With its diversity, depth and quality, Auckland's Pacific theatre talent deserves - nay, demands - even more support. Other recent highlights: in March, Victor Rodger's Black Faggot dominated the Auckland Fringe Festival awards. In May, Michelle Johansson of the Black Friars group directed icon John Kneubuhl's Hawaiian play, Mele Kanikau - A Pageant, at the University of Auckland fale. In August, experimental theatre-maker Louise Tu'u was one of five members on the jury at Zurcher Theater Spektakel in Switzerland, an important performing arts festival. Lauded new works, classics and international prestige - all there.
This month, Auckland sees not one but three Pacific plays. Oscar Kightley and Erolia Ifopo's hilarious Romeo and Tusi, with a charismatic cast of talented Wellington Whitireia graduates, has just ended, while another revival, Dianna Fuemana's Birds, is at the Basement from Tuesday. The world premiere of Iaheto Ah Hi's Digital Winds is at Mangere from September 24.
Fuemana, a pioneering Niuean-New Zealand playwright, sees revivals as a sign of maturation: Pacific plays aren't disappearing when their playwrights move on. All three plays this month show young urban Pacific life, a trend which, she says, has grown out of earlier migration stories and broad comedy.
All happy then? Not quite. Pacific play seasons are usually short, and the Mangere venue is often cold. The new waterfront ATC theatre is unlikely to have this problem.
