BONES
a one man play
by julian noel & martine baanvinger
“powerful theatre”
M. O’Hanlon
raw. honest. unapologetically real”
Ingrid Svedlund-Campbell
“Julian is a gifted and fearless storyteller”
Michael Winchester
“Julian’s powerful stories of what we inherit from our ancestors need to be heard in Aotearoa and beyond in order to set future generations free from the past”.
Martine Baanvinger
“‘Bones’ is an unmissable piece of theatre—bold, innovative, and deeply moving.”
Reviewer. Kate Lindsay
“An actor standing alone on stage carrying the presence of generations — living, dead, silenced, and roaring… an unflinching mirror held up to colonial violence, familial rupture, and the complex, painful inheritance of identity.” Reviewer Ingrid Campbell
BONES is an unmissable piece of theatre—bold, innovative, and deeply moving.
Reviewer Kate Lindsay
Julian says, “BONES is set against the backdrop of colonisation and its impact on Māori identity. I explore the hand a mother was dealt — the unsought gifts and wounds that echoed through generations into her life. I began to realise how unresolved pain blinds, twists, and torments families, and how love, without the tools for healing, is never enough to break the cycle.
Although this is a Māori story, I wanted to reach beyond culture to universal themes — touching what lives in all of us: the broken stories we carry in our bones.
Those fractures live on, carried quietly within — when pain is left unspoken, when healing is never found”.
A co-creation between writer, storyteller Julian Noel (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Torehina) — and Martine Baanvinger, actor, director, and one of New Zealand’s leading exponents of one-person theatre.
“We started with the series of stories I had written — stories most families never speak. I wanted to give a loving voice to the pain that lies deep beneath the surface”.
Our creative challenge: how do we stay real and tell the dark, messy, human stuff — and still leave people feeling whole? Held? Lighter?
We drew upon indigenous spiritual frameworks, invoking the protection of gods, ancestors, and nature’s unseen forces. What emerged was a form we started calling “sacred theatre” a liminal space where we felt held by the wisdom dormant in our bones allowing us to create safety for the storyteller, the characters, and the audience.
In ancient Greece, theatre was a conversation with the gods — a way for humans to wrestle with their flaws, their courage, their hubris. BONES stands in that lineage — creating safety and understanding for the dark, flawed and human urges.
We pared everything back. The show fits into a suitcase, requires a table, three chairs, a hat, and a scarf. It can be performed in a community venue, a theatre, or a local hall.
It’s confronting.
It’s funny.
It’s powerful storytelling.
