Since 1980, the term ‘marae theatre’ has been used to account for attempts within the Māori cultural renaissance to produce new plays which draw on the protocols of the marae, the traditional physical centre of the tribe. The marae, however, has been seen as an arena of performative interaction, quite independent of any element of play production. The 1998 revival for marae performance of Songs to the Judges by white playwright Mervyn Thompson, dealing with issues of Māori sovereignty and land rights, eighteen years after its first performance for a liberal urban audience, addressed a totally different audience in a radically altered mode of address. Marae communication is symmetrical, with local people and visitors following strict protocols, and actors performing to the authority and approval of the host marae. There arise familiar issues of cultural constraints, property and appropriation, mobilized with a special intensity here in the use of actual utterances of historical Māori resistance leaders, transposed into other mouths. The Western concept of performance itself is brought into a state of crisis, as are the foundations of a ‘postcolonial drama’.