INFO
| Name | Nadia Freeman (she/her) |
| Also known as | Miss Leading |
| Country of Birth | Aotearoa |
| Place of Residence | Pōneke Wellington |
| Ethnicities | Indo-Fijian, Pākehā |
| Artform | Music, Theatre, Poetry |
| Decades Active | 2000s, 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Nadia Freeman is a theatre-maker, musician, producer, and poet based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is Indo-Fijian and Pākehā and was brought up in Lower Hutt. As noted on her website, “Miss Leading is an electronic music producer, singer, and poet. Composing music on a unique Wellington-made Synthstrom Deluge. Her music layers conscious lyrics focused on environmental and human rights with complex percussion and light melodies that aim to widen your mind and get your body moving."
Freeman gained a Bachelor of Science from Victoria University in 2004 and went on to complete a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Otago in 2017. Between the years of 2010 and 2020 she lived and worked in Toronto and Edinburgh, spending some time back in Aotearoa from 2012 to 2016. Outside of her creative work she has worked within environmental non-profit organisations and the public health sector.
While in Canada, Freeman began attending spoken word events, which reinvigorated her high-school interest in the form. This passion for on-stage performance continued when she moved to Edinburgh in 2016, stoked by the city’s lively creative scene and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She spent time attending gigs and started performing her own work, beginning with spoken word poetry at open mic nights. From there, Freeman began being booked for guest performances and performing more regularly.
Freeman moved back to Aotearoa during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. In returning to Aotearoa, she wanted to connect with other Asian artists in the music industry in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. This desire compelled her to form Eastern Sound Collective in 2020, a group of pan-Asian musicians who connect and support each other. Together they created Eastern Sounds Stories, a podcast series produced with RadioActive.FM, for which Freeman was the executive producer. The podcast won the Outstanding Music Journalism award at the 2023 Taite Music Prize. In each episode, the host, Namnita Kumar, interviews an Aotearoa Asian musician about their life and work in the music industry, including Alisa Xayalith and Nadeem Shafi.
In 2021 Freeman performed her first solo production, Eat These Words, which she developed while in managed isolation. Performed at the Pyramid Club in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the show combines poetry, music, and food — with each audience member being served food items related to the stories being shared. Freeman talks about travel and her family members, articulating the landmarks of her life through nibbles. Margaret Austin wrote in Theatreview, “This is a thoughtfully created, well-rehearsed performance, with an unusual – and tasty – premise.” In the same year Freeman released her album of electronic alt-pop music Minor Thing and toured around the country.
In 2022 Freeman was commissioned by the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts to write her next solo poetry show, which became Another Universe. The production explored the theme of alternative life pathways. With a box labelled ‘Possibility’ on the stage, Freeman uses poetry to describe different opportunities that were passed on or lost. As she describes, “these poems weave the stories of other lives to reflect on ideas of possibility and regret while looking at topics of identity, sexuality, war and feminism.” In a review for Rat World Jennifer Cheuk described the performance: “Raw and honest, Another Universe is a lyrical journey through nostalgia, opportunity and regret. Nadia Freeman captures the overwhelming sense of yearning that humans have everyday.”
In 2023, Freeman received a grant from the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund to create The Girmit, (initially titled Coolie: The Story of the Girmityas). Freeman’s mother was brought up in Fiji on a sugarcane farm and was a descendant of the Gimityas, who are a part of the country’s history of indentured labour. The production explores the stories of Girmityas — brought from India by the British through kidnapping and coercion. The performance begins with a recording of the sound of her signing a copy of her great-grandmother's labour contract, which she weaves into the soundscape. Freeman uses several samples — sounds made by sugar cane, voice recordings and archival material — to help narrate the dark stories of forced labour . In describing the performance, Lynda Chanwai-Earle wrote for Theatreview “Freeman’s powerful, mesmerising and moving theatre experience reminds us that the illegal trade of human trafficking still exists throughout the world to this day, and that the forced servitude of any ethnic group is history we should avoid repeating.”
LINKS
Key works / presentations
The Girmit
2024 —Waikato Museum, Waikato
2024 — New Athenaeum Theatre, Ōtepoti
2023 — Snails: Artist Run Space, Papaioea
2023 — Kia Mau Festival, BATS Theatre, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Another Universe
2022 — Basement Theatre, Tāmaki Makaurau
2022 —Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland
2022 —Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland
2022 – NZ International Festival of Arts, online
Writing home (with Rose Northey)
2022 — Art Friend Studio, Level 5, 148 Cuba Street, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
2022 – Tauranga Fringe Festival
2022 – SOAP, Tāmaki Makaurau
Eat These Words
2021 — Pyramid Club, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Minor Thing (album)
2021 — Aotearoa Tour, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Napier, Rotorua, Ōtautahi, Ōtepoti
