I Was In A Musical about Silence, PART I

HUSH, and other Sounds

The beginnings of HUSH: The Musical

Starring: Nathan Sam Pomare, Krystal Elizabeth Juffa, Jasmine Koria, Daniel Koria, Tamiana Olano, Alofau Rile, Benjamin Lelevaga, Grace Pauga Greed, Elisapeta Fepulea'i, Abbey Tofamamao Heather, Eseta Corrine Uili, and Lars Gustaf Bell 

The Official Poster for HUSH: The Musical (2023).

Two weeks ago I was in my first-ever musical. The work was a collaborative production of Brown Girl Woke, Samoa Performing Arts and Creative Excellence (S.P.A.C.E), the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC). I was a writer, vocalist and narrator/performance poet in the show. Busy does not even begin to describe this season of my life. 

At our first writing session, we, the writing team, threw around several onomatopoeic words and phrases. We knew right from the beginning that we wanted the narrative to have a poetic, lyrical flow. Think, ocean waves and sandy sea breezes. The focus of our work was to be IPV (intimate partner violence) and DV (domestic violence), and the way in which silence both perpetuates and prolongs these societal woes. We talked about the sound 'shhh' that is often heard when a child talks too loudly. 'Shh' is a very interesting expression- it can also be used to menacingly get someone's attention, or to jokingly brush off someone's attention. For some reason, as we all sat around the table making the 'shh' sound, the word 'HUSH' came to my mind. I blurted out, 'Shh sounds like HUSH!"...and everyone thankfully indulged my idea (lol). Thus, the musical got its name. And the serious work of drafting scenes, sequences, choosing songs and arranging the cast list began. 

One of the things I am most thankful for is that I starred in my first musical under amazing direction. Brown Girl Woke's Doris Tulifau and Yvette Alalatoa, and S.P.A.C.E's Valentino Maliko were an absolute dream to work for. They were visionary, perceptive, creative and super accommodating of our cast's different schedules (and personalities!). Directing and producing a musical in the developing Pacific is very different from running a show in, say, Auckland or Sydney. For one thing, you will most likely be working with artists whose 'art' is but a part-time or spare-time endeavor. Most people- especially young people- in our part of the world cannot afford to do their craft full time. The majority of our cast, and even the directors themselves, has full-time work and study schedules PLUS a myriad of family and community obligations that we had to very carefully work around. Then, of course, there were the usual setbacks like illness and bad weather. I should know...I had a bad episode of vertigo mid-week, two weeks before the show opened. I literally woke up in the E.R (fun times!) with a nurse (who happened to be a former student of mine!) telling me I had low blood pressure. Side note, I could barely talk but was so bloody proud to see my student living out the full fruition of his dream! Yay for Pacific success :)

Something I'll never forget is the human compassion and kindness that our directing team extended. They wanted the show to be a success, yes, but they also cared deeply about the health and well-being of their performers. I got the rest of the week off and they checked in on me constantly. Dream work environment, if ever there was one!

The final cast was a twelve-member ensemble. We were all versatile performers, the majority of us being able to sing, dance, write AND act. The Pacific is brimming with talent, but still lacks opportunity. Just before opening day, my brother arrived from Melbourne for his usual end-of-year holiday. He's an amazing performance poet, writer and rapper, so of course I kinda-sorta talked him into joining us. Yes, Samoa is THAT small-you and your entire family be in a play together before you know it 😂 

As a cast, we got on GREAT. Everyone was super supportive- there is nothing quite like knowing your co-workers are truly, genuinely rooting for you. If I had to attribute our success to any one single thing, it'd definitely be this. We had a lot of laughs, and a ton of great conversations about everything from where we grew up to how to become TikTok famous. Remember when Nelly sang "we started as strangers, now we leavin' as brothers'? Yeah. This was the vibe. We worked long nights sometimes, plus there was the general exhaustion and of course, for us narrators, a couple of slip-ups and forgetting lines. But we worked through it, and an absolute gem of a lesson that I have learned from this experience is that PEOPLE make all the difference. You can have the most high-tech, state-of-the-art facilities or the biggest budget in the world. An unsupportive team holds everyone back. I'm so blessed, so grateful, that this was not our case. We were a team in that cliche but important way: together, everyone achieve(d) more. Thanks team!

(to be continued...)

READING RECOMMENDATIONS :)

💭 Every few blog entries, I'll recommend two books from my reading list. I'm a very eccentric reader, so I'll post everything from historical fiction to homicidal manifestos.  

1.

"There is nothing special in (you)...it is in those who love (you)." 

Klara is an AF- an 'artificial friend'. Literally. She's the product of decades of scientific and social progress. And she's just one of several million 'friends' whose main purpose is to provide moral and intellectual companionship to the new class of genetically 'elevated' human children. In Ishiguro's usual heartbreaking, genre-bending style, Klara and the Sun is a masterpiece. Thoughtful, earnest, observational and with slight undertones of parody, the story of Klara's misunderstood and unconditional love for her human 'friend' Josie will stay with you long after you've turned the last leaf of this book. 

If you want a deluge of thought-provoking quotes, a cry over your 3pm coffee, or a springboard for your own existential questions about what it means to be human and what it means to love and be loved, THIS is for you. 

2. 

If POWER were a play, I know it'd be this one. 

