A standing ovation greeted the wonderfully entertaining Teen Faggots Come To Life at Basement Studio.  Five young actors tell their real and personal stories of being a teenage queer.  It is a roller coaster of events: first love, discovery, violence and above all survival. 

The actors all perform solo performances on a bare stage with one chair. They reveal a wide range of life experiences which have shaped them into the leaders they are today.  Trained and supported as students at the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts (PIPA), where the show was created, they have now graduated and bring the show to a wider audience. 

Each story is told in a fast-paced theatrical montage of their lives where all the other ‘characters’ appear with identifiable characteristics and cleverly interact with the ‘hero’ of the story.  It is like watching a film full of images and dramas live on stage. The slight fan of the hand to the face, a whip of a hip, or the flash of a grin allow the audience to clearly identify each new person.  Vocally each actor embodies the sound and attitude of their friends, dragons, lovers, mothers, fathers and bullies.  

There are squeals of delighted recognition from the full house as teenage bitches, outrageous queens, hip hop dancers and beautiful boys appear. This is a show full of honesty, love and authenticity. 

Raukawa Tuhura (‘Takataapui’) takes us from his birth through the trauma of living in a boy’s body but knowing he was a female.  The discovery of his/her Takataapui title is a triumph of a Maori youth finding an identity. 

Fa’afafine Jaycee Tanuvasa (‘A Different Kind of Love’) is a talent to watch.  She has enormous stage energy with a riveting power to engage the audience in the story of her first boyfriend at school.  He was her prince she was his princess!  

Isaac Ah-Kiong (‘Michael’s World’) shines with his top mop of blonde hair as the tragedy of his first school ball with his gay date evolves into brutish thuggery.  Yet he still survives. 

Amanaki Prescott-Faletau (‘S/he’) is a beautifully crafted arc of first love with a young man betrayed at the fulcrum of satisfaction. 

Darren Taniue (‘Coming Home’) tells a different story of a guy trapped in the house of his first love’s family as his domestic willing slave. He finally finds the motivation to confront this strange closet.  The violence that results is truly shocking.  However the resolution is warm caring and fulfilling.

It is remarkable that so many of the stories contain ‘Bullying at School’.  This is just the sort of show that should be touring our schools as part of the anti bullying campaign.  It shows the confusion, the trauma and the isolation so many of our young people suffer and leads to our outrageous youth suicide statistics.

The joy of this show is that the five actors/characters have survived and are stronger because they found ways to keep going and arise with new found energy and twice as much drive. 

As part of the Auckland Pride Festival, Teen Faggots Come To Life is an important work which reveals the stories of our young BGLT people as never seen before.  Credit is to due to Mika and his Mika Haka Foundation for their support and bringing this excellent theatrical event to the stage.

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