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It's easy to find the Naked Samoans. Just follow the giggles. They're at the offices of bro'Town - the TV show that with Sione's Wedding launched the comedy crew into the mainstream - to rehearse for the play, Naked Samoans Go Home (Again).
The four-night season, starting on December 12, will be the long-awaited return to the theatre for the Nakeds. The live stage is where these six friends started when it was something to do so "we didn't have to get a proper job".
Between cracking jokes and hassling Robbie Magasiva about how good looking he is, they bumble around in various states of dress, getting into the band outfits they wear in the play.
Mario Gaoa is already changed and strums away on the guitar, Jerome Leota (the quietest, yet smiliest, of the bunch) plays the bongo drum, and big David Fane wanders around, occasionally stopping to act out the "clean and jerk" with a long pinch bar he's wielding.
Fane is in roadworkers' garb, complete with reflective vest, skimpy black shorts and a peaked woollen hat, because he didn't get the message about dressing up as the band for today's photo shoot. He says he's glad, considering "the gay white singlets" Robbie Magasiva has bought for them all.
"You send Robbie out to get singlets and he comes back with bras," hoots Shimpal Lelisi. They all giggle in that cheeky, bro-like fashion.
While Fane could be one of the Village People, the others look like the Samoan Chippendales with their red bow ties and pristine white singlets. Thankfully, their blue and white lava-lavas and bright orange leis bring a little decorum to their outfits.
They're looking forward to getting back on stage. As head Naked Samoan, Oscar Kightley, puts it, "Going on stage for us is like P. It's the pure form of the Nakeds because Firehorse Films makes bro'Town and South Pacific Pictures made Sione's Wedding. But on stage it's just us. It's the mates. It's where it all started, which was as a group of friends who wanted to work together on stage."
They first performed Naked Samoans Go Home (Again) in 2003 at the inaugural Auckland Festival. The story starts in "the island paradise" of Samoa where we meet a family band made up of orphaned brothers.
Sione, played by Magasiva, is the multi-talented one of the bunch, who gets a chance to try out for the Ponsonby Rugby Club (The Ponys) in Auckland. He stays with his aunty in the "urban oasis" of Mangere, joins a crew of roadworkers and sets his sights on rugby's big time. Whether he makes it or not, the Nakeds aren't saying, because they want you to go and see the show.
This is what the Herald said about it in 2003: "Oscar Kightley's Commando, Shimpal Lelisi's Boogie Wonderland, Mario Gaoa's Sperm, and Dave Fane's 'lesbian' fa'afafine Caesarean are wonderfully evolved and completely realised, as is Leota's Laho. Robbie Magasiva, though, shines like a nova among stars in his central role as the doomed Sione."
The Nakeds say this year's version will be even funnier. "We've remixed it a little bit," says Kightley.
"And when we read the script through really slowly," adds Magasiva, "there were bits in there that we missed first time around and they never really came through. So for me, we'll be bringing those moments we lost first time around and finally put them to bed."
"Give it the respect it deserves," adds Gaoa.
"It's a chance for us to put this show to bed properly. And it's also a chance for us to get back on stage and see if there's any love for us still and flex our on stage live muscles," says Kightley, who hints that they will be writing a new play next year.
"It's just like Moses going back to the mountain and having a chat to the burning bush," smirks Gaoa, impressing with this biblical reference.
"Was that Moses or Noah?" asks Kightley.
"It was Moses," retorts Gaoa. "Anyway, anyway, it's been two years since all of us were on stage together and theatre is something we enjoy immensely. It brings out different shades of us that we don't otherwise get to use in film and television. That live aspect, of having these wonderful actors around you, makes you feel alive again."
Magasiva is just looking forward to being a lad again. "Although it doesn't seem like it," he says seriously, "when we get together to go on stage, that's the only time we get to be boys and be immature."
Kightley reckons they're better actors now than first time round.
"We learned heaps doing Sione's Wedding and bro'Town, so it'll be good now that we're up-skilled to do the show again and it was always one of our favourites, and one that we felt we'd never done justice to.
"And the great thing is you can't burn theatre, so you won't be able to buy it from that dairy [in South Auckland]," jokes Kightley, referring to a dairy that was busted selling pirated copies of Sione's Wedding earlier this year.
He and the fellow Nakeds were vocal about how disappointed they were that people would buy the fake DVD version of the film.
Magasiva said he was "absolutely stoked" someone had been caught because he estimated the pirated versions had cost the film at least $500,000 in lost earnings at the cinemas.
Despite the pirating, Sione's Wedding is one of this year's local box office hits, and bro'Town has won numerous television awards in its three-series run. Both projects have made the Naked Samoans household names and Kightley recently won an Arts Laureate award worth $50,000.
While Kightley hopes people don't come along to Naked Samoans Go Home (Again) expecting to see Sione's and bro'Town, there's no doubt it will attract a new and younger audience who may never have seen them live.
Go Home (Again) was the fifth show they created together. The first was Naked Samoans Talk About Their Knives in 1998, and Kightley remembers the string of sell-out shows at the Laugh Festival in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
"We had no idea what we had," he confesses. "Our producer never saw the first show until opening night and she had no idea what we had, and she freaked out. There was this fear like, 'Shit, we've got this monologue where Dave [Fane] talks about [expletive] a horse. We could either be really good or get shit thrown at us.' So there was just that fearlessness that you have when you are young," he laughs.
"But we jumped off the cliff and people were shocked and laughing at the same time - I thought they were having asthma attacks."
Beatrice Faumuina was there, apparently. "We invited her and I remember the shock on her face afterwards. She didn't answer my calls after that," he jokes.
Gaoa: "I like how with our first shows we were doing stuff that was considered risque, and shocking, and explicit. But it was funny."
"It was the genesis of everything that we've gone on to do," continues Kightley, "but it's crazy because we still think to ourselves that it was just something we did to muck around and now it's sprung up various offshoots."
They also reflect fondly on how none of them had kids and most of them were single when they started and now, eight years on, there are six children in the Naked family and a few of the lads are married. There have been tough times too, like when Fane had a stroke during their second tour, and Kightley says it could have been the end of the Naked Samoans. "We nearly lost him, but thankfully he recovered and a year later he walked back on stage."
"We're just friends," he says, "and it's never been about people working, it's just about hanging out and doing stuff. And that's never changed and, with that as our founding stone, that's why we're still going."
Kightley says diversifying into animation and feature films - a bro'Town movie is also likely in the future - has also helped to keep them together and stay fresh.
"You don't start out wanting to create a whole new wave of New Zealand storytelling. You start out for the money," he laughs. "But now I think we've sort of learned and grown up and take things a little more seriously. But with us, unless it's fun, it just doesn't happen. And we've been really lucky we've been able to maintain that and we still laugh, even after all these years together."
And if you're wondering about the secrets behind the Naked Samoans' sense of humour, it's not rocket science. "We've really only got three jokes that we tell each other," says Kightley. "They're, ha ha ha, you're gay; ha ha ha, you farted; and ha ha ha, you like her.
"They are the three jokes we have among ourselves and we still laugh at them. We just tell different versions of them every year."
Lowdown
Who: The Naked Samoans, made up of Oscar Kightley, Mario Gaoa, David Fane, Shimpal Lelisi, Jerome Leota and Robbie Magasiva.
What: Naked Samoans Go Home (again), a play about Sione who leaves the "island paradise" of Samoa for a new life in the "urban oasis" of Mangere, South Auckland.
Where & when: The Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall, December 12-16.
See also: The movie Sione's Wedding and the TV show bro'Town.
