Occasional Stuff – with regular updates – about Auckland Pride Events 2014

The Auckland Pride Gala opening show, subtitled Le Jeu Mechant – The Wicked Game, was the official launch, but the previous night the wicked Mika slipped in his own launch sampler, Mika’s Aroha Mardi Gras (no subtitle), based on Festival events in which he has a hand.

Both shows were very different in character even though they featured some of the same performers. Aroha Mardi Gras was informal, low rent, boisterous and there was a sense of risks being taken, talent being developed and explored. The Pride Gala was black tie, slick and professional with some of the cream of the performers showing stunning skills. It was more introspective, less rambunctious, slicker and no-one lost their footing in tottering heels and did a plunging faceplant into the catwalk! Both were highly enjoyable.

Let’s have a look at the Gala first. The obligatory speechifying and thank you-ing was always going to be a weighty start but without sponsors and commitment and contributions the Pride Festival would never happen so we sat through the speeches in stoic gratitude. Then Ali Mau, she of the lustrous locks, dazzling smile, slinky gown and throw-away quips, appeared as the perfect MC. Entertaining, oozing celebrity and perfectly bridging the gap between performers and audience.

Dancers from Mary Jane O’Reilly’s In Flagrante show presented a hyper-modern take on titillation and erotica, stripped down to its (and their) bare essentials. It was slick and synchronised, somehow successfully blending unattainable erotica and beauty with mechanical and constrained moves. Burlesque for the i-generation.

Jaycee Tanuvasa wowed the crowd with her take on being faafafine at school and had everyone singing along with her oh so wicked send-up of Lorde (“…never gonna be a real girl…”). There was a hint of emerging star power here.

Bryony Skillington

GALS, the Gay and Lesbian Singers, have never quite made friends with Q Theatre, their natural home is an acoustically bright school or community hall, but their two numbers hinted at what they can do and the evocation with finger clicks and thigh slaps of a passing thunder and rainstorm preceding Africa was a stunner. 

Bryony Skillington, all Rubeneqsue curves and in your face insouciance, was the next crowd-pleaser. Her Lola was a woman not to be ignored or denied. Luscious and with the ‘fuck that!’ attitude of a Glasgow ship welder she blended a beautiful singing voice with bigger than life stage presence and a tonne of attitude. Her show must be a must-see, but perhaps throw down a straight scotch before taking your seat.

Then, slowly tumbling out of the darkened heights of the theatre, Edward Clendon of circus troupe The Dust Palace mesmerised us with his aerial acrobatics and contortions. Without a safety net or wire he presented the sort of power, control and daring that only OSH could suck the life out of. Thankfully their presence was nowhere to be seen and we were left to hold our breath and glory in his gymnastic skill. Even his final ascent back up to the girders was a wonder.

Jaycee Tanuvasa as Lorde

Actor Edwin Beats took us into that moment when two incompatible worlds overlap to enable a closeted at home teenage son of a religious family to furtively slip into his queenly otherlife. In an excerpt from Queen he crowed with a touch of bravado that he was luckier than us queens in the audience because he has two lives rather than one. It was a simple, understated performance and you couldn’t help hoping his two worlds won’t crash into each other as they too often do for too many glbti kids.When you want a lesbian with a guitar and a song (and whoever heard of a gay man entertaining with a guitar and his own song???) then Charlotte Yates is the one to have. Confident, poised, musically accomplished and vocally rich, Yates gave yummy taste of what we might hear in her show tonight and tomorrow on the big Big Gay Out stage. Don’t miss her!

Kita Mean, all neon orange bouffant and super-sized white fake-fur coat, stole the vocals of Julie Andrews and Catherine Zeta-Jones then added her own boisterous presence to Le Jazz Hot and All That Jazz. Elements of Queen Latifah and Jessica Rabbit were blended into a sequin-flashing force of nature, a magnificently sassy, self-centred and lustful drag performance.

Dust Palace returned with two sweetly sexy women entwined in one chair and each other high above the stage in a sultry show for the girls to match the earlier aerial display for the boys. We now know it is possible to fall in love while suspended in space.

Short snippets from The Legacy Project, the on-stage realisation of short contributed works, returned us to the introspective mood which flavoured the Gala, itself a reflection of the youthfulness of many of the contributors and performers.

