Inspiration

         Louise Tu'u came to class tonight to share with us her experiences as a successful playwright. She talked to us for over an hour. She is a Samoan New Zealander.
Louise had worked as an actor and after seeing a play she really hated she decided she could write something better. She applied for funding and after receiving a grant sat down and wrote a play about the experience of young Samoan men growing up and straddling palagi and pakeha culture. She set the play in the competitive world of Polyfest. She felt that urban Pacifika youth could really relate to this setting. She had represented her school on stage there so it was a milieu she knew well.
She has since written several plays and has been selected for several major international residencies.
One of her plays is about homelessness, Providence. She spent several years researching the issues of living rough in Auckland, and was committed enough to spend a night or two sleeping up by St Benedict's Church. She says that she was surprised that all minimum wage work, including street prostitution had strong resonances.

       So what is she like? She's funny and confident, with the linguist ear for accents. ( She speaks at least four languages, Samoan, English, Italian and German). She has the ability to laugh at herself while still taking herself seriously. She has confidence in her abilities and her voice and values herself as a professional. Her work is often about the 'broken' aspect of language and the difficulty of communicating. She say writing dialogue is hard, you need to listen well. When she wrote Providence she spent a lot of time researching, going undercover, which she said wasn't hard because she is brown. She shows a lot of commitment to her art.
Her inspirations, without wanting to sound like she was giving an "Oscar acceptance speech" were her parents. They are a close family and her mother has appeared in her work. Then she mentioned poets, philosophers, and writers, Maurice Blanchot, Charles Bukowski, David Sedaris and Jacques Derrida amongst others. She wasn't sure why she found angry white (possibly drunk) men inspirational, but that's how it is sometimes.

      She is running a workshop for playwrights and writers on how to apply for international residencies. Grants too are a good way of keeping going. She encouraged us to work on getting published and on self promotion. It was great having her in class and I look forward to seeing her work in the future.