Cultural Storytellers: Toa Fraser

Fijian New Zealand filmmaker and playwright Toa Fraser has been awarded this year’s three month Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer’s Residency at the University of Hawai‘i.

A few days into his residency, Toa talks to Renee Liang about scriptwriting, stories and the importance of a good breakfast.

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Ok, so I admit it, I’ve always had a thing for Toa Fraser – um, his work. I admire his plays – naughty, serious, fast and tender, they’re full of those lines that catch you off guard.  His movies are the same. And what I admire the most is that he’s an artist who has found what he loves doing and has gone for it. 

Toa is not ‘just’ a writer, he is a storyteller – which means writing sometimes follows the needs of the story and becomes adapting, producing and directing.  He's also a writer that has taken his stories to the international stage - sucessfully - and then brought new audiences and stories back to New Zealand with him.  It's so easy to feel isolated in New Zealand, as if no one else in the world is watching - but Toa reckons the opposite is now true.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt from talking to him is that opportunities don’t just happen, they have to be created.  It takes hard work and many small moments of connection to get there. Which is why I don’t begrudge the fact that he is in Hawaii to write.  No, I don’t begrudge him at all....

Renee: How's Hawaii?  Done any work yet or been too busy settling in?

Toa: It's HOTTT!!! It's taking a lot longer to find my feet than I'd hoped.   I'm having an admin day, haven't left the hotel room yet but I'll go for a swim after we're done.

Renee: Wow….so you're in a hotel the whole time?

Toa: No I was going to be but I've decided it's not working for me so on Saturday I'm heading to the North Shore of Maui to stay with a yoga teacher I read about. I'm going to do yoga twice a day and work in a coffee shop I read about... I mean, write in a coffee shop.

Renee: What are you working on during your residency?

Toa: I'm here to write another draft of The Beach at Falesa. It's a feature based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella of the same name. Alan Sharp - who wrote Dean Spanley, amongst many other things - wrote some drafts over the last decade or so. When I was asked to come on-board as director, I had some script notes and we - the producers, Alan, me - decided I should have a crack at a couple of drafts. I wrote one last year and have had a break from it. And now I'm back in the Pacific and excited about the next stage of the process.

Renee: What will being in Hawaii do for your process?

Toa: Well for one thing I've learned that the best way for me to achieve a good screenplay draft is to block out a specific time and place to do it. I used to think I should write every single day of my life and I ended up not enjoying that at all. So Hawai'i represents a great chance for me to write in an inspiring environment, stay healthy and positive, talk to Pacific writers like Robert Sullivan and Vilsoni Hereniko, swim, get exercise. Kant, apparently, reckoned that in order to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal. I'm enjoying creating an optimal environment for writing these days. It's a new thing, I didn't give that enough weight before.

Renee: Give me a picture of your optimal environment.

Toa: It depends on the project, and it doesn't have to be flash. Earlier in the year I was doing a screenplay in Auckland - a story set in Auckland - and I stayed in a warm apartment with plenty of light, straight across from the gym and the swimming pool. I've just finished another draft of the same story, writing in England - I did the last couple of weeks at an empty house in the Hampshire countryside - just me and the cows and the farmers next door bringing me soup and unpasteurised milk. For the next few weeks I'm heading up to Maui to the North Shore. The main thing I've really learnt this year is that, unless I'm writing with somebody else, I'm on my own. Nobody else can do it for me. And I'm a pain in the ass to live with. So it's probably better for my loved ones to be somewhere else.

Renee: Do you have a writing ‘habit’ that you follow?

Toa: I used to write 10am to 2pm, have a break, 10pm to 2 or 3am, five days a week. That was unhealthy in the end, and most of the time I wasn't doing much writing. These days I prefer to do intense weeks of writing. A certain number of weeks for plotting and structural work. Then a hard, intense burst actually writing the thing. That bit's hard and grim but a lot of fun too.

Renee: Do you turn off distractions like email and phone? I only ask because that's my own Achilles heel....

Toa: No, I remember seeing a picture of the writers of one of the Bond movies, and I was shocked that they had their cellphones and phones right by their computers. These days I flick between e-mails and internet and texting and writing pretty happily. I often don't answer my phone. One of the things that directing has really reminded me of is that I like people, I like connecting with people. So balancing that is very tricky.

Renee: You seem to have moved across genres and disciplines quite fluidly... from writing plays to writing screenplays to directing. Has that been a natural drift, and what has pushed you in that direction?

Toa: I always wanted to do it. I always felt I fell into writing plays kind of by accident. As you know, Bare was really inspired by movies. I wrote the play No. 2 with the aim of directing it as a feature. Some of my earliest memories are about movies, going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark with my Nanna, who was a big movie fan. She loved Raiders because it harked back to that era of movies that she grew up with.

Renee: And what about the cultural drift.... from stories about NZ to more international stories? Is that by accident, design, or both?

Toa: It's design. I'm a storyteller, I want to tell stories about all kinds of people, from all over the world. Also as a Pacific storyteller, I feel it's important that we don't let others pigeonhole us. Bare, No. 2, Dean Spanley, they all have in common the idea of connection, across suburbs, national boundaries, generations, emotional barriers... It's what I do, I connect.