The redoubtable Edwina Thorne once again made the trumpet classy and sexy, then Finn Matheson, the angelic young flower boy for the evening, showed his harder side by charmingly beating the crap out his mother live on stage (You had to be there!). Well done Finn and get well Cushla!

Andrew Laing made us all want to go see Songs for Guy. His evocation of falling in love with a house painter followed by Charles Aznavour’s She, poignantly re-worked as He, were intimate and loungey and quite lovely. Wow, can this man deliver a song!

Andrew Laing

The unidentified singer amongst the performers from Mumbai Monologues sang in a ghostly, plaintive tone that I still can’t properly describe. Something about her soaring but hushed clarity evoked ghosts or angels or… something that speaks straight to your head and your heart even if you don’t understand the word. Magical.Dynamotion filled the stage with colour and vitality and the finale, with full cast and more than a few audience members doing The Time Warp, acknowledging the ‘Time’ theme for the up-coming Pride Parade, closed a great night. Directed by Lexie Matheson with a sure and expert hand, this was a stylish formal introduction to the glories of Pride 2014.

The LYC Big Gay Out

To co

Jay TeWake – an amazing human being. Such incredible passion and integrity. 

Mumbai Monologues – A Thousand Unsaid Words

From the moment I began to discuss Agaram Productions involvement in the Auckland Pride Festival Gala ‘Le Jeu de Mechant’, Mumbai Monologues sounded fantastic to me.

Ahi Karunaharan and co-director Padma Akula were a dream to work with as were their cast and musicians. We had fun. That’s always a great start.

After the performance a lovely friend told me he’d cried at the beauty of their work. I suggested alcohol. He denied it. It all sounded great, so I decided to experience it for myself with my family.

Padma Akula – co-director

Ahi Karunaharan – co-director

It’s hard to imagine this not being one of my favourite works in the festival.

I love a marriage between live music and spoken text as anyone who has followed my own work will testify. I wonder if there is such a person lurking in the shadows somewhere on the planet – it’s been awhile!

Music, well chosen, opens the ear and the heart in ways that facilitate both understanding and emotional response and melds the two into one.

The music in this show is quite superb throughout, both culturally evocative and telling in its pace and content. The three piece group of Say Anti (vocals), Karen Plimmer (piano) and Kim Gruebner (violin) is quite superb in particular in the way they manage to remain in focus but also get lost on the perimeters of the collective narrative. There are four original compositions, each of which anchors the work and draws us inexorably in. Kim Gruebner’s Mumbai Auckland Style, Sayanti and Jennifer D’Souza’s Monsoon Love and Hold On Tight are wonderful but it’s Sayanti and Marie Wills’ beautiful and haunting Jaa Uda Jaa that has stayed with me and won’t leave my head alone.

Kim Gruebner – violin/composer

The show is essentially what the name implies, eight interlinking monologues that traverse the queer experience from a sub-continental point of view. It’s not all ‘Indian’ per se, but the cultural links are evident in most of the works.

Some of the monologues attest to personal influences and others external influences – Train Therapy by Gyan Prakash, Is This How We Date? By Stephanie Georgopulous, I Don’t Need the Permission of Your Lordships to Love and the writings of Paul Singh are the ones mentioned.

Three monologues have been written by Sananda Chattergee and one by Poorna Prakash. One was written by the artist performing the piece, Anita Crisinel. All were excellent and it seems pernickety to single out a few but time and space prohibit a full review of all the monologues at this time. This is a working blog so this will change when I get the time and opportunity.

My personal picks are Adrift, written by Poorna Prakash and performed by Anya Banerjee, Raj Singh as Manjit in Mumbai Nights, Aman Bajaj as Faisal in Section 377 and Emma in Memories, written and performed by Anita Crisinel.

Adrift is a delicate piece that scans life’s options and finds that the more you have the more complex your life becomes. Banerjee is a subtle actor and she draws us into her dilemma with a tantalising elusiveness that is so very appropriate when debating life’s ‘what to do’ quandary from within and more often than not, alone.

