The multi-award-winning Savage Coloniser Show is as much applauded as it is discussed in hushed tones — and for good reason.
The show — being presented today as part of Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival — brings ferocious life to Tusiata Avia’s book of the same name for which she became the first female Pasifika poet to win the Ockham Award for poetry.
It follows on from Tusiata’s internationally triumphant Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, which was part of the 2019 Tairāwhiti Arts Festival.
Her Savage Coloniser Show production is fierce, furious and as unforgiving as it is provocative.
Under the direction of the Anapela Polata’ivao, Tusiata’s unapologetic and clear-eyed examination of race and racism, the colonised and the coloniser, is full of humour, courage and lacerating truths.
“The show had rave reviews in Christchurch where many of the poems take aim. I saw the show in Wānaka and it was electrifying,” Arts Fest chief executive and artistic director Tama Waipara said.
Stacey Leilua is one of the six performers in the show and is probably best known for her role in NBC’s Young Rock. She’s had a stellar career in the arts, appearing in many Pasifika theatre productions and screen works and was also in Wild Dogs.
She said Anapela and Tusiata had had “a profound impact” on her life and career.
“They are nothing short of genius creatives in their own right,” Leilua said. “Every time we are in a working space, or even just having conversations about life and cackling away over cups of tea after a show, I am acutely aware I am in the presence of greatness and I soak up all the knowledge and wisdom I can.”
The reactions to the show — good and bad —– don’t come as a surprise to Leilua.
“It generates discussion because it pushes people’s buttons. As colonised people, many of us were raised in a society where our own indigenous knowledge, values and languages were disregarded, seen as ‘primitive’, and literally beaten out of us.
“We were brought up in a school system that essentially taught us lies,” she said.
“I still remember as a child answering questions about who discovered Aotearoa and the only ‘correct’ answer was Abel Tasman ... and that was that. Statues of white men erected around our cities made us believe we were celebrating honourable explorers when really, these men were war criminals who committed multiple atrocities and were not held accountable for them.”
She describes the show and book as “an awakening”.
“For many, it is a powerful reassurance and healing, but for others, it is confronting. Not everyone is ready to have that conversation, especially when you have lived your life benefiting from the system of colonisation. Challenging that would be uncomfortable.”
The reactions of people didn’t surprise her. Some were moved to tears, others were too stunned to speak, while others needed to go away and process things. “I understand it all. This work brings to light some really big things for a lot of people and it unearths a lot of generational pain.
“There’s a line in one of Tusiata’s poems that says, ‘New Zealand was founded on white supremacist violence’. I often think that line is a bit of an audience marker — can you accept that truth or not? A lot of people just aren’t ready for the conversation about how damaging colonisation was and is.”
-Story supplied by Tairāwhiti Arts Festival
The details
What: The Savage Coloniser Show
When: October 10, 2024
Where: War Memorial Theatre
More info and tickets: tetairawhitiartsfestival.nz/events/the-savage-coloniser-show/