A Raisin in the Sun is at once arresting and inspiring. The mundane suburban backdrop is coloured by the various painful hues of mid-50s America's civil rights struggles. Race, gender, social class and "no money" clash head-on in this celebration of faith, family and fearlessness. From the aspiring Black female doctor (we see you, Beneatha!) to the 'past-his- time' alcoholic father who is caught between his hope for a better future for his son and his disillusionment at the barriers that stand in the way of non-White Americans. To the starry-eyed, slightly deluded scholarship student from 'the motherland' and the well-to-do suitor who struggles to reconcile the labels he bears, 'black' and 'rich.' This dramedy is for you if you've ever asked the question: "what happens to a dream deferred?"

What's the Story?

Writing: A Never-Ending Story

A poem often becomes a story, and stories sometimes never end.

My writing process is as hectic as everything else in my life. Someone once told me this is called 'organized chaos'. I love irony, so I took it as a compliment. 

I've been writing since I was twelve years old. I was a very imaginative kid. I had this fascination with blurbs on the backs of hardback book covers as well as magazine articles. National Geographic was my absolute favourite. Our school library had stacks and stacks of these magazines, dating all the way back to, like, 1970. I'd read and read, and then make up my own stories and write them in my exercise books. Much to the dismay of my teachers (especially the Maths teachers! Sorry Mrs Pelenato and Mr Epeli!). I just couldn't help myself. 

What I didn't realize as a child was that I was, slowly and surely, honing a love for telling stories about people and places. I learned to love descriptions. To appreciate nuances in the geography and topography of places I still haven't been to. I know a river still runs out of Eden. I saw the Tigris on my way out of Dubai. But which river was James Vance Marshall talking about, and where can I find it, in this big, confusing world? To hear and respect different voices, some of which belong to people who are no longer alive. Nelson Mandela. There are days when I think I walked with him the whole way to Johannesburg and back, to see his mother. To eat home-cooked food, just one more time.  I learned to feel different types of fear, and different types of pain. I'll always think The Boy Who Was Afraid was a missed opportunity to open so many conversations about Polynesian masculinity. About it being okay to cry. To ask for help...I learned, also, to love anomalies. Misfits. Shirts that have one sleeve longer than the other. German prisoners of war that fall in love with upper-class Jewish heiresses. Some of my most favourite books- simply for their amazing attention to detail- are:

1. Cry, The Beloved Country (By Alan Paton)

Favourite Quote: "There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa."

2. Project Hail Mary (by Andy Weir)

Favourite Quote: “Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.”

3. As The Earth Turns Silver (by Alison Wong)

Favourite Quote: "Their god is a white ghost. You see the pictures. He has pale skin and a big nose and a glow of moonlight round his long brown hair. He has many names, just as we Tongyan have many names. We have a milk name, an adult name, perhaps a scholar or chosen name. The Jesus-ghosts call their god Holy Ghost. Even they know he is a ghost. People are like their gods, just as they are like their animals. They even call him Father. We do not need to name them, these gweilo. Even they know they are ghosts."

My love for details has given me a very eccentric reading list (which I love!). It has also given me a love for telling stories about various symptoms of the human condition; for telling them in different voices and drawing them in different colours. Because there is no singular way to be human, there can be no singular story that best conveys our humanness. Every story is just one of a trillion ways to express our humanity. Even the most high-fantasy or science-fiction plot is about our humanity. If it comes from us, it must be about us. 

The most hectic thing about my writing process is that I never actually know what anything is going to be. A single word becomes a poem. A poem becomes a story. A story becomes one of my many unfinished manuscripts. An essay can either be done in six minutes (no joke- I write faster than a bullet train when I'm under pressure), or six months. No in between. The biggest blessing is that I still have people who want me to write, and who actually want to read what I write. I'm a print and performance poet as well as a songwriter (I think? lol). I've published a few stories too. I'll always write more poetry than any other genre. A writing mentor I had as a teenager told me Pacific women write mostly poetry. She didn't know why, but I do. As Pasifika, our earliest modes of transmitting information were song, dance, chant and speech. Oral tradition preserved our stories and histories for eons before the papalagi brought their 'written word' to us. When we 'crossed over', as my Sa'anapu people would say, we brought with us our love for, and skill at the original record keeping methods. It's in our blood, basically. 

At my grandmother's funeral in September, I learned that she was a poet, songwriter and playwright, in both English and Gagana Samoa. With the few opportunities available to indigenous women in early post-colonial Samoa, she was limited to church and village spaces. She never told me about any of this. She always said how proud she was of me, writing and performing and traveling. She let me shine. She never, and I mean never, said, "you got your gifts from me." She allowed my gifts to be just that- mine. My own voice. My own story. Only last week, a cousin of mine shared with us some pages of our grandmother's handwritten autobiography manuscript. One thing I learned from my grandmother's writing: love. True, unconditional, sacrificial love. The kind that isn't 'cool' anymore. But that our world still desperately needs. Because this kind of love endures. Just like storytelling. Just like humanity. 

The title of my grandmother's manuscript, in her striking, confident handwriting. Translated and abridged, it reads:

I AM VASATI:

The Story of My Life

As I Have Written It, Aged Seventy-Six

Someday, I hope to edit and publish this on her behalf. She was a woman ahead of her time, in so many ways.