Cian Parker brings her show Sorry For Your Loss to OneOneSix in Whangārei next week, in what will be her first visit to Northland.
Cian Parker spent many years wondering if the Māori man who’d just walked past her on the street could be her father from Northland.
Eventually she did meet her father and the story will play out next week at OneOneSix when she brings her show Sorry For Your Loss to Whangārei.
It will also be the Hamilton-born 29-year-old’s first time in Northland, where she hopes to discover more about the family she never knew.
“I have many connections to other family members but I’m hoping, by coming up there, I can connect a bit more. I’m hoping to go and visit some family and maybe visit my marae and my maunga.”
Sorry For Your Loss was created in 2019, subsequently being nominated for Most Grand Design and Best in Fringe, with Parker winning Most Promising Emerging Artist at the 2020 New Zealand Fringe Awards. After Parker took a break during lockdown restrictions, the show is hitting the road again, this time with a sign language-interpreted version integrated throughout.
Described as a heartfelt and hilarious story about growing up on the mean streets of Aotearoa with a sometimes-there, mostly-not dad, Parker shares her story about reclaiming her heritage when she is unexpectedly introduced to a father and a family she didn’t know existed.
“We met briefly when I was 9,” she shares. “I mean, it went well … I guess it’s as people would suspect; a little bit awkward but a little bit of excitement. It all plays out in the show – there’s the childhood filling in the gaps and longing to connect with my Māori culture and trying to find where I belong.”
Raised by her mother and the eldest of six, Parker grew up in a low socioeconomic setting but with a close-knit community. As far as Parker knew at the time, she was the only member of the family to take an interest in performing arts. She took drama through high school, before being granted a scholarship in theatre at the University of Waikato.
She graduated with a bachelor of secondary teaching and a bachelor of arts, double majoring in English and theatre. She was a secondary school teacher for a year before a programme was launched between Creative Waikato and Creative New Zealand for local artists to develop new works with mentorship. She submitted her idea, it was accepted and she stepped away from teaching to use the grant to tour the show.
However, this wasn’t before a rewrite came about after a serendipitous encounter with a family member from her dad’s side.
“I like to tell real stories,” Parker explains. “Real people on stage getting the spotlight with mundane stories. I was interested in what it meant to be bicultural, the idea of having a foot in two worlds but never landing in either. I brought this idea to Victor Rodger, who was a mentor at the programme. He said, ‘That’s been done a lot, how can you make it yours?’
“Across the table was my niece technically and, although we had Facebooked each other, we had never met before.
She was working as a professional actor: “It turned out performing ran in my dad’s family – and for this programme, we got to workshop our ideas with professional actors for a weekend intensive.
“My niece was hired as one of the professional actors and they needed another actor so she reached out to me to see if I could do it but I realised I was already going to be there as one of the participants workshopping work!
“So the first time we met face-to-face was during Victor’s writing session. Victor picked up on those vibes and was like, ‘What the heck is going on?’ And the story of my relationship with my dad, who is her relation as well, came out and Victor said, ‘Okay, that’s interesting. This is the show’.”
The show became about growing up without connection to whakapapa (genealogy) from birth until her early 20s and she teamed up with director and dramaturge Laura Haughey, who “brought life into it”.
Parker explains: “I’ve lived the story, it was all autobiographical, then Laura came in and has an eye for the correct emotional gear shifts and she was able to direct me physically in movement while I brought in the dialogue and we were able to sew the story together.
“I don’t think I could make a show without a dramaturge in the room, someone who sits a little bit further back and watches from an audience perspective but they’re looking at the whole picture.
“You feel a lot and you have instinct but the dramaturge is saying, ‘You’re feeling that emotion but we, as an audience, haven’t quite got there yet so maybe we can build that in’.”
The title Sorry For Your Loss was taken from a Facebook message shown in the play about a loss of culture, loss of memory-making and a loss of relationships.
The show is accompanied by live music from Andrew Duggan, while the set itself is fairly bare, with only five pieces of rope hanging from the ceiling, which Parker says was purposefully done.
“It was just me and Laura and a bare room and I had to build the world. In the opening of the show, I walk out as the actor Cian and slowly I will set the scene for them with very few details in terms of dialogue,” she says, describing how in one scene she is at a Kiwi garage party and will physically show that the floors are sticky.
“I will see other people and, through my interactions with them, they can see what kind of vibe it is. I have an idea of what this garage looks like, what I’m drinking, is it cold, is it hot, but I think the beauty of this show is it’s actually just me in front of some rope moving around so the audience are able to then place their ideas of a Kiwi garage party. We are building the world together.”
Parker plays multiple characters, including herself at different stages, a neighbour, her mother and her father, whose character her niece was instrumental in guiding her with, having known him well.
“She knew him much better than I did so she was amazing at helping me play him. I think, as a story, it’s been really important for me that, on paper, it might seem like he was a distant or absent father but the show itself is a recognition that he was a guy and, through no fault of his own, life pulled him in a different direction to where I was at. The crux of the show is that your parents are human and they do their best.
“If somebody can walk away from watching any of my pieces and feel seen or feel like they can recognise themselves or someone they know in that story or the story itself, that’s a good sign that I’m telling the story that should be told.
“I’m not here just to give you a nice night out and a laugh and then, as soon as you walk out the door of the theatre you forget about it and you go on about your day. I want the piece to be able to talk beyond me and if I can do that then I think it’s got a bit more power.”
After its hiatus, the show toured to Melbourne and is set to go to Canada in September. However, Whangārei is the place Cian has always longed to bring it.
“We have tried to bring it up but it was all during Covid. I’ve never been more north than Auckland so it’s my first time and I’m pretty excited, it feels like full-circle.”
Parker will be spending about a week in Northland and performing Sorry For Your Loss over two nights on August 15 and 16. The show runs from 7pm-8pm at OneOneSix. Tickets can be purchased from Eventfinda.