Tusiata Avia's Wild Dogs finally return home to Christchurch

Friday, 26 July 2019

Wild Dogs Under My Skirt is a story specific to Pacific women but its themes are universal says multi award-winning poet, author and performer, Tusiata Avia.

Today Christchurch, tomorrow New York.

Tusiata Avia's multi award-winning play Wild Dogs Under My Skirt is being staged as part of the Christchurch Arts Festival but this week it has been announced that in January it will head to New York, off Broadway.

Based on Avia's visceral and deeply personal poetry, the play celebrates island life while exploring themes of cultural divides, abuse, racism, politics, sex and love. It's fierce, fun, ruthless and unapologetic.

It's a special story that is specific to Pacific women but its themes are universal.

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Avia first performed it in Christchurch as a solo show in 2003.

Wild Dogs has three shows as part of the festival this week, including a pre-festival show in Aranui at the Haeata Community Campus as a nod to Avia's 'Aranui roots'. The final show is on Saturday night at The Piano.

It's only the second time in 16 years Wild Dogs Under My Skirt has been performed in Christchurch, the city where Avia, a poet, author and performer, grew up.

Avia performed it as a solo show from 'Moscow to Jerusalem' from 2002 to 2008. Since 2016 it has been transformed into a play featuring a cast of six women. Performed around the world, it has garnered critical acclaim and a stack of awards.

Tusiata means 'artist' in Samoan and Avia is a national treasure who has held prestigious writer residencies nationally and internationally. She was the 2013 recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award and, in 2017, her work Fale Aitu was shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards.

Wild Dogs' producer, prestigious playwright Victor Rodger, who is also Avia's cousin, alongside award-winning director Anapela Polata'ivao, who also plays Teine Sa in the show, has transformed the production into a powerful six-woman show.

'Anapela is incredible, she is amazing at what she does, she and Victor have both taken it to the next level and continue to polish it and rework it and learn after every show,' says Avia.

It won Best Director, Best Production and Best Lighting Design at the recent Auckland and Wellington Theatre Awards.

Audiences around the globe have greeted the play with acclaim, shock and delight, but in 16 years, despite its success, it has not been performed in Christchurch.

If you ask Avia why this is so, the answer she offers is initially diplomatic. But the short answer is 'racism'.

'People think 'oh, that's a Pacific thing',' she explains. 'Not a theatre thing.'

Avia, 53, says growing up in Christchurch in the 70s and 80s with a Palagi mother and Samoan father in the Muldoon era was tough.

'It was a nasty time to be a Pacific Islander.'

As a child she was unhappy to live in Christchurch and recalls she was 'gagging to get out' from around the age of 7.

Back then she wasn't known as Tusiata. Everyone knew her as Donna, not her 'brown name'.

'The biggest thing is racism, it's just ridiculous. The relationship with me and Christchurch… it has always been so difficult, I have always found Christchurch a really difficult place to be. It's conservative and it is overwhelmingly white,' says Avia.

'All you have to do is step out of the airport in Auckland and then step out of the plane in Christchurch and you know that you are in two very different places.'

But life keeps bringing her 'back to Christchurch'.

'The last two years I've been here have been the most settled I have ever had. I feel the happiest in Christchurch that I ever have. It has taken me this long, from the age of 7 to 50, to come to terms with Christchurch. It still p….s me off but I've been able to come to terms with it.'

In the early days, she'd pour herself out on stage, performing the solo show. Now she often sits in the audience and admires Polata'ivao's work as six actors tell the story she knows so well.

Avia, who is working on a new book, has epilepsy which is not controlled by medication and, as a result, has had seizures, leaving her with a number of head injuries and concussions which have had a huge impact on her daily life.

'It is such a drag… I end up with broken bones and mashing my head,' she says. 'It means I can't drive.'

She is uncertain if she will be able to travel to New York to see her creation off Broadway.

'Airports are always difficult places for me,' says. 'But taking Wild Dogs to New York next year is something I am so pleased about and looking forward to.'

But for now it's time to conquer Christchurch.

'It was really important to me to do a show here, especially at the Haeata campus, I grew up in Aranui and went to school there,' says Avia. 'I had to do it there.'

Christchurch Arts Festival, July 26-August 4. Wild Dogs Under My Skirt by Tusiata Avia: 7pm. Friday, July 26, 7pm at The Piano; Saturday, July 27, 7pm at The Piano. Tickets available from Ticketek.co.nz. See Christchurch Arts Festival for details.

Wild Dogs Under My Skirt

I want to tattoo my legs.

Not blue or green

but black.

I want to sit opposite the tufuga

and know he means me pain.

I want him to bring out his chisel

and hammer

and strike my thighs

the whole circumference of them

like walking right round the world

like paddling across the whole Pacific

in a log

knowing that once you've pushed off

loaded the dogs on board

there's no looking back now, Bingo.

I want my legs as sharp as dogs' teeth

wild dogs

wild Samoan dogs

the mangy kind that bite strangers.

I want my legs like octopus

black octopus

that catch rats and eat them.

I even want my legs like centipedes

the black ones

that sting and swell for weeks.

And when it's done

I want the tufuga

to sit back and know they're not his

they never were

I want to frighten my lovers

let them sit across from me

and whistle through their teeth.