NZ theatre company reaches Solomon Islands women

Transcript

A national women's theatre company has been established in Solomon Islands as a vehicle for reducing violence against women.

A New Zealand-Fijian theatre director, Nina Nawalowalo and her creative partner and husband Tom McCrory have spent eight weeks in Honiara working with Solomon Islands women to launch the Stages of Change project.

Nina Nawalowalo told Beverley Tse how the two-year project explores the issue of violence against women. 

NINA NAWALOWALO: The whole project is around looking at gender violence and helping to make some sort of change or help look at change with violence against women. So it's theatre work with a clear direction of how it will be developed.

BEVERLEY TSE: How exactly will these themes be communicated?

NINA NAWALOWALO: Well, it's really interesting. There's a number of things that we are delivering with the programme and one is to gather 15 women through the Solomons. There are 9 provinces. And we have to make sure we get a really broad range of women who are all involved. That's the interesting journey, is how does one explore violence against women and imagery onstage? So we are working with visual material and choreographically. So how we develop that and how we work with the women and find it, 'cause you have to be quite careful, I believe, when you're looking at violence and issues, that it doesn't become re-enacting things or blaming men and so forth. And for women to stand up in the Solomons and say that they are against violence, you have to open up at that area of how you explore themes quite carefully. The first block, it's 20 minutes of theatre material that we perform, but about 7 of it was specifically looking at violence onstage in a choreographic way.

BEVERLEY TSE: So was it a drama, a play, or was it a dance?

NINA NAWALOWALO: Yes. I work in visual theatre, where I work more with images and choreography and music. So it's a blend. It's sort of looking at what is the theatrical language of how to explore theatre in the Solomons.

BEVERLEY TSE: What sort of people do you hope will come to these shows?

NINA NAWALOWALO: It's very much to do with taking it to the community, because it is looking at stories and themes and imagery that is coming from the women themselves, that they want to share.

BEVERLEY TSE: Now, you've talked about the cautious approach to the performances in order to get the message of reducing violence. But how exactly do you do that whilst ensuring the message gets out there?

NINA NAWALOWALO: The way I opened up the imagery in exploring that sort of thing was looking at, when women are hit and beaten, there's just the physical choreography as though one is being hit, how one receives that hit. We explored a language of choreography, that if you were watching from the audience, it looks like they're getting hit and slapped. It's like stage fighting.