The Songmaker's Chair (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Songmaker's Chair Melani Anae The Songmaker's Chair, a play by Albert Wendt. Directed by Nathaniel Lees, Auckland Theatre Company, Maidment Theater, Auckland, 11-27 September 2003. The world premier of The Songmaker's Chair played to sold-out audiences in September 2003 at the Maidment Theatre in Auckland. In the program, Robert Nash called it an "evocative, delightful work that only New Zealand can produce; a play [End Page 270] that brilliantly celebrates the wonderfully diverse Pacific migration to New Zealand and how it has enriched our cultures."After it was written by Wendt in 1996 , and given two well-received rehearsed readings (the first at Downstage in Wellington in 1997 and the second at the Auckland Writer's Festival in 2001 ), it was totally appropriate that the play was produced by the Auckland Theatre Company as part of the first Auckland Festival. The company's education unit also brought the play alive for local schools by offering an opportunity for secondary drama students from throughout Auckland to experience in-school workshops, matinee performances, and forums. On the surface, the play is about the migrant Peseola family and the problems they face fitting into a new community. But it is much more than that. As Wendt says in the program: "This play began many years ago in Samoa as an image of an old man, my father sitting in his favourite chair beside a large radio: a haunting image that refused to go away! I brought it with me to Auckland in 1988. From that year until I wrote the first full version of the play in 1996 , I saw a lot ofPakeha,Maori andPacific plays —a truly magnificent and dynamic development in our country's theatre that continues today. I acknowledge my debt to such playwrights as Harry Dansey, John Kneubuhl, Selwyn Muru, Vincent O'Sullivan, Briar Grace-Smith, Hone Kouka, Oscar Kightley, Makerita Urale, Toa Fraser, Jacob Rajan, Vilsoni Hereniko, Victoria Kneubuhl and others. I was absolutely taken by those plays—and I learnt much from them. . . . Since I came to Aotearoa in 1952 I have observed and written poetry and fiction about the Samoan and Pacific migrant experience. This play is my latest attempt to encapsulate that and to celebrate the lives of those courageous migrant families who have made Auckland and Aotearoa their home. It is also in gratitude to the tangata whenua who welcomed us into their home. . . . Like the Peseola family, our journeys have been from our ancient atua and pasts to the new fusion and mix and Rap that is now Aotearoa and Auckland. We have added to and continue to change that extraordinary fusion, the heart of which is still Maori and of Moana nui a kiwa [Great seas of the Pacific, or the peoples of the Pacific residing in New Zealand]." The play tells of a Samoan family, Aiga Sa-Peseola, who have been in Auckland since the 1950 s. To survive and adapt to New Zealand, they have over three generations intermarried with Maori and Pakeha and have developed what they refer to as the "Peseola way."Centralto the"Peseola way" is the magnificent Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific and a song-making tradition whichPeseolaOlaga, the patriarch of the family (played by Nathaniel Lees), has inherited from his father. At the heart of the play is the love between Peseola Olaga and his wife Malaga (played by Ana Tuigamala) and how they have struggled to give their children a good life in Aotearoa. Theirs is the Peseola Way: defiant, honest, and unflinching even in the face of death. For one hour and fifty minutes (the play is continuous with no interval) the audience is part of an intimate [End Page 271] journey in which we witness Pese and Malaga in their twilight years, engaging with different family members—sons, daughters, Palagi and Maori in-laws, friends—in what would seem normal aiga (family) conversations and events, often displaying the cross-cultural misunderstandings, confusion, anger, and amusement that surround the tensions and "playing out" of faasamoa (Samoan way of life) in migrant situations. During these (and often accompanied by intellectualized and verbalized thoughts), secrets...