‘The Remaining’: Theatre show on the high-stakes reality of boarding school

From a cohort of 11 young wāhine who entered the gates of an Auckland boarding school, only three remained to walk across the stage five years later.

For emerging actor and playwright Waikamania Seve (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Kahu o Torongare, Iva - Savai’i, Sāmoa), those five years were a gauntlet of “forced proximity” that redefined her understanding of identity.

“The name comes from our self-named little group,” Seve explains to Island Time. “The last three of us that survived boarding school. Heaps of people left, went on to different things, so we called ourselves ‘The Remaining’.

Her new play, The Remaining, debuts tonight at Wellington’s BATS theatre as part of the Fringe Festival. The play explores the “pressure cooker” of elite Māori and Pasifika boarding life.

An accomplished public speaker, Seve became the youngest person in Aotearoa to deliver a TED talk at just 13. She now turns her storytelling lens towards script writing.

The Remaining reveals “surviving” in elite schooling spaces often comes with steep cultural costs.

Watch Waikamania Seve's full interview below.

She says excellence is the only currency, and the weight of representation falls heavily on the shoulders of teenage girls.

“There was always a culture of…you have to hit the mark on your academics,” Seve says. “You have to stay well-connected with your culture, be in some kind of cultural group, join a sports team, and be very diligent and independent.

“At times it really pushes young wāhine to be the best they can be, but at times the pressure can lead to people crumbling.”

For Seve, the struggle was compounded by a sense of isolation. While her hostel was a Māori/Pasifika sanctuary, it sat within a majority Palagi institution, and says she often felt disconnected.

“Being kind of one of the only brown-skinned girls at the school, that kind of pushed me to really pursue wanting to learn more about my culture, especially now as an adult,

A graduate of Toi Whakaari, Seve has turned that vulnerability into a “raw but funny” theatre piece. Alongside a 13-person ensemble, she navigates high school dramatics with an unflinching lens.

Touching on the uncomfortable and awkward stages of teenage girlhood, where growing up away from home means navigating tensions of living with different personalities.

“If I can survive five years at boarding school and three years at drama school, I can survive anything,” she says. “From that experience I'm also wondering how we can support and uplift young people in those spaces.”

She hopes audiences will resonate with the stories shared in The Remaining and has her sights set on an Auckland tour.

The Remaining runs from 26 - 28 February at BATS Theatre. Tickets are available here.