Renee: How does this new script add to the ideas of cultural connection?

Toa: It's a story about white traders trying to set up in Samoa in the eighteen hundreds. So inherently there are questions of cultural connection or disconnection. Also the central character is a guy who is focused on business and material gain and he has a journey to go on to figure out how he wants to live his life. It's a story about balancing personal autonomy with connection to something larger.

Renee: When you write something, how much of it is your own story? Are you a writer who uses your own personal narrative to find answers?

Toa: I like what Bruce Springsteen says about that kind of thing: "I don't want to tell you about me. I want to tell you about you." He's not a solipsistic storyteller in that way. I work best when I'm facing out, not in. But that said, there's particular things that interest me, and of course, they come from me. I seem to be using the word a lot: it's a balance.

Renee: So looking out at the NZ storytelling tradition, do you think that's changing? Because that's the way it seems to me...

Toa: What do you mean?

Renee: I think the stories are changing from that inward looking, "we live on farms and we're staunch" to a much more outward looking, "hey, who are we actually?" I mean that's an evolution that's been taking place over at least the last 20 years…but it seems to be speeding up… more and more stories, people wanting to play variations on the theme of nationhood and identity.

Toa: We're all aware of the feeling that in the past NZ stories are all dark and inward-looking things. I don't know how true that was. Certainly that was Sam Neill's thesis in his documentary about NZ cinema, Cinema of Unease. So it was a delight to me that Sam spoke so excitedly about Sione's Wedding and No. 2 when they both came out at around the same time, talking about it being a moment in NZ cinema history where we really lightened up, moved to what he described as a Cinema At Ease. Definitely that's symptomatic of something that's been happening in NZ over the last fifteen years, people like Briar Grace-Smith, Oscar Kightley, Victor Rodger, the Liang sisters... I was talking to Robert Sullivan about it yesterday. New Zealand really has begun to own its place as a Pacific nation, culturally at least, and with that we're able to speak with a real athleticism and confidence. It's exciting, but we have a long way to go.

I just made myself a pineapple, pawpaw and macadamia nut salad. Yum.

Renee: I'm jealous…. I just put on an extra jersey – the sun is actually shining. I’ll have to go for a walk later to warm up.

What is the international view of what's happening in NZ? I came across a researcher from Spain recently who's been studying NZ/Pacific literature... apparently they find it exciting because it's on the boundary of old and new.

Toa: I just took off my shirt. Will go for a swim soon to cool down….

I think a lot of people who are cinema fans have a sense that New Zealand is a very exciting place for cinema at the moment. And of course Flight of the Conchords, Rhys Darby etc. Having lived in London for the last couple of years, it feels like the British feel like we're telling our stories with something like confidence and charm and a little humility, which is cool.

And certainly New Zealanders are responsible for the best coffee in London, my friend Celeste Wong at Flat White on Bateman Street in Soho will confirm that.

Renee: Good to know there are people watching us. It can feel so isolated making work in NZ. Supportive local community, but getting it out beyond NZ still seems so hard.  Any tips for getting work from local to international audiences?

Toa: Well I started in theatre which is a relatively inexpensive way to get your work in front of an audience. I was lucky to work with some dynamic performers - notably Ian Hughes and of course Madeleine Sami - we did some work that connected with people and they took the plays all around the world. And I followed. I usually followed the plays, because I wanted to meet people and make connections and find ways to work together with international artists and behind-the-scenes folks. You have to make friends, I guess.

Renee: You mentioned earlier being a connector... how important is that for a writer?  Or any artist, for that matter.

Toa: I couldn't think of doing what I do without wanting to be able to create some kind of connection. And that doesn't necessarily mean connecting with the world, I guess one of the most important connections we need to make is to ourselves. But the idea of being part of a larger community, united by a purpose, is exciting and fun to me. I love directing because I stand in the middle of a whirlwind of people from all different walks of life - carpenters, lawyers, make-up artists, accountants, actors, singers, musicians, animal trainers...

Renee: Animal trainers! They're quite expensive aren't they?

Toa: I don't know, I don't pay for them. But you need them when you're dealing with pigs and dogs.

Renee: Indeed.  OK... last question.  Any advice for aspiring first time feature film directors?

Toa: Well... be very very careful about who you work with. You need world-class people, in every department. We have that mostly in New Zealand. There are a few areas that I think it would be great if there were more people doing it. But make sure you get good people around you. It's the most important thing.

That goes for actors especially. Tim White, who produced No. 2, pushed us all to hold out for the best actor in the world for Nanna Maria - his advice was, "Don't cast anybody who only sort of lights up the screen." But that kind of discipline translates to your other collaborators too.

And the main thing is... Nobody's going to let you tell your story if you only sort of think it's worth telling. It's hard work, driving yourself everyday to believe in something. But you've got to believe in it.

Renee: Any last words?

Toa: Stay healthy! Eat well, lots of fibrous vegetables. This was my breakfast on the Dean Spanley shoot:

Alpen Muesli and yoghurt
Fruit smoothie with protein supplement
Multivitamins
Monmouth Coffee (stovetop)
Soft boiled egg and soldiers.

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