The power of women — to challenge, to overcome, to nurture and to create — is being celebrated by this year's Tauranga Arts Festival amid a diverse range of voices and cultures.
Based on the poetry collection of the same name by New Zealand-born Tusiata Avia, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt is an examination and celebration of what it means to be a Samoan woman and the sometimes uneasy intersection of Samoan and Kiwi cultures. The play follows six women as they navigate religion, sexuality, clothing, domestic abuse and food, all leavened with a generous sprinkling of humour.
Still Life with Chickens is a heart-warming play about a lonely, older Samoan woman (Goretti Chadwick) living in Auckland — and the chicken (a puppet operated by Haanz Fa'avae-Jackson) that invades her vege garden. What starts out as war turns into an unlikely friendship.
"From one tired mama to another" is the subtitle of Emily Writes' best-selling book Rants in the Dark, which has now been adapted into a play. Honest, authentic and laugh-out-loud funny, the play is full of the things that every parent thinks at 4am, but would rarely be brave enough to say out loud.
