Playwright finds inspiration in real-life events

Dianna Fuemana. Picture / Richard Robinson

What's the saying? Learn to walk before you run. It's the reverse for super-busy writer-director Dianna Fuemana.

Last week she finished rehearsals at a college for her new play Her Mother Dreaming when the cast realised they had left the stereo behind. It was dusk, and as Fuemana started running back though the gateway, she fell over the security chain that had just been put up, and smacked face down into the gravel.

Her friends found her lying on the ground, blood pouring from her face. Aside from cuts - her lower jaw is covered by bandages - x-rays have revealed a hairline fracture of her jaw, and the doctor told her he was amazed she hadn't broken her neck. From now on, rushing around is out.

"I will walk where I need to get to."

Fuemana has done a lot of rushing around over the past 15 years. She was a single mother of two by the age of 18, and her babies - now taller than she is - have always been her priority.

Somehow she's made the time to study for diplomas in drama and arts management, a certificate in television and video production, higher teaching diplomas in dance and drama, and a masters degree in drama. As if that isn't enough, she has written, directed, acted in and toured three highly regarded plays, Mapaki, Jingle Bells and The Packer. She also works as an arts-projects officer for the Auckland City Council. "It's a big juggle," she agrees. 

Fuemana is not appearing in Her Mother Dreaming, but she wrote the script and is directing the drama about the complicated relationships between a Niuean woman, her depressed daughter, and that young woman's growing-up-fast son, who has never had much to do with his father, a high-profile sports star about to remarry.

Susan Lei'ataua plays the older woman May; Stacey Leilua the barely coping daughter Lisa; and Michael Koloi is Sam, the son who wants to leave his mother in Auckland to go to university in Dunedin.

As Sam says in the play, "I just can't handle it any more. Children aren't supposed to look after depressed mothers for years on end."

Sam is a beacon in Lisa's life, the only positive male role model referred to in the play.

One of the most dramatic revelations was triggered by a real-life court case in Auckland last year, involving a sports star. Fuemana says when she read about the case, she was shocked.

"I was heart-broken by that story but it affirmed my decision to write a play like this."

Fuemana started thinking about Her Mother Dreaming when she was at the Edinburgh Festival last year with a sell-out season of The Packer. International performances are an important part of her career.

She has also taken work to the International Women's Playwright Festival in Athens, Hawaii, the United States and Australia.

"Those experiences were so invaluable for me as a Pacific woman travelling. Once I arrived, I was a Niuean woman and secondly the value - because the work is different ... a new form - is high. It gave me a lot of confidence to continue to write. It's much harder when you do it in your own home town. Going away builds my powers."

She is heartened by the news that all of the school matinees for Her Mother Dreaming have sold out to schools across the Auckland region. "A lot of those schools came to The Packer and the kids loved it," beams Fuemana. "They identified with it and that is really special to me. In that young audience are our future film-makers and theatre-makers. If they are inspired by this fusion of cultures within a work, that is going to set off the movement, of not being afraid to show what we know is around us."

But kids, a warning. Walk, don't run. 

*  My Mother Dreaming, by Dianna Fuemana is at the Herald Theatre, Aug 9-14; Tue-Sat 8pm, Sun 6pm