James Nokise: My story as told to Elisabeth Easther

Award-winning comedian James Nokise. Photo / Supplied

Following on from his acclaimed podcast series Eating Fried Chicken in the Shower, award-winning comedian James Nokise has teamed up with former rugby player John Daniell to make Fair Game, a six-part podcast investigating Pacific rugby, as well as questions of power, race and fairness. Fair Game is available on podcast platforms.

My parents met when dad was doing his PhD in Port Moresby, in Papua New Guinea. It was the late 70s and Dad was there on a scholarship from Canberra, doing some research, and my mum was a librarian at the university. My dad is Samoan and my mother is Welsh and I’m told Dad went to the library to get some books, and they were engaged a week later.

They married in England, then moved to Wellington, where the rest of my New Zealand Samoan family lived. Mum had never been to New Zealand, or met a Samoan family, but there she was in the early 80s, pregnant with me. Samoans are pretty good at making people feel welcome and, upon arrival, mum was given a bunch of pavlovas as an introduction to the family, but she had no idea what pavlova was. To try to better understand the alien world she’d landed in, Mum read Albert’s Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home, to figure it all out.

There was a lot of church in my life when I was growing up. My grandfather was one of New Zealand’s first Samoan ministers. He came over from the village of Fogapoa. He put himself through Bible College in Auckland while working at the freezing works. My dad then followed in his father’s footsteps, and he also became a minister. There are a lot of ministers in my family, and although I don’t call myself religious, I still go to the church where my dad is the minister, but primarily I go to see family, because Pacific people don’t just go to church for religion. Churches are also community hubs, so when I want to catch up with family, I wake early on a Sunday morning, I put on a good shirt and I go to church.

I was a bit of a dork at school. I loved the law and I had grand plans to be a lawyer. Also, Mum worked in the Parliamentary Council, which meant I spent some of my teenage years around drafters, so I knew I didn’t want to be a drafter. I pictured myself working in criminal defence. But I completely respected the way our laws are made and amended. I was also aware that I was quite privileged, as a Pacific Islander, to have grown up with academic parents. Even though neither of them was paid a great deal, there’s no great Nokise fortune, I grew up with books and language, which gave me the ability to pick my path, while also feeling a responsibility to do some good for my people. Then, quite accidentally, I fell into stand-up and theatre.

James Nokise, comedian and playwright. Photo / Supplied

Comedians tap into their own lives, although I did wonder if being an alcoholic who’d attempted suicide might be too dramatic, or too personal, or just a bit too much for audiences. That’s why it took me a while to be able to speak about those things, to publicly tap into my feelings of ridiculousness and to present those experiences as an extreme example of “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”.

As I’ve got older, and more experienced, I’ve learned what to share and what not to share onstage. When I was younger, something would happen, or I’d do something and I’d think, ‘This is a disaster, I’ll take it onstage.’ But the more you learn about your craft, the more you’ll see a disaster and think maybe that’s better as an anecdote for the family at Christmas, than the general public. As you get more experienced, you also learn more about making time and space for yourself to breathe, because stand-up comedy is one of the most insular art forms. In theatre you might have a small company, some solidarity from colleagues, but with comedy, apart from the green room, you’re in own head. Which is why I have huge respect for comics.

When I share personal stuff on stage, it’s usually because I want to present something in a human way that I wish I’d known when I was younger. Stories about screwing up, or being a dickhead, for lack of a better term. Most of those stories stem from my drinking days in my 20s and I’m trying to show how ridiculous my thought processes and behaviours were back then, but in a such way that anyone in the audience who’s still doing those things today, they can examine their own behaviour without feeling criticised.

I’ve hit rock bottom a few times. But the funniest thing about rock bottom, you’re never surprised to be there, but it is always a surprise that the next rock bottom is worse than the one before, because to hit rock bottom more than once, you have to find a new rock bottom. The one I hit before I stopped drinking, I didn’t think it could get worse, then about 18 months after I stopped drinking I attempted suicide. That was my last rock bottom, it happened six years ago in 2017, and I made a show about it.

For a while, my response to sobering up was to feel guilt and shame for wasting so much of my life on drinking. Then I started trying to make up for those lost years by worked so intensely I burned out, without understanding what burnout was. I count myself very lucky that, throughout it all, my parents have been very supportive, concerned without being overbearing.

James Nokise: "When I share personal stuff on stage, it’s usually because I want to present something in a human way that I wish I’d known when I was younger." Photo / Supplied

Dad’s sermons are actually quite funny and I suspect I learned some of my craft from him. He likes to tease the congregation. He’ll deconstruct the bible and make jokes. He believes that if the crowd is relaxed, they’ll listen. That’s the main performance lesson I learned from dad. Whereas Mum, she’s not a performer, but she taught me an important lesson when she said: “For God’s sake, have some fun when you’re working, otherwise what’s the point? You’ve chosen to be an artist. There are so many other jobs you could do for so little pay, so you might as well have fun when you make people laugh.” Mum suggested I should also make my job joyful but, instead, I talk about things like drinking and suicide.

It’s very important to me that my audience feels safe in amongst the laughter. If people come up to me and tell me I saved their life, or whatever, I thank them, but it’s not really me who did that, I’ve just sparked something. So I have to be sure I’ve checked my ego, because it can be really dangerous, if I start to think too highly of myself, as I definitely don’t want to get a Messiah complex.

One big thing I’ve learned from my podcast, Eating Fried Chicken In The Shower, trauma carries weight. So while it’s really beautiful when people want to share their own stories with me, they often tell me quite traumatic things. I want to listen and speak honestly with them, then I thank them, make sure they’re feeling okay, and I go have some cake. Something nice and treaty and dessert-y, because I also have to make sure I’m okay.

The arts have two main purposes, as I see it. You make art to put emotion into people who feel numb, and you also make art for those for those people who are emotionally tight, to help open up the cracks a bit and let the light in. Whether it’s a play, or stand-up or dance, watching live performance is all about human interaction, because art makes people feel less alone. To a degree, that’s why people love podcasts. You sit on a train or a bus and put your headphones on and there’s someone else there with you, and for a while, you don’t feel so numb or disconnected or alone.