Anya Banerjee – Natasha in Adrift

Raj Singh plays Manjit in Mumbai Nights. He’s quite brilliant. Blessed with fabulous looks and the stature of a Greek god – I’m sorry for mixing my cultural metaphors (no I’m not, he’s delicious!) – Singh is the perfect physical vehicle for a metrosexual dissertation on how to win the perfect woman. I’m fairly sure there were a few women in the room who were quietly exuding the odd ‘hmmm’ as he advanced his thesis, perhaps even the odd one murmuring to herself ‘pick me, pick me’ into a somewhat sad, half empty glass. Like Banerjee, Singh too had a subtle delicacy and a wryness that kept us guessing just how he fitted in way past the end of his monologue.

The prolific Sananda Chattergee wrote the most confronting work of the evening, a powerful testament to friendship and the abject confusion that comes when irrational bigotry is enshrined in ‘law’. Entitled Section 377, it personalises that most insidious of laws, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a code imposed on 42 former British colonies at the height of the Raj and which criminalizes anal sex between men and a range of other homosexual acts. The code was introduced by British colonial authorities in 1861 and was used as a model for sodomy laws in many other British colonies New Zealand being one of them. Section 377 was re-introduced in India in 2013 much to the consternation of almost the entire international community.

Aman Bajaj – Faisal in Section 377

Aman Bajaj plays Faisal with real passion and more than a frisson of anger as he itemises the issues for his gay ‘friend’ should he decide to come home. It’s touching stuff made even more so by placing this piece where it is in the programme. It’s twin themes of anger and loss are shared by every member of the audience.

My personal favourite, however, was Anita Crisinel’s self-penned – do we still ‘pen’ work – Memories and the character of Emma. Deconstructed, it’s a fabulous piece of writing as much for what it doesn’t actually say as for what it does. Crisinel, clearly an astute observer of both behaviour and rhythm, has written out of the text all the distress she wants us to feel and instead added a subtext that soundlessly screams Emma’s instantly recognisable anguish. Crisinel is a fine actor and totally in control of both her material and of us as she quietly narrates a story of love, loss, and the tragic vice-hold religion can have on its followers. It’s a deeply moving account of friendship, of coming out, and of the crash-and-burn train wreck that can occur when faith and creed are thrown into the same-sex cauldron. Crisinel makes us one of those offers we simply can’t refuse and ever so deftly escorts us on a journey to what is anything but enlightenment. She makes magnificent actor choices, is the mistress of understatement and the ‘play against’ and I won’t for a moment deny that most of the tears spattered on our table as she left the stage were mine.

Anita Crisinel – Emma in Memories

The super TAPAC space has the audience sat in the centre with stages raised all around and it works an absolute treat.

Big ups to Ambrose Hills-Simonsen too for some damned fine lighting.

All-in-all a wonderful evening, littered with laughter and watered, I imagine, by more tears than just mine.

Five stars!

Vanessa Byrnes was there too and she wrote this for Theatreview:

TAPAC theatre, a black box, can become anything. In this show it’s transformed into snatches of existence from a cast of many in Mumbai (Bombay). What a great way to spend an hour on a Wednesday night.   

Glimpses of real lives are presented in a lyrical, melodic framework in this highly evocative show. The fears and passions of everyday citizens of Mumbai are offered as short monologues, and through these delicious slices of life, we’re given a unique view of another location with its mores and norms.

Directors Ahi Karunaharan and Padma Akula sensitively bring forth issues such as bisexuality, homosexuality, straight dating and chasing your dreams, whatever they may be. Their direction is inspired and effective.  

Mumbai exists as a cityscape built on rhythm and feeling; dreams, perhaps. Chaotic and poetic, harsh and lyrical, its dichotomies are punctuated only by these random characters and a fantastic musical score.  

Sayanti (vocals), Kim Gruebner (violin) and Karen Plimmer (piano) infuse the performance with indo-celtic harmonies that lift the pieces with emotionally haunting compositions. Gruebner’s violin playing is wonderfully sensitive while Anti’s vocals are extraordinarily captivating. The music is divine and for its lifeblood, it could be even further connected to the whole drama. It’s an absolute windfall to have these expert performers in this show.  

A cast with wide-ranging experience perform the eight monologues with clarity and ease.

Raj Singh’s performance of ‘Bombay Nights’ is expertly nuanced and very funny, and a standout. ‘Section 377′ performed by Aman Bajaj strongly confronts Section 377 of the penal code that criminalises homosexual acts. Its final plea to “hold on tight” is sage advice to the lovers in the audience to hold their loved ones close. And Anita Crisinel’s ‘Memories’ is bittersweet with her emotional connection to the material.

