FA'AFAFINE

"Fa'afafine" means "like a woman", and is the Samoan term for males who take on the female role.

Fa'afafine is about ambiguity, and the collisions and confusions of culture, gender, sexuality... all of them performance.

Solo performer, Brian Fuata gives birth to his mother. He divides the audience, men from the women. He fucks palangi (white) men for the purpose of anthropological research... and to feel properly Samoan. He likes dresses and he likes being a boy. He plays talkshow hostess. He recounts all night poker games and exorcisms.

He wanted to remind her that he was not a fa'afafine.

Writer's Vision

I am to my mother the boy she never was. I am the white woman she wants to be. I am her lover she dreamt of in school. I am the liberty she desires. I desire to be a black woman. I am a stupid boy who knows nothing.

Reviews

Brian Fuata takes the audience on a Polynesian cruise that is often confronting, without seeking that most gratuitous of theatrical responses: merely to shock... Fuata's performance carried great conviction, and Fa'afafine has been finely paced to sustain a momentum towards a culmination that, naturally, is not a resolution.
John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald, Nov. 2001