Second-generation perspectives

New Zealand is the land of milk and honey. Plenty jobs.

Plenty women. Plenty good times.

Good education for the kids. Don’t need visa.

No problem just get your airfare! (Fuemana, 2008, p. 68)

Second-generation practitioners comprise the majority of Pasifika theatre practitioners, and while their time in theatre has not come to an end, they were critical of themselves as well as the next

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generation of practitioners. Second-generation practitioners explained that they already told the stories of first and second-generation Pasifika people, who migrated for ‘plenty job’ and ‘good education for the kids’ (ibid). They argued that that migrant identities and dreams were prominent in early Pasifika theatre, and used the expressions ‘the migrant dream’ and ‘looking for the land of milk and honey’ to describe their parents’ reasons for migration (KIG; MAN; IFO). The migrant dream for Pacific people was to gain better socio-economical position in New Zealand for themselves and their offspring. As a result, first-generation parents had high expectations for their children and expected then to become ‘doctors and lawyers’ (ANO1; KIG; MAI).

First-generation migrants’ hardship was portrayed vividly in the work and personal stories of Pasifika theatre practitioners, who were born in New Zealand or migrated at a young age (MUA_T; KIG; MAI). Plays in the first decades of Pasifika theatre, including Fresh off the Boat, and The Songmaker’s Chair, were concerned with the question of positioning and migration to New Zealand, as Manusaute described: ‘who we are in New Zealand? [...] why and how did we come here?’ (MAN). While early plays drew attention to the disillusionment of early migrants, they also expressed a romanticised purpose of migration: their parents’ move to New Zealand was associated with the aim to create a better future for their children (KIG; MUA_T).

Second-generation practitioner’s concept of Pasifika history consisted of their parents’ stories about migration and life in the Pacific Islands. This history was often idealised, a fact highlighted by Pasifika plays. In Frangipani perfume Pomu, who has never left New Zealand, explains her vision of Samoa to her sisters:

It’s not cold like here. The median average is 27 degrees… that means, the winter is like our hottest summer. Dad says at night, there are millions of stars and you can see them clearly, pulsating light that could be thousands of years old.

(Urale & Fuemana, 2004, p. 6)

Pomu imagines Samoa as an idealised far away paradise, and her irritated sisters, who have been to Samoa, got tired of explaining to her that Samoa is nothing like that. Pomu’s only connection to her history is this image of Samoa. Pomu, like many second-generation Pasifika, learned stories of Samoa from parents, for whom such stories are stories of loss. First-generation migrants’ stories are often idealised and they equally reflect migrants’ longing for the lost Islands and their

disappointment with life in New Zealand. Like the previous generation, second-generation practitioners use images of the Pacific Islands to reflect on Pasifika people’s lives in New Zealand. Manusaute, after coming back from Samoa to New Zealand, described Samoa in an idealised way:

Fuck [sic], what did we come here [to New Zealand] for? When I went back home [Samoa], it’s like man, why did we left this place. This [New Zealand] is a harder place for my people.

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There are so many rules there is so many laws to live by. We are not the king of our jungle here, because there is another king, we just try to fit in, mould in. And most of our people fail. (MAN)

The image of Samoa is compared to New Zealand, and ‘what did we come here for’ is a criticism of Pasifika people’s socioeconomic conditions, rather than a praise of Samoa. Thus, second-generation practitioners used the Pacific Islands and pre-migration history to contrast them with the present. The function of the Pacific Islands in history as a mythic homeland was secondary to their purpose to emphasise hardship in New Zealand.

Plays and practitioners’ comments evoke images of an idealised collectivist Pacific society partly to criticise New Zealand society. Nawalowalo, whose play Vula followed the natural and organic rhythm of Fijian time, explained that in Fiji, women’s lives revolve around the sea. Women fish, wash and gossip near the sea. Pomu in Frangipani Perfume imagined a Pacific paradise, and Charles, the recent migrant in Fresh off the Boat, wished he had never left Samoa. Manusaute yearned for the safety that comes from a sense of community and extended family:

We are the children of the taro plantations; we had all our families there. My family left our taro plantation when I was 9, put me on a plane and brought me here. Thirty years later I’m still asking questions…When I went back home, [I thought to myself] man, why did we leave this place? (MAN)

Such longing for the lost paradise, whether real or imagined, is linked to the present. The question ’why did we leave this place?’ criticises life in New Zealand rather than migration. The above- mentioned plays, questioning the benefit of migration, tacitly work as criticisms of New Zealand society, characterised as it is by broken communities and lack of support networks. Migration thus broke the imagined harmony of the Pacific Islands. Plays about first-generation Pasifika, such as Fresh off the Boat and Frangipani perfume, are about finding one’s place in a new culture, searching for a new support network, and trying to continue life as it used to be in the Pacific. Thus longing for the lost Pacific was to a real degree synonymous with yearning for large collectivist communities. Idealised images of the Pacific Islands suggest that Pasifika theatre practitioners are disillusioned with New Zealand, and feel like outsiders in New Zealand society; as Manusaute put it, they are not the ‘kings’ of the kiwi jungle (MAN). Outsider status is combined with a feeling that Pasifika people lack authority and control in New Zealand, because they are unable to generate social change. Lees pointed out that in the late seventies Pasifika people’s position had not changed since he was a child, and Kightley and Manusaute both characterised social change as slower than expected for Pasifika populations. In Pasifika plays, characters often work blue-collar jobs, in factories (The Factory), as cleaners (Frangipani Perfume), or in supermarkets (Once were Samoans). New Zealand was no longer perceived as the land of milk and honey, but as a land of unfulfilled promises. Plays

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such as Fresh off the Boat, The Factory, and Frangipani Perfume expressed disappointment with apparent lack of change. Practitioners I interviewed argued that it was especially visible from them, as artists:

Nah, nothing has changed. I’ve been here for 30 years still it’s the same. We still have to struggle. […] When I think I am an artist my eyes kind of open to what society has to offer. […] Problems left, right and centre. You know, like what has changed? It is the same government, the same thing. (MAN)

Pasifika people’s hardship is partly attributed to consecutive governments’ ineffectiveness and failed acculturation attempts. Manusaute was adamant that his experiences can be described in the last thirty years as the same ineffective government and same social issues, , and emerging playwrights expressed a similar opinion. Smith’s play, Music and Me, portrayed the hardship of today’s

generation through the themes of poverty, drug abuse, prostitution, and illness. Practitioners including Manusaute, Michelle Muagututi’a, Kightley, and Maiava emphasised that social issues reappear in Pasifika plays because Pasifika people’s position in New Zealand is upsetting to practitioners. New Zealand was described as a society where Pasifika people do not ’fit’, but they attempted to acculturate to gain more influence and become insiders. It is, again, an image of a reverse chameleon, because practitioners want to fit in in the kiwi jungle, but they have not yet acculturated (or are unable to acculturate) and thus stand out.

Second-generation practitioners also described themselves as outsiders in Samoa. Thus, second- generation practitioners do not fit anywhere – they are outsiders in New Zealand and outsiders in Samoa. One participant returned to Samoa on several occasions, and noted that she felt more comfortable living in a holiday resort, than in her ancestors’ village. In Samoa, she felt like an outsider because of the gap between her urbanised lifestyle in New Zealand and life in the village in Samoa (ANO1). A similar experience is explained in The Songmaker’s Chair, when one of the sons, Fa’amau, who went to boarding school in New Zealand, opens up to his mother years after he spent a few years in Samoa:

Fa’amau: You remember the three years Joan and I spent teaching in Samoan? She [Malaga, the mother] nods.

Fa’amau: I hated most of it. She looks shocked and hurt.

Fa’amau: I couldn’t wait to get out and come home. I was the one who wanted to leave. Not Joan…She didn’t go there with the romantic baggage you raised us on.

(Wendt, 2004, p. 52)

Fa’amau, like the second-generation Samoan practitioners interviewed, learned about Samoa through his parents, and was disappointed to realise that their memories were idealised and had

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little in common with reality. Thus, second-generation practitioners described themselves as double- outsiders: they do not quite fit in New Zealand and they do not belong to the Pacific Islands either. Second-generation practitioners’ group was transitional, because migration was not a choice they themselves had made, but still they felt that they did not fully acculturate to New Zealand society either. Many of their stories50 were about searching for one’s cultural identity and about fitting in in New Zealand. However, Kightley argued, Pasifika theatre needed to stay relevant: ‘and that is why I want to see new stories. I don’t want to see a story about a daughter who wants to be a dancer, but her mom wants her to be a doctor. We already told those stories‘(KIG). Kightley saw career choices as a typically second-generation problem and he called for ‘new stories’. Second-generation practitioners unanimously argued that young practitioners should move on and renew Pasifika theatre. Thus, because Pasifika theatre is young, practitioners are able to see clear trends, and influence the development of the theatre movement. Second-generation practitioners wanted younger practitioners to move away from migration stories. In the context of their emphasis on shift from migration stories it became clear that these practitioners see the development of Pasifika theatre as parallel to Pasifika people’s history in New Zealand. Thus, in this regard, Pasifika theatre is a continuation of storytelling traditions in the Pacific, because one of their primary functions is regarded as passing on history. Kightley’s call for new stories reinforced Pasifika theatre’s educational purpose:

Our theatre has to be, our culture, storytelling a living thing, the kid have to be telling these stories, different than the stories we told. I would not want to go to the theatre today and see the same stories we told because I would have hoped that we moved on from there. (KIG)

Therefore, while Kightley wanted theatre to mirror current experiences of Pasifika theatre, he also emphasised that Pasifika theatre’s function is storytelling. Through this function, Pasifika theatre gains an educational purpose, which practitioners’ statements about younger generations’ ignorance of Pasifika history magnify into a serious social problem. As Pasifika history is only marginally

incorporated in the New Zealand school curriculum, future generations lack of knowledge could result in further loss of Pasifika identity. At the same time, if future plays do not write about Pasifika history, Pasifika theatre could become a mirror or catalogue of history, and as plays are rarely performed again, it could lose its educational function.

Today, Pasifika theatre is in an in-between stage, where second-generation practitioner’s stories have been told, and third-generation Pasifika theatre practitioners are not yet heard. From their

50 _{Such as: Fresh off the Boat, Le Matau, Horizons, The Frigate bird sings, Dawn Raids, Niu Sila, Once were}

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own experiences, second-generation practitioners emphasised that beginner playwrights use theatre therapy and often write about immediate themes that the writers themselves need to process. Such discussion of the immediate is a forum for social issues, and serves therapeutic purposes for the writer:

When you are a writer, you tend to start with things that affect you the most, and write all that stuff down and it’s all the worst things that can happen and people do that. […] Then they pass all that and the craft takes over. Then you start inventing stories, making things up, writing beautifully. […] But it might have been something that was tackled a few other times, we managed to get out, create a new piece but the same sort of stories. (MAI) What affects young practitioners the most are often social issues; therefore plays by emerging practitioners in the 1980s and 1990s often rebelled against social conventions, criticise Pasifika culture, social hierarchies and conventions, and the church. The early years of Pasifika theatre were dominated by immediate topics second-generation practitioners wrote about; and as practitioners started out at the same time, a large proportion of works discussed social issues:

A lot of Pacific theatre was about quite heavy issues, topical, about migration, identity rites of passage, and elements of culture. They were quite furious, they were quite dark. […] Not about what the audience wants to hear, but “this is what we’re thinking and we are going to tell you”. Nowadays we [have] […] moved on just from having to tell the struggles and the issues. […] We can talk about everyday issues. We’re not pigeon holed as, you know, heavy drama. (CAR_A)

