MARCH 10 2018 LISTENER 51
A
fter a performance of Tusiata
Avia’s poetry show Wild Dogs
Under My Skirt, it is not uncom-
mon for audience members to
have an intense reaction – in tears, they
come to wildly shake her hand.
Her one-woman show was first
performed in 2002, and Avia says that
over the years it has been cathartic for a
lot of people. “I have had young people
tell their stories and old people tell their
stories. I think it is because it’s about uni-
versal stuff – it is about love, heartbreak,
it’s about families and it’s about violence.”
Although it’s not often performed in
New Zealand, Avia says the work has trav-
elled all over the world and produced the
same reaction, sometimes where people
can’t even understand the language – for
example, in Moscow in an underground
place. “People can feel it.”
Now, under the direction of Anapela
Polataivao, a revised version is part of the
New Zealand Festival.
The six female characters
originally played by Avia
are being played by six
actresses.
“There is a young girl,
there is a really mean
aunty, there is a gossipy
aunty, there’s the village
slut – there’s a whole
array of women.”
The words are the
same, but the work has
expanded. “Anapela is an
incredibly gifted director
and she has let it fly in
a much fuller way – it’s
quite extraordinary.”
Avia says that some of the material is
particular to Samoan culture, but it also
universal. “It is not special to us – it is
human. While it talks about sexual and
child abuse, it also talks about love and
sex, relationships and gossip. “There is
a lot of humour in there – albeit a little
dark.”
“One of the things I really love aboutthis play is that Samo-
ans laugh at it. That is
something we do, we
laugh at our pain.”
Reconciling both
her Samoan and palagi
heritage has been a
major struggle in her
life. “I always thought
of it as a curse when
I was growing up – I
grew up in the 70s and
80s in a very white, very conservative
Christchurch. I was obviously this big
brown girl, so I never fitted in. Everyone
made that very clear to me: every teacher,
every parent and just about every friend
made that extremely clear to me. But in
the end, it was to my advantage as an
artist.”
In her twenties, she lived in Samoa
and made the painful discovery thatshe was not accepted as a Samoan.
Acceptance came in her thirties
when she realised that she had “one
foot in both worlds, but was outside
both. As an artist, that gives you a
great perspective, because you know
both worlds, but you are outside
both, so you can write with real
authority.
“Negotiating the tension and
movement between those two worlds
speaks to everyone of mixed race –
actually, not just mixed race but mixed
identity of whatever kind. It is across the
human spectrum – I don’t think there
are many of us who are so sure of our
identity.” lWild Dogs Under My Skirt, by Tusiata Avia,
directed by Anapela Polataivao, New Zealand
Festival, Hannah Playhouse, Wellington,
March 7-11.At home in
two worlds
ROBERT GEORGE; HAYLEY THEYERSStacey Leilua, who plays
Tusiata Avia in Wild
Dogs Under My Skirt.Performance poet Tusiata Avia.