Victor Rodger: A life to write home about
Victor Rodger, 54, has dedicated a large portion of his life to the playwriting scene and has excelled. Photo: Deborah Marshall.
Playwright Victor Rodger has a way with words. For years he’s been based mainly in Tāmaki Makaurau and Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, but often returns to his hometown of Ōtautahi to visit family. I catch an interview with him on such an occasion, at a café in New Brighton.
Rodger has a bright smile and a humble, calming manner, mirrored in his beverage of choice: green tea. He is somehow undeterred by the screaming children and shrieking seagulls who provide the soundtrack to his life story.
Rodger was raised by a young Palagi mother, Nora, and his maternal grandparents. He was an only child until the age of sixteen. His childhood was “full of movie magazines and books,” owing to his mum’s obsession with movie stars.
He and Nora are close to this day; Rodger’s Instagram profile is filled with photos of the two at Waimairi Beach. “My mum really gave me the capacity to follow my own path, and I appreciate that,” he said.
Rodger attended Linwood High School. His fondest memories: appearing in the play The Pirates of Penzance as Queen Victoria, and writing a book report on Hollywood Wives, the novel by his long-time hero, Jackie Collins.
Growing up, he had a “very negative” relationship with his Sāmoan father, which informed how he felt about Sāmoan culture. “I had no desire to connect to it, and no desire to identify with it.”
In his penultimate year at Linwood High, Rodger had an experience which he calls a “pivotal moment.”
“Some Palagi friends of mine cracked a Sāmoan joke. And I – one, didn’t find it funny, and two, didn’t understand it. And they kinda castigated me for not being able to laugh at myself,” he said.
“I, for the first time, consciously thought, ‘you are all white, and I am not. I am Sāmoan.’ And that’s when I started my journey towards embracing my Sāmoan side – which continues to this day.”
After high school, Rodger had a journalism cadetship at the Christchurch Star – his dream being to interview Jackie Collins’ sister, Joan Collins, who he was also obsessed with – before embarking on an OE.
He “always had a strong desire to write” and knew the story he wanted to tell, but it took a while to find the right format: he tried a book, then a screenplay, and finally, a play script.
In 1995, his first play Sons premiered at the Court Theatre in Christchurch. He’s mostly stuck to theatre since then: his plays include Cunning Stunts, At The Wake, and My Name is Gary Cooper. In 2001, he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award.
Along with Sons, his personal highlights have been Club Paradiso – which he explained as the “darkest thing he’s ever written” – and the critically-acclaimed Black Faggot, “a play where I attempted to portray a spectrum of gay Sāmoan men in a way that I didn’t feel had been done before.”
Rodger had a memorable interaction at a performance of Black Faggot in Te Papa-i-Oea Palmerston North. A young fast-food worker, seeing the show for the second time, thanked Rodger for writing it, he said, “this is my story.” Rodger says it was “beautiful to hear that he felt reflected by the work.”
Rodger describes his writing as “provocative, naughty, and funny,” with many recurring themes. “That first play, Sons, was really me trying to write myself into the narrative… I went through a difficult patch with my dad when I was about eighteen, trying to connect with him – and there was a bit of a culture clash there because I didn’t understand.”
“I was desperate, at the time, for there to be just something I could grab hold of – like a book or a film – that had my very specific point of view… and there was nothing. And that’s why I wrote Sons.”
Rodger spent a few years writing for Shortland Street, which he calls “such a great training ground.” He likes that regardless of how you might feel about Shortland Street, it’s still “the one chance you’ve got every weeknight to hear our vernacular.”
He’s been a writer-in-residence at universities in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Hawai’i. He likes that residencies can offer great freedom; one of them gave him the opportunity to spend time just thinking.
He’s drawn to intense, reflective works with an irreverent streak. His favourite books: The Road by Cormac McCarthy and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. As for movies, Titane stands out, and his favourite play is the seven-hour epic Seven Streams of the River Ota by Robert Lapage, which he describes as “one of the most incredible things” he’s ever seen.
Rodger has started producing theatre, like The Savage Coloniser Show written by Tusiata Avia and directed by Anapela Polata'ivao. While he’s taking some time off from writing, he has a “long-gestating” short story collection which he’s hoping to complete soon.
His green tea nearly finished and the seagulls growing angrier, our interview concludes, and Rodger departs. I realise that I forgot to ask him about his New Zealand Order of Merit. He didn’t bring it up himself. Damn, if I had one, I certainly would. That must be Victor’s secret: be humble, then be brilliant.
