KEY POINTS:
Auckland actor-writer-director Dianna Fuemana has travelled the world staging the plays which have made her a standout among New Zealand's accelerating wave of young Pacific Island talent. She has worked in Scotland, London, Hawaii, Greece, the United States and Australia, and has had writer's residencies in Massachusetts, Minneapolis and Niue.
Her CV includes plays The Packer, Frangipani Perfume, Mapaki and My Mother Dreaming. So a two-week stint as a dramaturge and mentor at the World Interplay festival for playwrights should have been a breeze. Not so.
"I'm only four and a half hours away from home, but I've never felt more away from home than being here in Townsville," says Fuemana on the phone from the festival, which wound up on Tuesday.
The conference, which has been running every two years since 1985 and is mooted as an international "creative incubator ... to encourage and nurture the next generation of playwrights", this year features writers from around the world, including China, Croatia, Turkey, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Britain, Indonesia and Singapore. While there are participants from Australia, and even nine people from the Royal Court Theatre in London, there is something missing from this most recent lineup.
"Apparently I am the first Pacific Islander to attend," says Fuemana, "but what's even weirder is that there are no Aboriginal writers or tutors at the conference. Where are they? No one will say. People have raised that issue - well, it's been me that has raised it.
"The Aboriginal element is really missing. It seems like it's a deliberate choice for Aboriginals not to come. When we first arrived [the Howard government] had made that law about banning alcohol in the Northern Territory and taking the military in. At first I felt like coming back home. I don't know what I'm supporting by being here in the political sense."
Fuemana's trip to Townsville, suggested by Playmarket and funded by Creative New Zealand's Pacific Arts Committee, placed her as a mentor-tutor within Interplay's structure of six base groups, each workshopping six plays by six young writers. Its advantages, for her, have been to develop her international network, meeting people like British writer Tanika Gupta, who has scripted for TV series EastEnders, Grange Hill, Crossroads and The Bill, as well as a number of highly regarded plays.
"That was really inspirational, working with another person of colour in the role of dramaturge and mentor. I'm going to try and get her over to New Zealand to do workshops with Maori and Pacific Island writers.
"I am discovering my skills as a dramaturge, working on such an assortment of scripts. And in terms of networking, I've met some incredible people. I feel I have been able to make some solid connections whereby I am perhaps able to invite or suggest to people to come to New Zealand to offer these workshops."
The downside, apart from the lack of Aboriginal representation, has been the reminder of racism in Australia. "There were racial comments coming from the Australian delegation that were affecting quite a few people within the festival," says Fuemana. "So I rocked up to [Interplay director] David Berthold and told him he needed to call his people in and tell them to pull their heads in because they were the hosting country and it would be horrible for people to walk away from this conference feeling that Australians are very racist."
The racist comments, she explains, "were not even deliberate".
"We have a couple of Kenyan writers here and a black writer from England. A girl was in a group situation and she'd say things like, 'My mother always said never to sleep with a black man because they have Aids'. Another one said, 'Please tell the Kenyans they have BO.'
"They don't seem to realise that what they are saying, other people find offensive and when you are the only person of colour in that group you are going to think, 'Do they think that about me?' There is no awareness.
"When I've pointed it out to them, they say, 'Oh, we're Australians, we're open, we're free.' By and large most Australians are not like that at all but there are a few that are. It has been an interesting time here for me, as a Pacific writer from New Zealand. I've been giving it to them."
* Director David Berthold has not responded to an email request to comment on the lack of any Aboriginal presence at the festival.
