Queer performance artist Mika Haka went from being one of the few Māori at Timaru Boys High School to opening for Grace Jones in New York, and now he runs a charitable foundation for talented young performers from diverse backgrounds.
Mika in front of the sign at GayBiGayBi, Austin, 2015 Photo: supplied
He's played a takatāpui in Jane Campion's Academy Award-winning film The Piano has appeared in more than 20 TV shows, and worked with Carmen, Dalvanius Prime, Merata Mita and others to develop outrageous stage shows that toured the world including seven Edinburgh Festivals.
He also penned the world's first gay haka, Tēnei Tōku Ure (This Is My Penis).
A biography of Mika's life, I Have Loved Me a Man written by Sharon Mazer and named after his first single, has just been released.
He tells Saturday Morning's Kim Hill he was a confident young man.
"This is the early 1970s ... 3rd form or year 9 when I came out.
"I was also the fastest track and field star at the school, I was a rugby player, I became the South Island disco champion - so I did all the things that the cool boys wanted to do.
"Because I was so confident about that it enabled me to be who I am."
Haka says he taught his school friends to "disco dance".
"I said 'you want girlfriends?' and they say 'yeah' - 'well, learn to dance'.
"So the gym was full of all these farming white boys, and there I was teaching them how to Harlem shuffle."
He says being athletic and good at sport helped "immensely".
"I was a strong kid too: the thing is with boys, if somebody gave me some grief, we had a scrap and I invariably won.
"That's how I dealt with it, it was a boy thing ... you know, it's what you'd do - you'd have a fight - 'oh yeah, over it now' - and carry on.
He also had a lot of support, he says.
Mika Haka Photo: Supplied
"Timaru boys' high school in the '70s the rector and many of my teachers - Bruce Medley especially - hugely supportive.
"For many of the boys too - remember, they didn't actually know what a homosexual was. It's not like today when everyone knows … they just thought I was fun."
After school, he got into music and acting, and hung out with the likes of Dalvanius Prime. He says that's where Mika first made an appearance.
"In the back of the car with Dalvanius …"
"He'd taken me to Warner Music when they'd signed me to do 'I Have Loved me a Man' which was my first single, which again was bizarre when you think about it - I did a gay single at a time when people like George Michael and Elton John still were not out."
Dalvanius suggested Neil Gudsell would never cut it as a stage name and started to make suggestions.
"I kind of said 'I'd like something that's a bit Māori'," and so "Mika" was born.
Indeed, his early life in Timaru gave him little connection to Māoritanga, but it's something he's connected deeply with since.
"I was still in that funny 'am I going to be an actor?' type thing, and then after I did The Piano - Jane Campion, probably my greatest memory, her and Merata together - they completely released me from being Neil Gudsell because I had a life that didn't have to be - in those days - pretty much white and straight.
"That's how the industry was, it was extremely white and straight and even if you were Māori you had to fit into that white and straight phenomenon.
"If I think about all those great parties of Dalvanius' and Mereta and Carmen's … the sense of tikanga and who we are is very real."
He talks about the time he was asked to perform while the Māori Queen lay in state.
"I was in a massive blue Issey Miyake octopus outfit, because when they rung me I said 'oh I'll wear black and sing traditional type songs' and they said 'no, we want you to do what you did for her last time' and I went 'no you don't'.
"They said 'yes we do'.
"I was only meant to do one or two songs and they kept me going, just kept me going and going and going.
"The next day I saw the chair and he thanked me on behalf, and I said 'why did they keep me going? [Māori King Tūheitia] Paki had popped his head round the corner with a smile - and he hadn't smiled in days.
"So the old woman said 'keep Mika going'."
His shows are known to be flamboyant - a mix of cabaret with sequins and feathers, and kapa haka dance hall - but he says fashion was always a big part of it too.
"Everybody knows I always dress well when I go to events … and I was taught that again also by Mereta and Dalvanius.
"Every time you go to something as Māori, you know, you have to present."
Mika stars in an unannounced performance and NZ Fashion Week, 2016. Photo: RNZ / Sonia Sly
The Mika Haka Foundation, mentors talented young people in the arts.
"I use the word spectrum, our community's spectrum, they're LGBT but there's cool straight kids as well. There's Māori, but there's also poor white kids in New Zealand too now, it's not black and white like it used to be.
"Part of my job is I don't have children, so I have everybody else's."
Mika personally mentors six young people.
"One, Ryan Turner, just did his first show at New Zealand Fashion Week a few weeks ago, a 21-year-old.
Photo: Supplied
"Barefeet Street - a couple of Māori lads - just got their first show at Edinburgh.
"I take them to the highest level I possibly can and then mentor them, and then it's a relationship for decades."
He believes todays' young people have too much pressure on them.
"There's too much pressure on young people to get what we had automatically.
"I had a choice of three jobs for life when I left school - now, no young person thinks of a job for life, they think of 10 jobs this year.
"They're expected to know more because the internet's there, but knowing stuff doesn't equate to knowledge.
"Having access to so much information can make it destabilising for a young person … to actually know what they want to do."
Mika says he is happy to get personally involved when a young person in distress contacts him
"I've lost count of the amount of times young LGBT ... have messaged me and I've had to go see their parents.
"We call it the Mika effect, when I turn up and generally the parents know who I am, and when I talk about how gifted this child is, and yes she is lesbian - or they are now trans or whatever, and still your child.
"I'm very glad to say that at least six or eight those parents have turned and you know, a few years later we're all at a party and the parents are there and I generally get up a speech and my one is 'yes there was differences years ago, but love is love, family is family and let's move on'."
That's a lesson he's taken to heart.
"If we hold grudges as a people, as whānau, as communities, they just make us dark. They make us dark and unhappy and life needs more sequins, feathers and jumping around and playing.
"We've stopped playing too haven't we … there used to be more fun."
