Twelve Questions: Victor Rodger

Playwright Victor Rodger believes life will always leave fiction for dead. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Acclaimed writer Victor Rodger grew up in a Scottish Christian family, the illegitimate son of a teenage mum. His play Sons, written 20 years ago and being performed again in Mangere this week, is about his fight to be part of his Samoan father's family. Six months ago he thought he'd never write again.

1. Sons was based on you visiting your dying father and first seeing photos of your siblings: is your Dad still alive?
In fact what happened was my Samoan auntie rang me and told me my father was dying - erroneously as it turned out. He had had a massive blood clot and it was too close to his lungs to drain. Turns out the one thing he gave me - apart from big feet - was the same blood clotting disorder which caused his clot. This was in the late 80s. He's still very much alive, but suffering from dementia. He never saw Sons but he knew about it. I can't remember if I thanked him for my career because I've turned our f***ed up relationship into an industry. Ha ha.

2. How does growing up with an absent parent shape you?
To be honest, because mum and my grandparents did such a great job of raising me, I can't say I ever really had moments as a kid where I pined for Dad. I was a supremely indulged child. I hated my father because from an early age I could sense that he had somehow hurt my mother. The problem for me didn't really start until I tried to connect with him when I was 18 and I was suddenly confronted with this very charming, very funny man who was the same man who had seriously hurt my mother.

3. How did you get to know your siblings?
I always knew I had siblings but when I went to see Dad is when I saw a photo of them. I thought he would tell them [about me] but he didn't. I went to this travel agency where my brother was working. He is six months older than me. I got into the lift and the door opened and I could see him working in his office. I talked to him, inquired about airfares and stuff. I was so curious about getting to know him and wanting to be part of his life and wanting to be part of my father's life. It was such a confusing time. Later, I drunkenly told one of their friends [that we were siblings]. If I was older I would have had the maturity to stay back and wait to be invited in. But I sort of pushed my way into my father's family. I remember in my Dad's house there was this little gold tree which family photos hung from, and there was one empty branch and I wanted my photo to be there.

4. Do you have a relationship with your brothers now?
I do with the younger brother but the older one hasn't spoken to me since the mid-90s. It's funny, I wrote part of [Sons] as a tribute to my mum's strength but she felt so exposed having her life exposed to the world and I had never thought about that. And I wonder if that's perhaps how he felt too.

5. What did your mother teach you? And your grandmother?
My mother is all about love. And the part of me that is not a self-absorbed asshole is absolutely her. She can certainly make me go from zero to 60 like nobody's business but she is a Sons plays at Mangere Arts Centre this week, 7.30pm.rare and special woman. I get my sense of humour from her and there are few things better than crying with laughter with your mum. Both mum and Nan have taught me this: women are strong, they are survivors and they don't need a man to save them.

6. You grew up gay, Samoan and illegitimate in a born-again Christian Palagi family in Christchurch: do you still feel like an outsider?
Growing up, yes, that was absolutely the case. Mixed race. Gay. The only kid in Sunday School who couldn't speak in tongues or be knocked over by the spirit of Jesus. I did think about faking it but I figured God would know I was a faker. But I have found my people now. They are everywhere -- afakasi [half Samoan, half Palagi]. In New York, I met Albert Wendt's Jewish Samoan niece, I met a couple in Hawaii, I have my soul sister in Sydney, I have a poet afakasi here in Auckland and I have my soul brother in LA. So the outsider has found his people, and we all speak the same language.

7. When did you know you were gay?
I must've been around 8 or 9. I remember reading an article about [songwriter] Janis Ian and she was saying how she knew she was gay when she was about 11 and I distinctly remember feeling really bad that I knew at a younger age. I [came out] when I was 25.

8. What suits you better: being single or partnered up?
In a word: single. I've had one significant relationship that was on and off for about seven years. But that's it. Some people fall easily in and out of love and that's not me. I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 25. I'm not saying I was a chaste nun but 25 was my first experience of love and it was wonderful. And then it was tumultuous. After that I wasn't in a rush to enter back into a relationship unless I felt it wasn't going to be hard work all the time. Ha ha.

9. You've recently had a career break in Christchurch: what was that about?
In its very simplistic form it was stress that I created and making incredibly, horrifically bad decisions and then coming home to Christchurch for an extended cup of tea and a lie-down. I gave up on life and writing and many other things. I gave up and then turned on myself for giving up. Thought I'd never write again. I thought I was a shit writer and everything I had written was crap. I didn't shower for days at a time. Lay in bed. My counsellor would say it was depression. I'm reticent about using that word. It was one and a half years of replaying every bad thing I did since coming out of my mother's womb. I lost every ounce of confidence I had. It was hell.

10. How did you recover?
Counselling. I'm a very big proponent of counselling. But it took having the same conversation with my counsellor from October to May for my lens to shift. I feel great now.

11. Could you describe your most hedonistic night out?
Never. Not as long as my mother is alive. Well, let's just say it involved the Cannes film festival, four other people, including an Afro-Italian who kept singing the same refrain of Volare over and over again, an awful lot of alcohol, a hotel room in Antibes and a line that I later used in a Shortland Street script.

12. You've had such a complex family life and a prolific career in TV and theatre. What have you learned from it all?
That life will always leave fiction for dead.