Fifty years of tender love

Actor Aleni Tufuga is in the first major Pacific Dance Theatre production My Penina. Photo / The Aucklander.

A year after she graduated in 1997 from Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand Drama School, Fiona Collins wrote her first play Under My Mother's Mattress and was busy collaborating and acting in the groundbreaking Pacific dance theatre work Vula, with director Nina Nawalowalo.

Under My Mother's Mattress is still under the mattress, says Collins of her story about the lives of three afa kasi (half caste) sisters.

"I am still finding my way to really address the issues in that play," she says, "including incest. I do know about that ... but how do I address it without alienating the community, my community?"

So for now that first script forms just another layer in the "lasagne" of old school certificates, family secrets, fine Samoan mats and Collins' first communion dress, that has long bolstered her mother's sleeping place.

But on Monday Collins' second play My Penina opens at the Herald Theatre, in a reworked version of the "Best Play" and "hottest new thing" so feted at the 2003 Fringe New Zealand Awards.

Collins' career has included performing in a wide variety of plays, most significantly Vula, which took the Sydney Opera House by storm in 2007, followed by an extensive tour of Europe, including a 10-night season at London's Barbican Theatre. Vula combined magic and illusion with traditional song and dance - all performed on a stage flooded with water. Then there was her turn in Frangipani Perfume, The Vagina Monologues at Downstage Theatre in Wellington and Taki Rua Theatre's Awhi Tapu by Albert Betz. She has also guest-starred on TVNZ's flagship drama Shortland Street.

In spite of her successes Collins' family remained unconvinced, in 2003, of the value of their daughter's dramatic career.

"I was shunned by the family when I went to drama school in Wellington," she says. "They told me it was a waste of a brain. I was brought up strictly to be a good Samoan girl. I wasn't even allowed to take drama at school, until my last year. So I really wanted to make a work that would bring that close community into my world - to make a work for my mother and her church ladies."

At the same time she had several friends lose loved ones. Her own father had died in 1996 and she was watching her mother struggle and fail to get over his loss. So My Penina, a universal story of love and remembrance, set in the living room of an old couple contemplating their 50th wedding anniversary, was penned. Its first season was in a small venue, almost sitting room size. And the audience came and appreciated the work.

"I never envisioned it in a 'real' theatre," says Collins, of the new showing. "There have been lots of changes, a new team."

Anapela Polataivao directs and the movement component has been taken over by choreographer Justin Haiu, of Lion King and So You Think You Can Dance fame, and the newly named 2010 Manukau Pacific Dance Artist. "I have developed new levels of trust," says Collins, quiveringly. "I do trust Justin. I do! He is such a pure soul."

The lead roles, with Collins as the old woman, and Aleni Tufuga as the old man, remain unchanged. Iaheto Ah Hi plays Malae, the fa'afafine character, and Collins is also Kristina, the granddaughter.

Collins was Creative New Zealand's Artist in Residence at the National University of Samoa last year, arriving just a week before the tsunami struck, but safe on the university campus. She elected to stay on and continue the brief of mentoring, providing performance workshops and to research and write a new work.

She is now on a three-year contract to the NUS to teach performing arts within the university's Faculty of Education.

"I was brought up knowing the old Samoan ways, all the protocols," she says. "And I really respect the culture. I felt that I fell into my skin in Samoa - but the people there still ask if I am a proper Samoan.

"And it is different. Even at my most chilled I look like I have attention deficit disorder there. I am setting up my own curriculum - but there are no theatres, no resources, the people there don't even have any concept of a contemporary dance piece or a show.

"There is to be a film component in the curriculum - but the department doesn't even have a photocopier. Half the time there is no running water or power - but there is such a huge amount of talent."

PERFORMANCE

What: My Penina

Where and when: Herald Theatre, August 2-7

- NZ Herald