50 LISTENER MARCH 10 2018
BOOKS&CULTURE
W
hen award-winning
Whangarei playwright
David Fa‘auliuli Mamea’s
mother started lavishing
love and care on a pump-
kin, the family took notice. She was saving
it for a special occasion.“When my sister told my wife, she
immediately said, ‘That woman needs
chickens.’” The next time they were in
Wellington, they bought her some and
built a coop. “It was that time when the
family had left and before the grandkids
arrived. She was lonely. Even though my
father was there and needed her attention,
my wife could see that my mother wanted
to love something actively.”
Her simple routine of caring inspired
the play Still Life with Chickens, premier-
ing at the Auckland Arts Festival before
heading to Palmerston North and Wel-
lington. “The central role, Mama, is about
her coming to terms with her life and the
choices she made that she has very quietly
carried within herself. When things
happen, she has to deal with her own
mortality, but not in such a direct way.”
It is a largely one-way dialogue between
Mama and the chicken, played by a
puppeteer. Her husband speaks to her
from off stage, mostly in Samoan, yelling
instructions – telling her that he is hungry,
that he wants to be fed, that it’s lunch-
time. Mamea says he loves the use of the
chicken as a character, but it behaves like
a normal backyard chook – “scratchingaround, attacking the garden and getting
into trouble and, yes, always wanting to
be fed. And that is like catnip to an old
Samoan woman.” Nevertheless, it is an
agent of change, providing a sympathetic
ear, and at other times acts as confes-
sional. “She reads into its behaviour what
she wants and what she needs.”
The character of Mama (played by Gore-
tti Chadwick) has similarities to Mamea’s
mother. She emigrated from Samoa in the1950s, was working class and raised kids.
“One thing that surprised me in my mid-
twenties was realising that my parents
were at one time vigorous sexual beings.
That took a long time to process, and it’s
nice to have gone through that and put it
into this play. When we see these elderly
people, we forget they had passion and
drama in their time.”T
he work is a departure from previous
plays, which focused on diversity:
Pasifika men serving in the Māori
Battalion in WWII, “an ethnic minority
within an ethnic minority”; and a road
trip to Wellington by four friends – Māori,
Chinese, Samoan and Tongan, but all New
Zealand-born. “I make sure my characters
are the colours of Benneton, to reflect
what I see. To get a different palette of col-
ours on stage, it’s important that the story
and ethnicities feel natural and real.”
Mamea says Pasifika theatre has moved
beyond immigrant arrival tales. “They are
just stories like anything else, but from a
Pacific perspective. Still Life with Chickens
is a universal story about a lonely human
being, and then the layer that she is
Samoan, and then the other layer that she
is a Samoan in New Zealand.” lStill Life with Chickens, by DF Mamea,
Auckland Theatre Company, Auckland Arts
Festival, Māngere Arts Centre, March 8-14;
Cube Theatre, ASB Waterfront Theatre, March
17-24; Centrepoint Theatre, Palmerston North,
April 7-15; Circa Theatre, Wellington, May
8-June 2.Flying
feathers
Two stage works
depicting the lives of
Samoan women will
bring laughter and
some tears to festival
audiences.
by FRANCESCA HORSLEY
“One thing that surprised
me in my mid-twenties
was realising that my
parents were at one time
vigorous sexual beings.”
THEATRE
Goretti Chadwick as
Mama in Still Life with
Chickens: a simple
routine of caring.