When I first ‘came out’ we still used Polari.

What’s ‘polari’ I hear you cry?

Well, it’s a slang language that tracks back to the sixteenth century used mostly in the UK by actors, circus and fairground performers, professional wrestlers, merchant seamen, criminals and prostitutes, and especially among gay subcultures.

Like Cockney rhyming slang.

In other words, popular with reprobates, degenerates, troublemakers, and ne’er-do-wells, queers, homos, trannies, faggots, and poofters.

Owning the language is so important.

The first time I replied in the affirmative to ‘are you a friend of Dorothy’s’ led to an unanticipated, but very agreeable, experience (as it happens, I did have a friend called Dorothy but that’s another story).

So why did we hide who we are behind the ambiguities of language for all those years?

Because being out and LGBTQI+ was, and always has been, a dangerous place to be.

So, why am I giving you this lecture?

Because last evening I went to the theatre, Q Theatre in the Auckland CBD to be exact, Queen Street actually, to review a play. To get in the door I had to traverse a bunch of burly security guards whose job it was to protect staff, audience members, and cast alike, from possible violent threats by Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church thugs, hoods, and goons whose form of Christianity permits them to engage in premeditated violent attacks against … it seems almost everyone, but certainly the LGBTQI+ communities. As recently as three months ago they invaded a venue hosting a kid friendly theatre show starring a drag king and beat people up. Last weekend they staged a ‘faith, flag, and family’ parade down Queen Street lauded by the Daily Telegraph New Zealand – who knew – as a ‘Brian Tamaki and Destiny Church led large-scale march through central Auckland, drawing thousands in support of Christian values, national identity, and family.’ They tore flags and burned them – rainbow and trans flags among them – and jostled, intimidated and threatened bystanders. The Minister of Police said it was ‘a shame’ and ‘not the kiwi’ way which is apparently ‘being ‘tough on crime’ in white, right wing, anti-LGBTQI+ New Zealand in 2025.

It’s 2013.

Enter playwright Victor Rodger.

Rodger saw young people marching in a Destiny Church rally against same sex marriage with the rabble shouting ‘enough is enough’ and thought, ‘at least one of those kids will be gay and feeling quite wretched about himself.’

In response, Rodger went home and wrote Black Faggot, ‘a series of (mostly) humorous monologues from a vast array of (mostly) queer characters from Auckland’s Pasifika community.’

The show has been around the block and back since then, touring extensively, and taking the Edinburgh Fringe by storm.

Currently, Black Faggot is on the road again playing seasons at the Court in Ōtautahi Christchurch and Q Theatre Rangatira and I’m so glad it is because it’s much more than a piece of theatre, it’s a snapshot of queer history as seen through a unique lens, and it allows us the opportunity to compare then with now.

I was really looking forward to revisiting the work, in part because I consider Victor Rodger to be in the top tier of New Zealand’s playwrights but also because I really rate Anapela Polata’ivao ONZM as a director. Her style is unobtrusive, nuanced, and she always honours actors, text, and the audience.

Black Faggot is an episodic piece – many scenes of varying length, some quite long, others merely a few words – that requires a complex mix of absolute clarity and a cracking pace. With the support of an excellent cast and sublime technicals, Polata’ivao achieves both.

We are welcomed to the Rangatira space by helpful staff and seated in the front row. The stage is in semi-darkness with a giant floral structure (Chris Reddington) towering over an otherwise empty space. It’s evocative, full of suggestive power, and, as the work unfolds, ensures that we have a unifying Pasifika image as backing for the full 60-minute journey. Lighting throughout (Giles Tanner) is deliciously subtle and supports the narrative in ways that enable us to connect the disparate threads of the work with ease.

From the outset we are thrust into the crippling world of the closet, of living a ‘stealth’ life, within the unique world of young Samoan men. Communities have unique ways of repressing homosexuality in their young men and Pasifika communities are no different. Black Faggot provides a window into this world that enables we palagi queers to experience the differences and the similarities between our experiences, while offering a confronting picture of homo life (and language) to straight audiences of all ages, all mellowed by laughter and brutal honesty.

Rodger’s numerous characters – some momentarily visible like snapshots in a flicker book, others, like James’ mum, fully realised – are made flesh effortlessly by actors Jake Tupu and Gideon T. Smith and shaped into an intuitive human landscape by director Polata’ivao. The performances are deeply satisfying, delicately etched within characters as varied as life itself: a forthright award-winning faʻafafine artist who, in explaining the meaning of her work has the crack-up line of the evening with ‘cracker wanna Poly’, the young, gay, Destiny Church acolyte, James’ wonderful mum who had me in tears, the young clean freak and his indiscriminately ejaculating lover, are funny, touching, and angry often in the same moment.

You’ll go a long way to find more likable performers than Tupu and Smith

It’s no surprise that Rodger’s script remains a theatre classic, sustaining performances and connecting with audiences as the ecstatic full house in Q Rangatira can testify. It’s an historic moment in time that remains as contemporary as tomorrow – Brian Tamaki isn’t going anywhere while police continue to enable, and support, his hate-filled exercises in cultural havoc – and a middle finger to all that. It’s as courageous a work today as it was in 2013 – perhaps more so – because the pushback right now against all things queer and all things brown is deeply disturbing and it transcends the stage. It has permeated the Whare Pāremata with Seymour’s twin exercises in cultural hate, the Treaty Principles Bill and the Regulatory Standards Bill, with Peters’ attacks on gender identity, gender definitions, and transwomen in sport, and the shameless personal attacks by coalition members on Benjamin Doyle, all with Luxon’s tacit (if silent) support.

