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Cast: – 3w 2m
ISBN 1 877319 04 X
Teachers’ discount $17
RRP $22.50
Fresh Off the Boat
Oscar Kightley and Simon Small
“Would Samoans be Naked or the Bros be in Town if it weren’t for Pacific Underground?” asked Felolini Maria Ifopo in Spasifik Magazine.
“They made it cool to be fresh. They made it cool to remember where we came from. And they made it cool for brownies to be centre stage.
Pacific Underground challenged NZ audiences to open their minds to a new wave in theatre. Suddenly, new characters with a different history, accent and worldview stepped onto mainstream stages.”
Pacific Underground’s groundbreaking play Fresh Off the Boat examines the tragi-comic trials and tribulations of an immigrant family and their attempts to make sense of their new home, and the often painful transition from island ‘paradise’ to urban New Zealand – Samoan life in the Big Smoke.
Fresh Off the Boat was a huge hit, performed all over the country as well as Australia and Samoa, and broadcast as a radio play.
Reviewers raved, with remarks such as –
“Fresh off the Boat has reached the status of Pacific Islands classic, and should be required viewing … this admirably understated play is almost a docudrama.”
Samoa Times
“Balanced on a knife edge between the cultures … a milestone in New Zealand theatre … “
The Christchurch Press
“This play should be studied and performed in every New Zealand Secondary School.”
City Life
Oscar Kightley
was born in Apia, Samoa, and emigrated to NZ at the age of four. He worked as a journalist before joining Pacific Underground. In 1998 he was awarded the Sunday Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Subsequently he has written several other plays, and prolifically for TV, and has won a number of awards and honours, including a Fulbright- Creative NZ Pacific Writer’s Residency,
Simon Small
was born in Christchurch. After training at the Polynesian Performing Arts Trust as an actor, he went on become Writer in Residence for Whakarite Theatre Company in 1990 during which time he wrote several plays that were toured nationwide in primary and secondary schools, and has worked as a television director and producer.