Award winning play a journey of Pacific male vulnerability

Samoan playwright Shadon Meredith (Safune, Vaiala, Solosolo, Vailele) brings an exploration of contemporary masculinity to the theatre with his award-winning play Waiting.

Written and performed by Meredith and directed by his wife Amelia Reid-Meredith the show is framed as a generational love letter to his son, navigating in and out of beat poetry with reflective projections - a live mosaic of memory and possibility.

Waiting has featured in three Fringe Festivals and picked up a multitude of awards including Best of the Fringe, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Design and Best Solo Show (Nelson Fringe Festival 2017); Best of Whangārei Fringe (Whangārei Fringe Festival 2020); Best Theatre and PANNZ Auckland Festival Fringe Winner 2021 (Auckland Fringe Festival 2021).

Showing at Q Theatre this month Meredith is looking forward to bringing the play back to Auckland with fresh energy.

"Waiting is made to access the heart and dive into the hard places so that we're able to bring the ugliness and the beauty of human nature to the surface and talanoa," says Meredith.

The vision behind the production appears grounded in sparking a wider conversation about mental health in Aotearoa and contemporary Pacific masculinity as identity turbulence and dislocation ripple through the Pacific diaspora in New Zealand. Assertions of belonging and togetherness channeled into arts and culture - liberating a new generation of Pacific creatives to be radically vulnerable.

"It's about dissecting truth and bravery together as a community - we might not solve it straight away but we can get the conversation started about what male vulnerability looks like and how it can breathe in this new dawn," says Meredith.

​Waiting​ ​is on at Q Theatre from 26 - 30 September.