Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, the award-winning stage adaptation of Tusiata Avia’s poetry, will open at Wollongong’s Illawarra Performing Arts Centre on Wednesday, April 10.
“It's about the lives of Samoan women. But it's much bigger than that. It’s real universal themes,” says Tusiata, speaking via Zoom from her home in New Zealand.
“It’s about love, about domestic violence, about being a person of mixed cultures. Which appeals to a lot of people in Australia, I would imagine. There are a lot of children of immigrants, grandchildren, and people with more than one cultural background.”
The themes in Tusiata’s work will touch a chord with audiences in Wollongong, a city that celebrates its diverse heritage each year at the Culture Mix festival.
“We have people of two cultures where you're kind of standing with a foot in two camps, right? But you’re also outside of both,” Tusiata says.
“I think that it gives us a really good position because we know both cultures really, really well. And we also have the experience of feeling excluded from both.”
Wild Dogs Under My Skirt is a cultural critique as well as a deeply personal narrative. A New Zealand-born poet, performer and children’s author, Tusiata Avia was inspired to write a series of poems in 2001-2002 while visiting family in Samoa. In 2004, she published these works in a book. This inspired the stage adaptation, with Tusiata’s poems becoming monologues for the play's characters.
Today the production is directed by Anapela Polata’ivao and performed by five women, with Stacey Leilua (Young Rock) as Tusiata Avia.
“I think very often as people of colour we've had our stories told by other people. When we tell our own stories we get a much much more nuanced take on it,” Tusiata says.
“We have a really extraordinary director. It's a real collaboration between my words, and her quite incredible directing. It's an incredible stage show in all the aspects; the lighting, the staging, the choreography.
“It also draws on traditional, pre-Christian spirituality. And I think the director has an amazing talent for really drawing on that. The hairs on your arms stand up.”
Tusiata performed Wild Dogs Under My Skirt as a 40-minute one-woman show from 2002 to 2008, touring around the globe.
“I did it in Morocco in Russia and places that have no cultural context for New Zealand or Samoa. And I learnt there, that didn't matter, because the themes are universal,” Tusiata says.
In 2015, the show was picked up by FCC Productions and began to tour on a larger scale.
“It's funny, and it's heartbreaking and the ending is really colossal. It's huge. It's really difficult to describe what it's like, but it's a huge experience. There's really not a dry eye in the house.”
In January 2020, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt toured off-Broadway, and became the first production directed by a Samoan woman to do so.
“People came from all around the United States to see it and they were crying because they hadn't seen themselves on stage that way,” Tusiata says.
“We also saw the other opposite end of the spectrum. I remember hearing a woman behind me saying ‘Oh, it's very angry, isn't it?’ But women of colour have a lot to be angry about, with generations of injustice behind us.”
Next week will be the first time that Wild Dogs Under My Skirt has been presented in Wollongong, with shows scheduled from Wednesday, April 10 to Saturday, April 13.
“People come to the show with whatever they are, and the show will meet them wherever they are,” Tusiata says.
“Maybe one or two people will walk out going ‘oh my God, it was so angry.’ But I really do defy anyone to sit through the end of the show and not be really moved.”
Merrigong Theatre Company will present Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt from 10-13 April at the Bruce Gordon Theatre at Wollongong’s Illawarra Performing Arts Centre. Tickets $45-$55, book via Merrigong's website