Emerging practitioners’ stories

Third-generation practitioners’ sense of history is radically different from second-generation practitioners’ views on Pasifika history. Emerging Pasifika theatre practitioners write about more contemporary stories rather than about first-generation migration stories. This shift in ‘history’ became evident in the last decade of Pasifika theatre, where migration stories only emerge in second-generation practitioners work. Victoria Schmidt, whose first play debuted in 2012, explained that migration stories are less relevant for her generation:

As much as I respect migration stories, I write about how far we've come from that era. Migration stories are a big part of Pacific theatre, however, I really believe I'm different in the way that I write and what I see. I like to write about […] our people that didn't make the dream of the milk and honey. You come to South Auckland and you see the generation of the migration era, and a few of them didn't make it. Some are begging outside for coins next to Lil Abners in Papatoetoe, some are selling themselves behind a club in Manurewa, selling drugs, locked up in jail. (SCH)

Pasifika people have come far from the lived experiences of migration and its immediate aftermath, explained Schmidt, yet the milk and honey dream is inscribed in the stories of emerging

practitioners. A long-term effect of migration, described as the loss of hope, and bitter

disappointment with the ‘milk and honey dream’ are frequent narratives in contemporary Pasifika plays. Yet, for emerging practitioners, migration is reduced to the starting point of a contemporary narrative through which Pasifika people’s disillusionment with life in New Zealand can be expressed. In fact, stories of the Pacific Islands are largely absent from this generation’s sense of history. In effect, for third-generation practitioners migration became the start of Pasifika history. The implication of this analysis is that Pasifika history only goes back two generations for these practitioners, and what was before is not mentioned:

Immigration is my grandparents’ story. I do not really have the right to it, because it is not my story. I still enjoy hearing about that experience. It was my grandparents who came from the Islands, and their migration story is always interesting for me. But for us it’s more so about who were here now in our community, what’s it like in South Auckland, what is a

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day like in South Auckland. It is not an immigration story, but surviving paying the bills, family and kids – that’s our world now and that’s the story we tell. (LEI)

The history of Pasifika people in South Auckland started with migration, and third-generation practitioners explained that they have little interest or knowledge of what was before. Thus it is a valid assumption that the rupture caused by migration reduced Pasifika people’s sense of history by breaking it off from centuries of history in the Pacific Islands generation by generation.

Carter pointed out that third-generation practitioners often come from a multiethnic background. Consequently they felt that Pasifika theatre should express their multiethnic background and Carter exclaimed: ‘why can’t you have a Fijian Cook Island theatre experience?’ (CAR_A). At the same time, Chandra argued that third-generation practitioners ‘assimilated into the Western traditions

and have some loss of Pacific identity’, which Pasifika theatre would reflect. Evolving trends in Pasifika theatre, such as the growing importance of identification with one’s specific background and gender identity suggest that second-generation practitioners speculation may be true, but these trends are still young and therefore no conclusions can be drawn yet. Nevertheless, these trends suggest a seemingly paradoxical development: while practitioners acculturated more into New Zealand, they also started to be more interested in their specific cultural background and identity. The development, however, is not paradoxical if one sees it as a growing importance of

individualism: the more third-generation Pasifika are acculturated, the more they take on

individualistic perspectives of New Zealand society, and as a result, their focus shifts towards their own specific and individual cultural heritage and identity.

Third-generation migrants described an acute sense of double identity, which was created by moving between two worlds:

Aumua Because we are torn between two cultures: at home traditional Pacific Islander, outside is the outside world.

Fulop What do you mean by traditional?

Aumua Traditional is our Samoan world, culture, how things are done traditionally, church, respect our elders, use of Samoan language, certain mannerism, how we carry ourselves in public. (AUM)

Samoan traditions are still alive in Samoan communities but third-generation practitioners also participate in the outside world, through schooling, university, sports, and friends. Unlike second- generation practitioners, they do not consider their ability to move between European and Pasifika cultures as a skill, but as a given. Such change from one generation to the other is a sign of ever growing acculturation of Pasifika people. Nevertheless, they remain reverse chameleons, because even though young Pasifika theatre makers live in a space between two cultures and identities, they

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feel they stand out in both. They stand out in New Zealand because they are Pasifika and in their families because they are more acculturated than previous generations.