Creative Team:
Presented by: Sos & Sha Creative in collaboration with Q Theatre 
Written & Performed by: Shadon Meredith
Director: Amelia Reid-Meredith
Creative Producers: Theresa Adams & Ruth Evans
Lighting Design & Technical Operator: Peter Davison
Dramaturg: Renee Lyons
Sound Design & Composition: Brandon Haru
Choreography: Sarah Foster-Sproull

As the lights dim down to darkness, the sound of lapping waves set a rhythm that becomes intrinsically present throughout the show. It is quite hypnotic and transcendental – as if it is the pulse of the play – and Shadon Meredith’s voice comes out of the darkness, lyrical and strong, as he sets us up for the first “moment” in his love letter to his son.

What follows is a deeply profound and so skilfully crafted theatre work.

Shadon Meredith is an absolute joy to watch. His talent, his craft, his love not only for the stage but for this work, is abundantly and heartfully humbling. His performance is deeply and profoundly poignant, and light and funny and charming. From being the cutest little boy ever, to the funniest tired Daddy-daycare Dad, to glimpses of his Nana…he is phenomenal in his care for the audience. He is phenomenal.

With astounding grace and beauty, Shadon moves effortlessly all over the stage, (also proving his chops as a dancer!) as he takes the audience to various and significant places in the story through the wonderful and alluring choreography of the one and only Sarah Foster-Sproull.  His hands and movements are so, that there are moments of audible sniffles from the audience, just with his leaf-like motions falling in a channel of light.

Ah the lights! Such a great lighting design that implements, complements, encourages, demands, and lovingly caresses the different characters Shadon portrays. It’s a joy to watch both actor and lights play and transform the space into places.

The sound design is also wonderful! The many and favoured and familiar songs, the raves, the cliché/tongue-in-cheek instrumentals, the gentle voices, the soundscape of pain and despair … all moments just long enough to take the audience in, and then out, of the memory.

WAITING is the perfect marriage of script, actor, and production – something so rare to find on stages of late. Neither overshadows the other, they go from shimmying around each other and playfully exploring, to throwing each other into deep dark crevices, to holding each other close … keeping each other safe when the material feels like it could get too sad or too dark.

This hour-long show is such a journey – there is a spontaneity, an organic-ness with both text and movement, light and sound, yet it is clear just how cleverly orchestrated each moment in time is. It is also very clear, the alofa, precision and visionary beauty with which Amela Reid-Meredith directs this wonderful work.

The story, the content, the contentiousness of some of the words/scenes/situations … the word play, lyricism and poetry cut deep, soar loudly, freeze, and drop like icicles. And the audience gets it, laps it up, laughs, cries … loves it. The references to growing up as a Samoan New Zealander are real, and heart breaking, and shared with grace … and a bit of irony!

Opening night might have been Shadon Meredith’s birthday, but it was he who gifted the audience with this beautiful mealofa (present).

Faafetai, faafetai, faafetai tele lava to Sos and Sha Creatives for this amazing piece of their hearts.

If you are lucky and there are tickets left, go see some of the highest quality art of late, physical theatre at its best … and relish the invitation to “breathe”.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Having won multiple Fringe Festival awards in Nelson (2017), Whangarei (2020) and Auckland (2021), the long wait is over: Sos & Sha Creative has finally brought Shadon Meredith’s Waiting to his hometown of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Billed as “a love letter to his son, taking the audience through a journey of his life and breaking down the human condition of waiting”, this hour is also described as “an evocative coming-of-age story that celebrates beat poetry delivered through physical grace.”

According to Textosterona Playeras literarias, beat poetry got its name in the 1940s and 50s “when a new generation of American poets rebelled against the conventions of mainstream American life and writing. They became known as the Beat Poets – a name that evokes weariness, down-and-outness, the beat under a piece of music, and beatific spirituality.”

While all these dimensions of being are touched on in Waiting, Shadon Meredith is clearly unbeaten by his life to date. Certainly every emotion is experienced in his ‘coming of age’ story as he progresses from the innocence of childhood through puberty to an adolescent awareness of his family and social circumstances, breaking out into rebellious party mode until he is surprised by parenthood and adulthood, shocked by mortality and embarks on the inevitable quest for ‘self’, not least in relation to his ainga (extended family), past and present.

His mother was 19 and solo when she had Shadon; they lived with her mother, his deeply loved nanna, and he had three very different ‘dads’. Only one was a good role model for the boy, but his mother … As for his biological father … (no spoilers; see for yourself).

By telling his story to his son, and sharing it with us, Shadon brings focus and purpose to it – and a dynamically eloquent physicality that complements his poetically evocative text to communicate meaning and feeling through a whole new dimension of theatrical alchemy.

Amelia Reid-Meredith’s directing, Renee Lyons’ dramaturgy, Brandon Haru’s composition and sound design, Sarah Foster-Sproull’s choreography, and Peter Davison’s lighting design and technical operation, combine with Shadon’s personal and theatrical quest to produce a spellbinding hour of poetic, physical, metaphysical, existential and practical performative excellence.

The rhythms of nature – of tides and breathing – book-end the play. The only question I’m left with is why is it called Waiting? Beat poetry engendered a tradition of calling out that is also prevalent in Pasifika audiences – indeed I sense the urge and hear it bubble behind me on opening night. But I don’t think my calling out, “What are you waiting for? This is it! Carpe diem!” would have been welcome. So I’ll say it now to you: don’t wait, BOOK! It’s only on until Saturday.

_______________________________

• Copyright © belongs to the reviewer

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer