On Wednesday, October 30th, a group of us travelled to Invercargill to watch a play by Fua Creative, a performing arts company from Blenheim. The 17 of us were joined at SIT’s Centrestage theatre by students and teachers from Southland Boys, Aurora College, Southland Girls’ and Verdon. This play is based on the true story of a Tongan father who decided to pack up and move his family to Invercargill after they experienced Auckland’s violent Dawn Raids in 1976. As the play goes on, we see that the family is struggling with the discrimination and trauma in their new life down south.
The play was performed by four amazing actors who displayed the emotions the family would have felt during that time. Even with such a simple set, you could visualise what was happening in each moment. We all thoroughly enjoyed the play, and took into consideration how much of a struggle it would have been for the people who went through this to heal.
“I loved this play and would love to see another historic event acted out in a similar way.” - Anonymous
We would all like to thank Mrs Kelly and Mrs Kortbaoui for making sure that we were able to attend this very worthwhile event.
Written by Maddie and Lia
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