In the early years of Pasifika theatre plays were about ‘heavy issues’ and ‘were quite dark’, because second-generation practitioners used theatre for therapy rather than to entertain the audience. However, as Maiava described, these practitioners then matured and moved away from these issues, which is a natural learning curve for writers. While second-generation practitioners no longer use theatre primarily for therapeutic purposes and as a result Pasifika theatre is not ‘pigeon holed as heavy drama’, these, now experienced, second-generation practitioners identify with emerging writers who are going through the same developmental phase early practitioners experienced when they started out. Second-generation practitioners were proud that Pasifika theatre was not

stereotyped as ‘all serious’, and did not fall in the same trap as Maori theatre, which is already stereotyped as political, focused on the Treaty and the land (CAR_A). Yet another way to express Pasifika theatre’s outsider status of the bicultural framework, is practitioners’ argument that the Maori have the right to talk about ‘heavy issues’, because they are the indigenous population, and suffered injustices during the last two hundred years. Pasifika theatre may offer a unique

opportunity to observe a theatre movement development from generation to generation, because due to the unique historical circumstances practitioners start out roughly at the same time. Nevertheless, while second-generation practitioners expect another dark stage of Pasifika theatre,

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whether Pasifika theatre will go through another therapeutic phase may be too early to tell, as many of third-generation practitioners started to develop only in the last couple of years.

There was also a quantitative change in the number of active practitioners: while at the turn of the millennium there were fewer emerging new practitioners than in the 1990s, by the mid-2000s the number of practitioners and comedy troupes grew. Second-generation practitioner’s main concern was the quality rather than the quantity of work, but the increase in emerging practitioners is nevertheless seen as important for the development of Pasifika theatre:

Bruce Lee said: running water never gets stale. You have to keep the water running and that requires fresh blood, but yeah there hasn’t been much lately, there has been pockets coming out, it’s good to see and people are sort of doing stuff. (KIG)

Kightley was pleased by the influx of ‘fresh blood’, and noted that there were more and more new playwrights. The upward trend was partially a result of education, and of training schemes like Banana Boat and Young Kila Playwrights.

A fundamental difference between second and third-generation practitioners is their upbringing. Second-generation practitioners described themselves as pioneers who ‘fearlessly’ took initiative and established Pasifika theatre (KIG). But what made this generation special? Second-generation practitioners I interviewed unanimously argued that the quality of their work effected their

reputation, as Muagututi’a argued: ‘we have a strong reputation among Pacific communities, and it needs to be upheld‘(MUA_T). Pasifika theatre practitioners were taught the importance of

reputation and performing well from their early childhood. Muagututi’a remembered that in her childhood, her performance in school and church influenced her parents’ social standing in the community. These pressures intensified in Sunday School and on White Sunday, where children performed biblical stories, plays, poems, song, and dances. Muagututi’a remembered:

There was a huge pressure to be brilliant, in the community. My bro used to cry all the time – that is what I remember. And the parent pressure:”make sure your kids do well”, because parents want to be the best. It’s your name in the community. (MUA_T)

The reputation of first-generation Pasifika parents depended on their children’s performance at these occasions, and therefore children learned that they had to perform well from an early age. Such pressures were not mentioned by third-generation practitioners, and it is likely that the

second-generation was under larger pressure because Pasifika communities were in a stage of being reconstructed. Migrants arrived from close-knit communities in the Pacific Islands to New Zealand; and in the new environment communities shrunk and changed. New migrant communities in New Zealand were very close-knit, and they were built based on family, locality, ethnicity, and the church. The church became a meeting place for new migrants, a place of community building, and identity

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construction. Social hierarchies in new communities were based on a combination of traditional and new concepts, and the church became a site where new hierarchies were established and

strengthened. Children’s performances were sites of comparison, therefore second-generation practitioners were expected to become successful and make good career choices. Public donations, where ministers would read out how much money each family had given to the church were common, and they further increased competition. Maiava and other practitioners I interviewed pointed out that donating beyond one’s budget, along with the consequent detrimental effects for one’s family, became frequent among Pasifika people. On a larger scale, first-generation Pasifika wanted their children to succeed and fit in in New Zealand, which second-generation practitioners often internalised as an obligation; after all their parents left ‘paradise’ for them. This served as a strong motive to represent one’s parents, heritage and community. Kightley’s story of his parents’ generation portrays the perceived responsibility to perform well:

It was hard for our parents sometimes, but then they see you in the paper and TV, and they