NIKITA 雅涵
Nikita 雅涵 (Ya-Han) Tu-Bryant is a Taiwan-born Aotearoa Artist who has been working as a multidisciplinary artist for over 10 years. She has spent the last between acting roles and music, poetry and visual arts, making work and serving her communities with vision, intelligence and strength.
Through her roles as a performing musician, a film/theatre actor and director, visual artist, teacher, band manager and producer, she has collaborated with artists from all over the world. Recently, with her Pōneke based band • KITA • she has performed in WOMAD, Splore and completed a New Zealand wide tour with their third EP release, ‘Love Lives Here’. Tu-Bryant released her first release as a solo artist since 2016, having been awarded a NZ ON AIR grant for her bilingual single ‘Chasing Summer’, a collaboration with producer ‘An Ogre’.
Tu-Bryant is currently one of the Artists in Residence at The Hannah Theatre, in Pōneke. She is working on the most ambitious work of her career to date, a 4-part film titled LOVE LIVES HERE, inspired by the band’s latest EP. This art-house film is currently making it’s way through Film Festivals around the World, recently winning it’s category at Brighton Rocks Film Festival, recently selected from upcoming festivals in Taiwan and Texas.
The film is being translated into a multimedia immersive-theatre experience with live band and a chorus of performers.
Get in touch to collaborate.
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Nikita has collaborated with artists from all over the world, from non-english speakers in Japan, to her apprenticeship in New York with Chinese Theatreworks, as well as her time puppeteering and playing music in Vermont at Bread & Puppet Theatre.
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Nikita has just completed a nationwide tour with her Pōneke based trio •KITA• (Tu-Bryant, Ed Zuccollo, Rick Cranson) touring their 3rd release Love Lives Here EP produced by Tomasso Colliva (Grammy-award producer).
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Currently working on the most ambitious work of her career to date, the 4-part film titled LOVE LIVES HERE, inspired by her band’s latest EP. Not only is Tu-Bryant the main writer and director for her latest work, she is also the main producer and actor in the film, and the main composer of the sound design.
NEWS
NEWS
Photos by Alyssa Medel
PORK & POLL TAXES
SEPTEMBER / THE HERALD THEATRE
COMPOSER and ROLE of 楊水清
The most exciting thing for me about being a storyteller, is the power that stories have in creating common ground between our differences as humans. Old stories can be retold time and time again as a reminder for us not to repeat our mistakes, and no story can ever be told the same, when we use our voice to tell it authentically.
In the late 1800s, Aotearoa government invited the Chinese to work in the mines. A lot of the jobs on offer were jobs no one else wanted, and Chinese were considered hard-working as well as cheap labour.
Race-based poll taxes were discriminatory government fees explicitly targeted at specific ethnic groups to restrict immigration and marginalize non-white communities. In New Zealand, this was enacted through the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881, which imposed a heavy entry tax solely on Chinese people.
The Poll Tax was imposed by the New Zealand government under the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881, starting at £10 per migrant and raised to a punishing £100 in 1896 (equivalent to roughly $20,000 today).
As the gold dried up in Aotearoa, many of the Chinese workers turned to market gardening, and continued to face discriminatory hardships, such as crops being ruined. Many of the men sent here were working hard, to support families back home in China.
This injustice of the race-based poll tax was acknowledged and apologised for by Helen Clark in 2002, and her apology was finally translated in 2023 to Cantonese - the main language that most of the Chinese immigrants spoke.
PAT - Proudly Asian Theatre and Hand Pulled Collective are entering the 2nd season of a reworked play titled #PorkandPollTaxes written by Talia Pua. A story following a family split into two, between Guangzhou, China, and Ōtepoti, NZ.
I have been invited back to rework, and compose music for this historical drama showing at Auckland Live this September. I feel even more honoured and humbled to have also been cast as 楊水清, the wife of 楊招財, played by Darren Young.
We hope you can come see this show, brought together by an epic cast and crew giving awhi, manawa and mana to this kaupapa.
• KITA •
SANFRAN
CONCERT
LOVE LIVES HERE: 愛住在這裡
Melding inspirations of folk, soul, pop and psychedelia with the guitar and spirited storytelling of musician-actor Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant (Avatar 2, Far North); the thick lushness of Moog synth and Fender Rhodes from Ed Zuccollo (aka Zuke); and the filthy drive and barking drums of Rick Cranson (Little Bushman), KITA have long-since solidified themselves as a must-see live band with a massive sound.
Front-woman Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant is amidst her Artist in Residence at The Hannah Theatre in Wellington, translating her debut art-house film "LOVE LIVES HERE 愛住在這裡" for stage. The narrative originally inspired by the band's EP LOVE LIVES HERE which they toured nationwide in 2023. Tu-Bryant is debuting the film into a full immersive cinema-live-theatrical experience with a chorus of dancers and live band for her residency at the end of this year. In the meantime, she revives the live-in-concert version of this vulnerable ambitious work-in-progress. Excerpts from the film will be remixed live by Elfling. This show was showcased at Twisted Frequency, and now powerhouse trio KITA bring it back to the capital playing one of their favourite venues in Pōneke.
