiable smiles took the edge off their warlike demonstrations, however.
So what did their onstage performance look like? The men in the group performed a haka, the fierce challenge dance that many people today know because of the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team. (I was going to mention Dwayne Johnson here too, but the Samoan version called the Siva Tau is different.) New York audiences absolutely loved it. One critic compared it favorably to the cheers and chants at Yale. Another talked about how much the ladies would enjoy seeing these paragons of masculinity.
“Scrapbook -- Hippodrome Season 1909-1910,” n.d. Series VII, box 57. R.H. Burnside Collection, Library of the Performing Arts.
“Supes” are supernumerary actors, typically extras in a crowd scene. Their “vociferations” appear comparable to the contemporary haka performances I’ve scene in terms of crouching posture and arm position.
New Zealand Maori tribe performing in the stage production Inside the Earth at the Hippodrome. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ace95ec1-ea57-290a-e040-e00a180618fb
The female performers do a poi dance where balls are spun rhythmically on the end of long strings. According to the reviews, both the haka and poi dances were performed at the beginning of Inside the Earth, ostensibly as part of the Chief’s birthday celebration. They are then interrupted by white men from the nearby mine who ask for their help in finding a white woman who has disappeared, the wife of the mining company’s superintendent. The male Māori find a “hideously made-up dwarf,” the lookout for a the tribal people who live inside the earth and have kidnapped the superintendent’s wife Rose Allen. The Chief translates between the mine owner and the dwarf. Eventually the miners travel to the “Palace in the Centre of the Earth” and rescue Rose Allen.
“Scrapbook -- Hippodrome Season 1909-1910,” n.d. Series VII, box 57. R.H. Burnside Collection, Library of the Performing Arts.
Several of the Māori women attended a women’s suffrage rally where Emmeline Pankhurst, the militant British suffragette, was the keynote speaker. Hosted by the League for Self-Supporting Women, the event seated representative career women on the dais along with the speakers. Their names are given as Kiri Matao, Waapi, and Erana. New Zealand granted women the franchise in 1893, but the article above includes the subhed “One of Them Has Been an Elector in Her Own Land for Twenty Years.” Not sure about the discrepancy — maybe voting for tribal/local/regional matters before, parliamentary in 1893? In any case, I love the thought of these women sitting on a platform 8700 miles from home, representing American women’s political future.