I enjoyed the honest quality of all the pieces which tell important stories in this cultural community. Although the writing varies in its quality, there are some brilliant observations. 

The space is cabaret-style with three small stages to accommodate other shows in the Queer at TAPAC season. This doesn’t offer the best glimpse of every monologue, but it does immerse the audience in the drama. This show will continue to grow but it’s already a wee cracker. It’s described as “a theatrical celebration of cultural and sexual diversity”, and it confronts tricky issues with sophisticated ease.   

An evocative, sensitively directed, beautiful show that gives voice to issues not often heard in mainstream theatre. My companion and I were moved by the humour and lyrical beauty of the piece. 

Queen

Produced by  Smoke Labours Productions

Written by Sam Brooks

Directed by Harry McNaughton

Driving to the theatre I found myself wondering why I was going to Queen at all.

Two lesbians (one transgendered) and an eleven year old straight boy going, quite excitedly, to experience a play exclusively about the gay male experience. I voiced this thought and was reminded by my considerably more perceptive spouse that it was a Sam Brooks play so it was bound to be well written and our son reminded me that Edwin Beats was in it and he was really sad about being a ‘shit gay’. Our son thought Edwin was the shizz when he performed in the Auckland Pride Festival Gala Le Jeu de Mechant which is great but I don’t even know what ‘shizz’ means and will have to assume, like any trusting parent, that ‘shizz’ is a good thing. Weary though they are from six consecutive nights at the theatre it seems my family are still very keen to go and have the Queen experience.

I’d really enjoyed Edwin’s performance too and thought, if worst came to worst, I’d at least have that to hang on to.

Sam Brooks – playwright

I needn’t have worried.

Queen is, I can now safely say having consulted the Urban Dictionary, also the shizz.

In fact it’s double shizz with vodka and bubbles and an olive!

The layout in the TAPAC main house has been the same for all the shows during the excellent season of Queer@TAPAC and there’s more to come. Venue’s supporting the festival by hosting season’s like this are absolute gold as has been evidenced by the number of times the ‘House Full’ sign has been dusted off. So, its audience in the centre and three stages situated on the outer perimeter of the room. Interesting, and the layout certainly works for monologues and Queen is made up of them. It’s more than simply monologular (if Shakespeare could make up words then any old queen can) as the actors come together at times and interact. I like TAPAC. The staff are always cheerful and efficient and the foyer is buzzy and informal, a place where you can be as visible – or invisible – as you want to be. The pretty young woman on the door recognises us from previous excursions and turns out to be a talented young actress who we’ve seen in plays before.

Nice touch, Anthea, nice to meet you at last?

Harry McNaughton – director

The show opens with Hamish McGregor telling us how boring he is, how ordinary – he isn’t, of course – and bemoaning, in a rather self-effacing and tender way, the fact that he doesn’t have a dramatic and angst-ridden ‘coming out’ story. ‘Make one up, Hamish’, I think to myself, ‘worked for me’ but then I come to my senses and realise that this is exactly what he is doing, he’s acting – using Sam Brooks’ exceptional wordies. Brooks is some writer, talent oozing from every phrase, and his barbs go straight to the heart or to the funny bone and, often enough, at exactly the same time.

Hamish McGregor – actor

He’s blessed, too, in having actors to die for who honour his text and live every word. I’m impressed by these men, by their talent, their commitment to the art of acting and to story-telling. Sam Brooks is a genius at weaving actor-friendly narrative and these men are the voices every director, in this case Harry McHaughton, need to make it all come to life. It’s fabulous, have no doubts about that.

Sam Christopher is pretty damn fine. His spiel about his love of Beyonce is credible and funny. I enjoy it immensely – so does my son – but we have no idea at that stage just what joys Christopher has yet to smack us around with.

Sam Christopher – actor

Jeremy Rodmell shares with us the tale of his seduction as a young man by his drum teacher. Neither he nor his teacher, as it turns out, were great drummers but the graphic re-enactment of this event by almost every actor on the stage leaves us in no doubt that this was visibly and unmistakably a memorable experience – one way or another. It certainly was for us as we shared his pain, his pleasure and his ultimate satisfaction at the hands of this badboy percussionist. It’s excellent ensemble work lead by Rodmell with Christoper, Beats and Ryan Dulieu, the latter three enthusiastically sharing the drummeister’s Snoopy hat and lustful seducer’s role, seemingly getting a real buzz from working together, a buzz they share abundantly with their ever attentive audience.