Support act to be revealed beginning of September.
NEWS
NEWS
Funeral back home sparks “THIS IS ME NOW” release for KITA’s front woman
“THIS IS ME NOW” was a commissioned pop anthem Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant was invited to write for TV show SIK FAN LAH! The epic culinary doco-series spotlighting Kiwi-Asian diaspora stories around Aotearoa through shared love of kai.
“I’ve never really done “straight Pop-Anthem” before and I wouldn’t say it’s my first choice of genre to listen to - but it was fun to lean into it.
Recently returning from my Ama’s funeral in our whenua of Taiwan, I was really feeling back into these lyrics that I had written for this song.
Here is “This is Me Now” a Pop-Anthem for you Pop Lovers and a song for those of you who have immigrated and feel the pangs of straddling two worlds. This song was co-created with my best bud Ed Zuccollo, who many of you know also plays with me in our band KITA, and is an amazing producer in his own right as ZUKE. “
THIS IS ME NOW is about feeling estranged and in some cases irrelevant when returning to a place we once called home. A power pop anthem for all who have immigrated, for the diaspora who feel as though they are straddling two worlds.
THIS IS ME NOW is a reintroduction of oneself to the people who once knew an older version of you, THIS IS ME NOW is a declaration of who you have become.
"...people I don't know in your picture frames that are on show.
Years have gone by and by, yet we both have changed..."
The music video was shot in one of Tu-Bryant’s favourite places in the world, Houghton Bay in Te Whanganui-a-Tara by the creator of SIK FAN LAH! Jack Woon (Award-winning director of LET’S SETTLE THIS), and produced by Jess Wong. The TV show featured some of NZ’s best culinary artists such as Sam Low, Vicki Young aka Vicki Eats, and Evil Twins.
NEWS
NEWS
[Before & After, JOSHUA]
Wednesday, June 11 - Thursday, June 12
"One day, a young girl boarded a flight and unexpectedly collided with a boy with kind eyes." - This is Our Story and Ours alone.
Step into a world where love lingers in melody and memory at The Auckland Civic Theatre Winter Garden.
Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant, the captivating force behind •KITA•, revisits [Before & After, JOSHUA], her soul baring breakup album recorded in the back of a van, born from a love story that unfolded on a flight between Phoenix and Santa Barbara.
First staged in 2016, the award-winning Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant now breathes new life into this deeply personal work, transforming it for the intimate surrounds of the Wintergarden, The Civic.
Joined by Dave Khan (Marlon Williams, The Veils, Reb Fountain) and Arahi Whaanga (Te Tokotoru, Troy Kingi), together they offer a sublime blend of music, poetic storytelling, and raw emotion.
A profoundly moving performance, in the heart of the cabaret.
WORLD OF WEARABLE ARTS
Multi-talented Tu-Bryant, who lives in the capital Wellington’s Newtown, says there is perhaps no better show to incorporate all the mediums she loves telling stories with: acting, music, theatrics, movement.
“My character isn't stagnant ‒ she’s forever shape shifting. So I get to just really play……….I’m stoked. I just want to nail it,” she said in an interview with The Post.
RECENT WORKS
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• KITA •
Having completed a summer tour with her Pōneke based trio • KITA •, Nikita toured their 3rd release Love Lives Here EP produced by Tomasso Colliva. Currently the Artist in Residence at The Hannah to translate her film into a Cinema-Theatre show with band playing live score, alongside performers echoing the action onscreen.
Trailer here -
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Intuition-led music and creative facilitation sessions with John Landreth; composition and storytelling of one's own story for recovery. Music video and mini-documentary currently in post production.
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Far North / TV Series
Nikita plays the character 'Hui' in Aotearoa’s highly praised TV Series Far North directed by David White, starring Temuera Morrison and Robyn Malcolm.
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Avatar: The Way of Water / Film
Recent screen work includes her appearance as a sub-pilot in James Cameron’s AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER.
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Sik Fan Lah! / TV Series
Nikita was the co-composer for the theme tune of Sik Fan Lah! A culinary adventure across Aotearoa, uncovering stories of modern Kiwi-Chinese life through our universal love for food.
NEW SINGLE - Chasing Summer
What becomes of the brokenhearted, when you’re off chasing Summer?
‘Chasing Summer’ is a first time collaboration between Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant and An Ogre. For Nikita, ‘Chasing Summer’ is the first release under her solo artist name since 2016.
‘My parts in Chasing Summer were written in my van on the long drives in between touring cities. I am often on the road, and people have commented on how boring my road trips must be as I prefer my 3-9 hour stints in silence. That’s often when the ideas come. When you have constant information and sound coming in, it’s hard to hear your own thoughts, or your ideas. Chasing Summer was no exception. I was driving back to Pōneke from Tāmaki Makaurau, when I wrote the melody and lyrics to this song. This love song is inspired by the narrative of changing only the good times.’