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Article: Focusing on the fa'afafine
- Article from:
- Sunday Star-Times
- Article date:
- February 11, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 Sunday Star-Times. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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WHEN Samoan director Nathaniel Lees worked at Auckland's Mercury
Theatre 10 years ago, he would walk along Karangahape Rd and see the
transvestites working the street.
Many were Samoan -- fa'afafine with whom he exchanged nods and
later talked to.
"A lot of the things I saw in their extraordinary lives stuck in
my mind and I thought a play had to be written about them."
Years later, when the International Festival of the Arts
approached Lees about a Samoan play, he suggested the fa'afafine
phenomenon and Dave Fane and Oscar Kightley were commissioned to
write A Frigate Bird Sings.
Funny thing was that as soon as it was given the nod a documentary
about fa'afafine screened on television and a ...