Jeremy Rodmell – actor

Worth noting, as I reflect on the quality of the ensemble playing, the maleness of all these characters. It’s palpable and maleness isn’t something I can often say I enjoy that much but in this space and with these fine fellows I could be encouraged to change my mind. In an exclusively vertical arms-length way I hope you understand! There’s no sense of privilege, no negating testosterone competitiveness, just a group of men exploring the heights and depths of who they individually and collectively are.

Edwin Beats has a journal and he and Sam Christopher interact with its faux-secrecy to construct a heart-wrenching expose of a friendship that is just that little bit more than that, maybe, perhaps, but not really, but yes it is. It’s beautiful, and these two handsome fellows – thanks again, Sam Brooks – say it all without a sniff of cliché.

Edwin Beats – actor

Christopher goes on to chat with us about his affair, age 18, with the captain of the First XV. It manages to be universal without departing from the personal or sneaking into the maudlin where both madness and platitude lie. While this is a boy narrative, girls experience the same suffering in similar situations and I have little doubt there’s a heterosexual version of it too. Suffice to say, being a teenager can be hellish enough without having your earliest sexual experiences occur in such stone-cold secrecy. Christopher is splendid and the image of his character sitting on a hilltop watching all that rugger-buggery and not feeling in anyway authentic will haunt me for a good while yet.

I won’t deny that, for the early sections of the show I wondered what role Ryan Dulieu had to play in proceedings. He seemed engaged but without too much to do. ‘Eye candy’ I thought pompously. ‘Director’s boyfriend’ flitted through my ‘otherwise engaged’ mind. Both may well be true, the former certainly is, but this fine young actor comes into his own – and into the audience – with a rant about what he is and what he isn’t. I call it a rant because at times Dulieu is angry, at times passionate, always on song and we’re never going to die wondering just exactly who and what he isn’t. He’s not a girl. He’s not gay like Beats. Or Christopher. Or McGregor. Or us. God forbid. He is gay, though, we get that. It’s a passionate discourse grounded in ‘I am who I am’ and it’s totally stunning. I find myself worrying what will happen next when he takes a swig from an audience member’s beer and then takes the bottle back with him to the stage. What would I have done if it had been me? What would you do if an actor stole your plonk? On Valentine’s Day?

Ryan Dulieu – actor

I ever so quickly decide he’s not here for his looks – he has plenty of those – or for being someone’s boyfriend – though that may well be the case – he’s here because he can act up a storm and when was that ever, ever not enough?

My son gets his wish. Edwin Beats does his ‘I’m a shit gay’ shtick and it’s even better than it was in the Gala. He’s immensely likable and a master craftsman for one so young. He sidles up to us with his premise and he takes us in, only to delicately take us out of the equation with his last quip. I’d heard it before in rehearsal and in performance. I thought I was impervious to it. I wasn’t. I laughed, and Beats clocked up yet another comic success.

As if all that wasn’t enough the men come together at the end in a litany of performance art that connects the dots of the previous hour. It was some journey, thank you Mr Brooks, and we should have been exhausted but instead we left exhilarated by what we’d experienced, thank you men.

Reflecting is an interesting thing, always.

Mine told me that this work – writing, directing, acting – would have been at home in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court in London. The work is gritty, subtle and as contemporary as tomorrow and every bit as good as that of Joe Penhall, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill, names to conjure with and names which are inextricably linked to that wonderful Sloane Square playhouse where impeccable theatrical marvels are made.

If you don’t believe me, or think I’ve been blinded by eye candy and pecs, then see it for yourself. You’ll be really glad you did.

Teen Faggots Come to Life

Produced by PIPA

Created in association with Jay Tewake and the Mika Haka Foundation

Staged in the Basement Studio as part of Auckland PRIDE

13-15 February, 2014 at 7.00pm

A thousand and six years ago (early 1960’s actually) I went to the Civic Theatre in Christchurch to hear a concert by a band call The Surfaris. I was a teen faggot, I just didn’t know it then. It seems others did and I have to say not much has changed when it comes to being identified as different at a state school in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The support act was a band called The Beach Boys who, while unknown then, went on to change the face of music forever while The Surfari’s disappeared without trace. Who hasn’t drivelled out Barbara Ann or Good Vibrations at some forgotten, substance-fuelled revelry, somewhere forgettable in their drunken, fuzzy-blur of a past?

