Successful, black and ready to snap

Mark Ruka, left, with co-stars Sara Wiseman and Roy Snow

Actor Mark Ruka looks slightly out of place wearing a pin-striped suit in a Mt Eden park on a humid summer day.

Everyone else around him is dressed casually - and coolly - with children round their heels begging for a turn on the slide or another go on the swings.

Ruka's appearance is a fitting irony given he appears in American playwright Neil LaBute's This Is How It Goes as an outsider.

He plays Cody Phillips, an Olympic athlete who married his flaxen-haired high school sweetheart Belinda (Sara Wiseman) and became the richest man in a small American town.

On paper, Cody should be at home in almost any social setting or situation - but he is black and acutely aware, to the point of irrationality, that his colour makes him different.

"Cody's got a cool, calm exterior but underneath he is so highly strung because he is always looking out for the people who want to cut him down because of his race," says Ruka.

"Any hint of a racial slur or racism, his temperature shoots up straight away but because he's this wealthy businessman from a good family who mixes in respectable social circles, he has got to keep a lid on it.

"He's just waiting for a moment when he can just snap."

That moment comes when a former high school classmate, played by Roy Snow, appears.

Once a fat misfit, the now slimmed-down former lawyer is vague about his reasons for returning home but it is obvious he carries an Olympic-sized torch for Belinda.

Snow's character serves as the story's self-proclaimed but unreliable narrator as LaBute cuttingly examines white attitudes to African-Americans.

The dialogue is quick and in typical LaBute fashion leaves you wondering whether you should laugh or gasp.

That, says Ruka, was what tempted him to audition. He describes the writing as layered and complex but simultaneously light and punchy.

A 2002 drama school graduate, he has spent most of the past two years filming small roles in the movies The World's Fastest Indian, River Queen and No. 2 and playing a larger part in TV One's upcoming drama Orange Roughies.

Ruka's profile will be substantially boosted but he's not sitting back.

After two years of screen work, with its chance for second takes and more subtle performance requirements, you could understand it if he had shied away from LaBute's work, which is not for the faint-hearted.

"I wanted to get back into theatre and I figured I might as well make it a baptism by fire. Yeah, I've got nerves but they are healthy and excited nerves and that's part of the process.

"I loved the challenge of playing an African American. You can't compare their culture with Maori culture.

"For starters, my ancestors came here by choice; the African Americans were ripped out of their homeland, made to live as slaves and had hundreds of years of that.

"It's not an experience that can be assimilated easily.

"Everything about their culture from the speech patterns to the world view is different to the dominant American one. Portraying the more obvious, like the accent, is only part of playing this character."

Ruka is contemplative and careful on his answers to questions about race in New Zealand. Unlike Cody Phillips, he says he is laid-back about the issue and does not go looking for inferences.

He's brave enough to admit he believes prejudice is an unfortunate but instinctive part of being human, something that afflicts everyone to a varying degree.

That, he suggests, might be hinted at in the play's title.

"Is it a question, 'This is how it goes?' which urges us to challenge the way things are or a statement, 'This is how it goes' - that we should just accept things the way they are."

Ruka entered drama school in his mid-20s with his eye firmly on television and film work. Influenced by the Hollywood action flicks he watched as a teenager, he had never been exposed to theatre.

He worked as a gardener, salesman, freezing worker and doorman before agreeing to support a friend at an acting course.

The friend did not show but Ruka completed the programme followed by a year-long course at the Wellington Performing Arts Centre and, finally, Toi Whakaari - the New Zealand Drama School.

He's quick to dismiss talk of a lack of Maori role models, saying the dearth of locally-made films or television meant there was a lack of New Zealand role models full stop.

"Up until I went to classes, I'd just done jobs to earn some money and have a good time. I never really understood that you could potentially make a career from acting.

"I can't believe it took me so long - my family said it wasn't a surprise because they always thought creative arts would suit me. I couldn't survive without it now." 


Performance

* What: This is How it Goes
* Where and when: Silo Theatre, Feb 1-25