Plays
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Dianna Fuemana (born 1973) is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She writes for theatre and screen. Her solo play Mapaki was the first that brought a New Zealand-born Niue perspective to the professional stage. In 2008 Fuemana won the Pacific Innovation and Excellence Award, at the Creative New Zealand Pasifika Arts Award. [1] Fuemana was one of nine women writer-directors of the 2019 feature film Vai.
Dianna Fuemana was born in New Zealand in 1973 and is one of seven children. Her mother is American Samoan and her father Togavale [2] is Niuean. [3] She is a cousin of singer Pauly Fuemana. [4] When she was a child she acted in church plays in her community. She went to Henderson High School in Auckland. During her time there, she attended a short course in performing arts run by Cath Cardiff and Jay Laga'aia. [3] In 2005 she graduated with honours with a Master of Creativity and Performing Arts from Auckland University. [1]
Fuemana has three children: a son and daughter from her first marriage, and a daughter with actor Jay Ryan. [5] [6]
Fuemana's father wrote the song that opens her play Mapaki. Her father died in 2000 and she dedicated the Auckland season of Mapaki to him. [2]
In 1997, Fuemana was one of three actors in the play Frangipani Perfume written by Makerita Urale. Two years later, Fuemana wrote and performed in her own play, a solo show called Mapaki. [6] [7] For this she was nominated at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards for Outstanding New Writer and Best Upcoming Actress of the Year. After being performed in New Zealand Mapaki toured across the United States and in Athens, Greece. [1]
Her screen work includes writing and directing the short film Sunday Fun Day, which premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival and includes the perspective of a transgender teenager and a solo mother. [6] She says of Sunday Fun Day:
This story came from the feeling of "vulnerability," as a mother raising teens. From my experience, teens don’t really understand vulnerability from a mother’s perspective. We have a load of films in New Zealand that focus on the child’s perspective but not from the strength and humor of a mother’s. [6]
Fuemana was one of nine writer-directors on the New Zealand Pacific Island feature film Vai released in 2019. [8] [9]
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2008 - Pacific Innovation and Excellence Award, Creative New Zealand Pasifika Arts Award.
Urban Pasifika is a New Zealand subgenre of hip hop, that developed primarily among Pasifika New Zealanders in South Auckland. Drawn from alternative hip hop and R&B influences, it was quickly blended with Pacific Island or Māori instrumentation and traditional songwriting and singing and rapping in a variety of Polynesian languages, such as Māori, Samoan, Niuean and Tongan. The genre's genesis in the 1980s blossomed into a unique, globally enrapturing cultural scene in its homeland of Auckland, especially in the next decade. Urban Pasifika is one of the most popular music genres to arise from New Zealand, and helped cement Auckland's reputation on the world stage as a major cultural centre, and the most ethnically Polynesian city in the world.
Paul Lawrence Fuemana was a New Zealand singer, songwriter and musician from Auckland. One of the first globally successful pioneers of his country's unique style of hip-hop, Fuemana was one of New Zealand's greatest popular music icons of the 1990s.
Nathaniel Lees is a New Zealand theatre actor and director and film actor of Samoan descent, best known for film roles in The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and for starring in Young Hercules as Chiron the centaur.
Oscar Vai To'elau Kightley is a Samoan-New Zealander actor, television presenter, writer, journalist, director, and comedian. He acted in and co-wrote the successful 2006 film Sione's Wedding.
Jay Ryan is a New Zealand actor. He is best known for his roles as Jack Scully in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, Kevin in the New Zealand comedy-drama programme Go Girls, Mark Mitcham in the internationally produced New Zealand television programme Top of the Lake, Vincent Keller in the American television series Beauty & the Beast and Detective Ben Wesley in the Canadian television series Mary Kills People.
The Naked Samoans is a New Zealand comedy group made up of Polynesian entertainers, most of whom are Samoan. The group performs social humour and satire that attracts a broad audience, especially among white New Zealanders, without sacrificing the group's Pacific Island identity. The group has gained success in both television and film projects as well as in theatre, which remains their primary base in entertainment. The members of this group are David Fane, Mario Gaoa, Shimpal Lelisi, Oscar Kightley, Robbie Magasiva and Iaheto Ah Hi.
Sima Urale is a New Zealand filmmaker. Her films explore social and political issues and have been screened worldwide. She is one of the few Polynesian film directors in the world with more than 15 years in the industry. Her accolades include the Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival for O Tamaiti (1996).
Victor John Rodger is a New Zealand journalist, actor and award-winning playwright of Samoan and Pākehā heritage. Rodger's play Sons won acclaim at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards (1998) and received the Best New Writer and Most Outstanding New New Zealand Play awards. In 2001, he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Other plays include Ranterstantrum (2002) and My Name is Gary Cooper (2007), produced and staged by Auckland Theatre Company and starred a Samoan cast including Robbie Magasiva, Anapela Polataivao, Goretti Chadwick and Kiwi actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
Fiona Samuel is a New Zealand writer, actor and director who was born in Scotland. Samuel's award-winning career spans theatre, film, radio and television. She graduated from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 1980 with a Diploma in Acting.
Mīria George is a New Zealand writer, producer and director of Māori and Cook Island descent. Best known for being the author of award-winning stage plays, George has also written radio, television and poetry, and was one of the film directors of the portmanteau film Vai. In November 2005, she won the Emerging Pacific Artist's Award at the Arts Pasifika Awards. Mīria George was the first Cook Islands artist to receive the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawai'i.
Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, and short story author from New Zealand.
Nina Nawalowalo is a New Zealand theatre director and co-founder of the contemporary Pacific theatre company The Conch. She is known for directing the stage plays Vula and The White Guitar. The first film she directed A Boy Called Piano - The Story of Fa'amoana John Luafutu (2021) won 2022 Montreal Independent Film Festival Best Feature Documentary.
Goretti Chadwick is a Samoan-New Zealand stage and television actress, writer, director and tutor.
Pacific Underground is a New Zealand performing arts collective, founded in 1993 in Christchurch, New Zealand, to produce contemporary performing art that reflects the group's Pacific Island heritage. In 2016 they received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Pacific Music Awards. They are the longest running Pacific contemporary performing arts organisation in New Zealand.
David John O'Donnell is a theatre director, actor and academic based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has been a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington since 2019.
Marafetu Togakilo Smith is a weaver and community activist from Niue. She founded the first Niuean weaving group in Auckland, and her work is held in the collections of Auckland War Memorial Museum and Te Papa.
Cora-Allan Lafaiki Twiss (born 1985 or 1986 is a multidisciplinary Aotearoa -based artist and full time self taught hiapo practitioner, Twiss was awarded the Arts Pasifika Award 'Pacific Heritage Artist award' in 2020 through Creative New Zealand.
Amanaki Lelei Prescott-Faletau is an actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, producer and director of Tongan descent, living in New Zealand. As a playwright, she became the first fakaleitī to have her work published in New Zealand with Inky Pinky Ponky. This play was awarded Best Teenage Script (2015) by New Zealand Playmarket. As an actor, she was awarded best performance at the 2015 Auckland Fringe Festival for Victor Rodger's Girl on the Corner. Her acting credits include The Breaker Upperers (2018), SIS (2020), The Panthers (2021), The Pact (2021) and Sui Generis (2022), in which she is also a writer for the TV series. Faletau competed as a dancer in the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in 2011 and has been a judge at the National Hip Hop Championships in New Zealand over several years.
Molima Molly Pihigia is a Niuean weaver, arts advocate and healthcare worker based in New Zealand. She founded Falepipi he Mafola, a Niuean handcraft group, in 1993.
Leki Jackson-Bourke is a playwright based out of Auckland and is the first Pasifika playwright to win the Creative New Zealand Todd New Writer's Bursary Grant in 2018.
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