Well, I have, and many more times than just once!

I guess my point is that there are times when the support act becomes the main bill and stays there, and I’d suggest that the NZ Herald, Metro and the other mainstream media who consider themselves noteworthy commentators on the world of the arts have totally missed the boat by choosing not to discover Teen Faggots Come to Life and the multi-talented artists who make up this collective.

Yes, I’ll get to the review eventually but I need to say a few other things first.

I need to say that Mika and the Mika Haka Foundation do more for young Maori and Pasifka kids than anyone else in the country, funded or not, and have been doing so for yonks, more yonks, in fact, than I can readily recall. Anyway, it seems like forever. Big ups to Mika for doing what he does and for being who he is. He’s a true Hero of the Pacific and he deserves to be readily acknowledged as such.

Mika

Next, there’s his right and left hand man, his wingman, often his front man and always my main man, Jay Tewake. Jay is tireless and he makes things happen like nobody else. He has all the style of an LA promoter and all that special, and inimitable, New York grit. He’s kind, respectful and he gets stuff done, more stuff that anyone can possibly imagine. He, too, deserves recognition – and the odd night off. He wouldn’t take it, mind you, he’d just find something else to do that would benefit others. He’s like that – and I love him for it.

Jay Tewake

Then there’s the Pacific Institute of the Performing Arts. I get to see a lot of their work – well, the finished product anyway – in my role as a reviewer with John Smythe’s www.theatreview.org.nz. It’s always classy, polished and different. They, Mika Haka Foundation and Jay Tewake are changing the face of theatre in Aotearoa New Zealand and giving us an authenticity that is exciting enough to make me want to dance on tables to celebrate it. Note I said ‘want to’. My advanced years have, sadly, turned my ‘will’ into ‘want to’ but you’ll catch my drift.

None of this happens without extraordinary support from all over the shop and most of that support is invisible. Let’s not forget that the people you see on stage and applaud wildly are also part of the demographic that appears at the top of our most shameful statistics as a nation: poverty, prison muster, drug and alcohol issues, early death and suicide. Add to that the fact that these kids are also queer and you have a potential time bomb just waiting to go off. All the more reason to recognise the work being done on the ground by Mika, PIPA and others.

I’ll acknowledge three such supporters as representative of those ‘helpers’ who remain invisible. First there’s ‘Mum’ to the Teen Faggots, Mrs Tanuvasa, who is simply extraordinary. Tireless – as she has to be – she is at all the performances the Teens give and I can imagine her home life is a wonderful, colourful riot and not always in a good way. I can barely conceive of the number of times this outstanding woman must have picked her ‘kids’ up and dusted them off so that they can continue their exemplary work or merely survive. ‘Survive’ is one word that repeats way too often in this work. Mrs Tanuvasa is a taonga a thousand times over. The group also acknowledge the support of Maxine Kalolo and Joanna Tuala. Big ups to them too.

We ‘transpeople’ have been around forever and, often, we’re our own worst enemy. Times have changed and so has the rhetoric so those of us who are older and who should be taking a nurturing and supportive role are, all too often, seen to be fighting about who’s authentic, who’s a ‘true transsexual’ and who lives in the ‘real’ world. One such person, who should know a lot better, suggested overnight that you can’t be a ‘real’ transsexual woman and be sexually attracted to women and that the only real transsexuals are those who come out, as she did, in their mid-teens. I’d suggest to her that she should ‘zip it’ and let us all get on with being who we are and not who someone else tells us we should be.

My whanau and I saw Teen Faggots Come to Life on the final night of a three night, sold out season in the Basement upstairs studio theatre. There’s been a buzz about this show since day one of the festival and I had the privilege of having that young star Jaycee Tanuvasa perform a snippet in the Auckland Pride Gala Le Jeu de Mechant which I directed. The Faggots had already been part of Mika’s 3^rd Aroha Mardi Gras the previous evening and, as it turned out, were members of a fabulous dance group Fine (fee-nay) Fatale who also performed in the Gala. I loved them in rehearsal as much for their professionalism – they arrived on time, prepared superbly, and nailed their performances – as for anything else and had anticipated their show from that moment on.