It takes real guts to stand up to all that, along with the ugliness of social media, and to speak your truth without fear, even more so to do all that from the public stage with Brian Tamaki and his homophobic thugs waiting, unhampered, in the wings.

The rich and enduring applause at the end of the evening is for more – much more – than the indisputable excellence of the performances, the brilliance of Rodger’s script and Polata’ivao’s direction, it’s also full recognition of the courage of the Black Faggot cast and crew that exceeds the needs of the work and floods into the area of social commentary in the most profound way, and for Q Theatre for having the courage to provide a home for such a ‘contentious work’.

I loved the production but do question one of its assumptions: the text locks itself into 2013 with the line, fashionable at the time, that ‘it gets better’. I’m not at all sure that, in 2025, this can be seen as a given, particularly for our transgender brothers and sisters.

In the US, the Trump administration has determined that there are only two genders, fixed at conception, with all the downstream impacts, including travel, on transpeople.

The UK has done the same with enforceable laws about toilets, sport, and that only male cops can undertake intimate body searches of transwomen.

Here, in Aotearoa, NZ First is heading the same way.

As if all this is not enough, Texas has just passed a law that makes being transgender a felony with the intention of making this a federal law as well.

It certainly doesn’t feel as though any of this can be described as ‘getting better’.

‘First they came for the trannies …’

But we live in hope.

Black Faggot plays nightly at Q Theatre until, and including, 29 June.

Highly recommended. Book now.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

One of the biggest fears almost every queer person in their earlier years is the truth. In a world that is constantly evolving and accepting the diversities of other communities, there is still denial, internal confusion, comparison, searching for answers, the navigation of relationships and then the inevitable self-proclamation of your sexual and/or gender identity.

Black Faggot, written by Victor Rodger and directed by Anapela Polata’ivao ONZM is a comedic take on many different perspectives on the modern multicomplex social commentary around male-on-male homosexuality, specifically in Samoan culture. Two actors – Jake Tupu and Gideon T. Smith – play a myriad of roles throughout the play, from a young queer in denial who looks to God for answers; a supportive ‘stereotypical’ older brother who likes to “break stuff” and “smash people up”; a couple where one is out and proud and the other is a closested gay, lovers-in-discretion type dichotomy; and more. The different characters Jake and Gideon play are sequenced like a skit show, where you cut from one scene to another in the middle of their storyline, allowing for a sequence of different character developments throughout the 60-minute runtime.

The play is showcased in the Wakefield Family Front Room at the new Court Theatre. The Wakefield Family Front Room space is more intimate than the main auditoria – only 12 rows, six on the ground and six on the balcony. Seats are at the stage front, left and right, with the stage taking up the centre of the room, curtained on stage left and right.

The chairs are only one-foot away from the stage, so when the actors come forward, they are in your face. I enjoy the intimate setting for a show like this. There isn’t a lot of stage production (more on that later), but I think it serves the play well, considering it is so heavily reliant on character storytelling.

Whilst the production cultivates a graphic and gloriously provocative nature, somehow, the most polarising component of the play is all of the different queer characters played. Both actors are straight-identifying and were vocal in the post-show Q&A about their allyship through their work. While this could cause a stir to some, these actors shine in the opportunity to bring forward the voices and stories of those who are voiceless, or maybe simply afraid to tell their story.

After the show ends, the cast and production crew come out for a small Q&A to talk about their efforts in the production. There is discussion amongst the cast and crew, based on a question from an audience member, about the longevity of the story. They mention that the script was written 12 years ago, and some believe that the Destiny Church protest this past February revived the script’s relevancy, which makes me cock an eyebrow.

Queer struggles internally, environmentally and with family will always be a timeless story. It takes me back to stories from survivors of the Aids crisis in the ’80s, in Chicago and Harlem, New York, specifically in the ballroom scene of black and Latino Americans who all join ballroom culture because their families don’t support them. A story told almost 50 years ago is still being told worldwide and is still happening in different cultures and periods. The attitudes and behaviours influenced by conservative societies, or driven by religious beliefs, are also core elements of the conflict in this play. Keep telling these stories, which have been silenced for so long.

The biggest takeaway from this panel discussion comes back to Chris Reddington’s stage production. On the stage in the middle of the room, with curtains on the left and right sides of the stage, there is just one piece of set – a big and beautiful Hibiscus flower. The flower was the sole production piece and it shone with lights and colours, thanks to the lighting by Giles Tanner, supported by Stage Manager Louise Topping.

Giles initially discussed having asterisks featured as the big prop piece, since they feature heavily in the original script. They mention the flower being simply an aesthetic choice, but after some deeper research, I learn that Hibiscus flowers can be associated with beauty and love. They can symbolise passion, respect, and the fleeting nature of beauty. In some cultures, like Hawaii, the Hibiscus represents the Aloha spirit, celebrating love, happiness, and peace. Whether or not this was intentional or discussed, it was a beautiful and symbolic representation of the play.

My favourite quote of the whole play was:

“I love to put balls in my mouth, too. It’s just Nike, bro – just do it.”

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer