Georgia Laga’aia’s eyes widen at the many roles she and fellow actor Rebecca Ordiz are performing right now – they are sharing more than 25 characters in Australian Theatre for Young People’s (ATYP) production of the two-hander musical Islander.
“Excellent is totally the word for it,” the 21-year-old Laga’aia says of the roles, all spanning decades in age and type. “It’s down to such specifics … How they walk, how they stand, vocally finding where they sit.
“Because, obviously, we are two young girls but we’re playing grandmothers, pregnant women, 60-something old men who live at the pub, and so many more.
“It’s been a big journey of discovery.”
Laga’aia is the daughter of actor Jay Laga’aia (the Star Wars prequels, stage musicals The Lion King and Wicked, TV show Water Rats), with actor siblings including Catherine (Moana in Disney’s live-action Moana remake), Nathaniel (Rent), Tana (Jesus Christ Superstar) and Iosefa (Hamilton, Hadestown). She is principally playing Arran, a mysterious young stranger who is washed ashore on a tiny fictional island.
There she meets Eilidh (Ordiz’s main role), another young girl whose home town is disappearing as its population heads to the mainland for better opportunities. The actor pair play the town’s residents and sing the score backed by loop-pedal music technology.
“Because I am such a muso at heart, this show is absolutely like my bread and butter,” Laga’aia says. “It has been so fun figuring out all of the voices, all of the harmonies and all of the music.”
Islander’s director, ATYP’s artistic director Hayden Tonazzi, says he discovered the work, originally set on a remote Scottish island, seven years ago while studying his masters of directing at NIDA.
“I just fell in love with it,” he says. “A loop-pedal, a cappella musical with two young women playing over 25 characters. It’s a really exciting form.”
He suggested Islander, originally conceived by Amy Draper, with music and lyrics by Finn Anderson and a book by Stewart Melton, to ATYP’s youth advisory body, a group of about 75 young people across Australia consulted about the company’s works, and they agreed.
“They said, ‘We love it but why is it Scottish?’,” Tonazzi says. “‘And why does that matter for ATYP?’”
The company began working with Samoan writer, filmmaker and creative cultural consultant Gabriel Faatau’uu-Satiu about possible links between the musical and Pasifika culture. Tonazzi says the intention was that the specific nation or culture featured would be influenced by the casting process.
“And then the lovely Georgia Laga’aia walked in the room,” Tonazzi says. “And we went, ‘OK, it’s going to be a Samoan adaptation’.”
Islander, an award-winning work which has played in the US, UK and Europe, follows two different young people from different cultures trying to understand each other as the world changes around them.
The musical’s recontextualisation stays true to its creators’ themes of identity and the future but has incorporated Samoan language, movement and costume, including translating one song into Samoan. An ie lavalava, a traditional Samoan sarong, is also used.
“The sarong has been a really beautiful way for us to transform people as well,” Tonazzi says.
“Georgia might be wearing it over her shoulders as a shawl for the grandmother character but then it becomes the sarong for Arran. Then it’s tucked in as a rag at the back for the whale-watcher character Jenny.
“It’s one of the only props in the show and it has that sort of cultural significance which is beautiful.”
Laga’aia, whose star continues to rise with recent roles in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Hayes Theatre Co) and touring musical Dear Evan Hansen (Sydney and Melbourne), agrees.
“I also feel really lucky that I get a prop because Bec doesn’t,” she says.
Tonazzi says Islander is one of the most complex pieces he and the creative team have worked on.
“Musical theatre is singing, dancing, acting,” he says. “But this is singing, dancing, acting and looping, which is this whole other sport in and of itself.
“Plus we’re incorporating traditional language and performing it in-the-round, with one row of chairs circling the play’s action.
“We’ve done that deliberately after consulting with Gabriel and our choreographer Bree Tipoki,” Tonazzi says. “A circle is a traditional place of telling a story and these two young women are storytellers – they’re playing this whole town and its story.
“It’s a beautiful way of acknowledging what we hear from Gabriel about how stories are passed down through cultures.”
It’s also, he believes, a new chapter for contextualising musical theatre for different cultures and communities.
“I think we’re pioneering a new way of unlocking more local instances of more well-known stories, uncovering a new way of working in the form that might open up more traditional stories,” he says. “[It could be] applying a Pasifika lens to Legally Blonde next.”
Islander is now showing at Australian Theatre For Young People, Walsh Bay, until October 17.
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