I was not disappointed on any level.

Because I’m smart – not so smart as to not start a sentence with ‘because’ (one of the few things I learned at my faggot-loathing school) – I’d figured out that there was a transgender component to this show, that the much hated and newly owned word ‘faggot’ applied to all textures of the LGBTI spectrum and not just the gay dudes (I liked that because I love words) and I couldn’t wait to how this played out because I am myself the cut sleeve’, the half-eaten peach of ancient Chinese tradition. I am also sister to those who identify as mahu in Hawai’i, fa’afafine in Samoa, Tonga’s fakaleiti, Fiji’s vaka sa Iewa Iewa, and can relate so very intimately with our own terms whakawahine, whakaaehinekiri  tangata ira wahine, hinehi, hineua, and tangata ira tane. While I make no personal claim to these linguistic and deeply cultural terms and can only really claim to be transgendered or transsexual – such dull, sexualized, Eurocentric rationalizations – I embrace my sisters and brothers of the world with real affection and admiration.

We all climbed the steep stairs to the studio and, I was assured, cooling electric fans. The Basement foyer, filled with audience for two full houses, had been a hot house of bodies and mine had begun to melt – if you catch my drift – so, when the promised fans eventuated I became one very happy camper.

It’s always both a joy and a confusion being one of a small number of palangi at what can seem to be essentially a Pasifika event. I like the feeling very much. It reminds me that I embody white middle class privilege in most settings and it’s good to experience being a minority within a minority from time to time. The feeling fades as it always does with the generous and immediate acceptance by Pacific peoples of people like us.

There’s a cunningly placed soundscape pre-show and then the lights come up on narrative number one, that of the beautiful Raukawa Tuhura. It’s called Takataapui and it turns out to be quite different from those stories that follow. It’s the transition chronicle of a young Maori woman born biologically male. It tracks her story from birth to today through the eyes, mind and feelings of a complex young woman from Gisborne. Her birth narrative had me in tears, the challenges faced by her family – personally and culturally – were deeply affecting and the marriage of dance and Tuhura’s exceptional use of many voices gave us an immediate access to her that was monumentally courageous. Truth is, I’m quite accustomed to the coming out stories of transgendered people, but this one was different. It let me in but kept me at bay as well. Raukawa’s passionate ownership of her story was extraordinary – she shared it freely and willingly but there was never a moment where I felt she was entirely letting it go. I’ve seldom experienced anything quite like this in the theatre before and I loved it to bits. I’m used – as actor and audience – to seeing stories put into the ether and left there but Raukawa did something new and different with hers and I felt a new form of communication was surfacing on the four winds. On a purely practical level this woman can really act, really sing, really dance – and I’m as envious as hell of her intelligence, her actor equipment, her talent and her spunk. Watch this space!

Raukawa Tuhura

Jaycee Tanuvasa performed her piece A Different Kind of Love which is about her first love, about him being her prince, she his princess, two dragons and a woman of great power who stood between them. I’ve said elsewhere that I think Tanuvasa is a star and most people who have seen her agree she’s got talent to burn. She’s immensely funny, immediate and can make you laugh or cry in an instant but she’s more than that. The depth of her writing is exceptional and is somewhat hidden by her unique performance abilities – she’s so absorbed in her material that it seems, sometimes, as though she’s just making it up (she’s not) – and the work is incredibly complete. She’s super confident it seems, and the sort of woman any young man would wish to be with – and her young man does – but the world around them, the dragons and the ‘woman of great power’, intervene with a brutality you can taste, and they screw it all up.

And why?

Tanuvasa tell us in the programme, and with every fibre of her performance being, ‘that’s right, because I’M A FAGGOT!’ It’s hard stuff to take – we want to give her a hug and make it right – but she’s on top of our getting too maudlin and she smacks us around with some of the best comic delivery I’ve experienced in a month of Sundays. Clever stuff, and I reiterate confidently, Jaycee Tanuvasa is a star?

