The creative team behind Alatini should have been making last-minute preparations for their opening night – but then omicron happened. Now there’s finally some good news, reports Sela Jane Hopgood.

“We were all in tears, tears of joy.” 

Sau E Siva Creatives director Troy Tu’ua remembers the exact moment he told his team that after five years of applications and rejections, they had received funding for Alatini, their South Auckland spin on the Disney favourite Aladdin.

Tu’ua and his colleagues Leki Bourke, Idalene Marianive, Italia Tualaulelei-Hunt and Bob Epine Savea have been applying for funding for their work on stage since 2016. In October, finally, they received not one but two grants through Creative New Zealand’s Pacific Arts fund.

In the very early years the Sau E Siva Creatives team would dig into their own pockets to help fund their shows, Tu’ua says. They’d ask for favours from their family and friends in the industry to help out. They received koha or donations from their supporters, which they were grateful for, but Tu’ua says doing shows for the love of art doesn’t pay the bills. Eventually, in 2016, they decided to apply to Creative New Zealand. Tu’ua says he felt quietly confident they’d be funded, given how widely supported they were by the South Auckland public. Their shows would regularly sell out at the Māngere Arts Centre a month before opening night.

Still, their first Creative NZ application in 2016 was unsuccessful. Tu’ua says it was a shock, but it didn’t stop his team applying a second time, and a third. Even though they sought the advice of performing arts professionals who knew the process, they were declined again and again.

During the 2021 delta lockdown, while Auckland was in alert level four, Tu’ua nervously contacted his team to see if they were interested in applying for funding again. “I could feel that my team was over it and I understand, there’s only so much rejection we can take,” he says. But he won them over, and this time they divided each section of the application among the five of them. “We also decided to play to our strengths, which is articulating our passion through dialogue, so we included links and visuals of our work that has appeared on Fresh TV, The Coconet TV and Tagata Pasifika, and created a mini show to attach to our application.” The plan: that Creative New Zealand could “open our application, press play and watch our work”.

It worked. last October, the arts fund granted Tu’ua $74,600 for Alatini, staged as part of this year’s Auckland Arts Festival, and Sau E Siva Creatives themselves $74,100 from the same funding pool to go towards a new Pacific dance theatre show called Manamea.

“It was great to know that we as artists are valued, our work is valued and equally important, our stories are valued,” Tu’ua says. 

An indication of how the funding has changed their lives came when it came time to distribute contracts to the Alatini cast – a first for Tu’ua, who had never been able to pay actors in the past. As he handed out the agreements, a 10-year-old cast member approached him, looking confused and anxious, and asked him if he could pay the amount he saw on paper in weekly instalments.

“When I realised what was happening, I had to quickly explain that the fee was actually the amount I was going to pay him for featuring in the show,” says Tu’ua. “It made me emotional and just showed how far my team has come to be able to pave the way for our young Pasifika creatives coming through.”

Originally, Alatini was scheduled to run from 16-19 March as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. However, last month Tu’ua – along with many other festival artists – were called to an emergency Zoom meeting.

Because of the omicron surge, all the festival’s live shows, including Alatini, were cancelled. 

Tu’ua says the hardest part was breaking the news to his team, his cast and the ensemble – a bitter blow for a group for whom Alatini, and the festival, represented their big break. “There were tears, which just shows how passionate these aspiring artists are about the show,” he says.

Without omicron, Alatini would have opened tomorrow night. Instead, Sau E Siva has announced that the show has confirmed new dates: 13-15 October at Q Theatre in Auckland, with two shows each day (1pm and 7pm). It took a lot of shuffling, hustling and negotiating, Tu’ua explains, “but we’re back on track now. Take four.” 

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.