Jaycee Tanuvasa

School Ball 2014, and Michael’s World takes is immediately into the realm of hopes and dreams. Isaac Ah-Kiong is an immensely likeable performer who is in love with the school superstar jock. He invites him to the school ball and the superstar accepts. How good is that? Michael certainly thinks it’s the best thing since eggs for breakfast (I like eggs for breakfast – please replace my metaphor with one of your own choice). His absolute joy turns to abject horror when the car they are in passes the venue for the ball and Michael finds himself set-up for a beating which we get to experience first-hand. It’s the most immediate and undeniable expression of a violence that lurks beneath the surface of all the narratives and, in this case, we simply can’t laugh it off. Ah-Kiong is an excellent young performer who takes on that part of the queer journey that we don’t wish to go on, mostly because we’ve all had our beatings and all too often at the hands of those whose job or place it is to care for us, in my case NZ Police (just thought I’d drop that in).

 Isaac Ah-Kiong

S/He is the work of Amanaki Prescott-Faletau and it’s quite, quite different both in content and performance style. Sure, there are themes that gather themselves together throughout the evening, but each piece is unique and stand alone and this is just one of the many, many qualities of this production. Prescott-Faletau is another in this stable of fine performers. The premise for this piece is summed up in ‘when love becomes a feeling and not a rule it can be beautiful’. It’s another exposition of love requited somewhat but challenged more and with tragic outcomes. Prescott-Faletau creates a range of characters in what is a wonderfully transformative performance and we not only get to know them all but we get to see them change as well. Again, clever writing and brilliant performing with genius comedic playing not quite covering the grief that follows consummation. It’s subtle work that rides the seesaw of in-your-face confrontation and introspective pain with the greatest delicacy.

Amanaki Prescott-Faletau

By now I had begun to realize that, from a purely theatrical perspective, I was watching something as new as tomorrow, a truly Pacific voice emerging fully formed in the shape of this group of teen faggots who live in their journeys so totally but who also manage to step outside and open doors to allow us full access to their narrative. It’s totally gutsy work but I’m somehow not surprised. You still need to have incredible courage to be gay or transgendered in 2014 Aotearoa. While seeming to be able to laugh at almost everything, I’m also left with the clear impression that they’re having a damn good laugh, through the blood and tears, at society too and that society better make the right decisions on their behalf or the vice-grip they have on society’s genitals may well become quite simply unbearable.

The final offering is called Coming Home and that’s exactly what it’s about. Darren Taniue has created for himself a comedic piece that is the most complex and challenging of the night. He’s written a rich vein of actor-friendly humour based in actor craft and characterization and it’s to his immense credit that he pulls it off. It requires instant changes of focus and attitude and, by the end of Coming Home we love him to bits. He’s chosen to get into an abusive relationship with some low-life called Daniel who keeps him in the family’s home where he is nothing more than a domestic slave. We ache for him to leave because we all know relationships like this and when he does, we breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Well, some of us do. Others shout their support and cheer with gusto Darren’s decision to get out and go home to his Mum. Tanuie is another top line actor who has the benefit of being a fine dancer as well. The physicality of Coming Home is one of its finest features.

Darren Taniue

There are overall themes – conscious or otherwise – of underlying violence, beatings, emotional anguish, familial and educational homophobia and hate. There is also an overarching emphasis on courage and survival that, while laudable and essential, is ultimately sad because no human being should have to accept such horrendous behavior from their fellow human beings.

As the last curtain call is taken and I wipe the happy/sad tears from my eyes and get over just how talented and skillful these teenage faggots are, I remind myself that these are the ones who have, through humour, audacity and sheer pluck (such a wonderfully Eurocentric word ‘pluck’), have got through to where the future looks OK. What about the ones who haven’t? What happens to them? While not stated as a theme I doubt I was the only person thinking this as we trooped down the stairs and back to the ‘real’ world.

We have to remember that the beatings, the homophobia, the negativity, the confusion, the closet and the bash is the real world for these kids and they can’t walk away from it. It’s like being transgendered, or lesbian, or gay – it’s what we are and there is no holiday, no lieu time, and no place to hide.

We are what we are.

Teen Faggots Come to Life is far and away the best theatre I’ve seen ever, the performers unequalled in courage and talent. I want to take them all home and look after them but I can’t because Mrs Tanuvasa wouldn’t like that – and they don’t need it anyway.

Nurture these faggots because they’re our future!