Oscar Kightley: Author, actor and playwright on Dawn Raids showing in Wellington and how he got King Charles on Bro'Town

Oscar Kightley has been a journalist, an author, and an actor - but he's also an acclaimed playwright. 

He's the writer behind Dawn Raids, a play he wrote in the late 1990s exploring the horror of the raids targeting Pasifika overstayers in the 1970s.

But 27 years later, the show has never been staged in the capital. That finally changes this week when Dawn Raids will be staged for two nights at the Wellington Opera House by the Pasifika theatre collective Pacifc Underground. 

Kightley joined Nick Mills to discuss the show, his memories of the 1970s, and the incredible story behind how he arranged for King Charles to appear on one of his best-known projects Bro'Town.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
We've got a very special guest joining us this morning
on the show. Our guest is the man behind acclaimed
Dawn Raids stage show exploring the shameful period of the
nineteen seventies when government cracked down on overstairs ripping Pacifica
families apart, usually always in the early hours of the morning.
Dawn Raid's first hit the stages in the late nineties

(00:35):
in Auckland and christ Shurch, but the show has never
come to Wellington until now. Joining us now is the
man behind at Oscar Kightly Tallerflava Colla.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Hello and Nick, thanks for having me on your show.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Firstly, I want to ask you a simple question. This
was all brought the Dawn Range thing. I mean, it
happened and everything, but it was actually brought to light
when a family from Wellington took it, took the court,
took it to the Privy Council in the early eighties.
So it really was a Wellington based family that got

(01:11):
the public awareness of the tragedy that went on.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
The tragedy, I think people were already aware of what
was going on. But it took a Willington based family,
a woman called Philip Matty less Her and her lawyers
who actually challenged it in court. So they ran pretty
much from seventy four up until eighty two, and they

(01:39):
probably wouldn't have stopped if they hadn't taken their case
to the Privy Council, who agreed with their position that yes,
in terms of so mourns, the raids were illegal.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Right for those that don't know anything about this particular show,
we all know about Dawn Raids, but most of us
would have little or no idea about the show. Tell
us a little tiny bit about it to make us.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Come up to play. Well. I wrote it at the
end of the nineteen hundreds, only about twenty years after
the raids, you know, kind of lessened, and it's by
a Pacific underground the theater company from christ Church. It
hasn't been stage four over twenty years, and to walk

(02:24):
in theater company each days. So I guess it was
the previous government's apology that helped bring the issue back,
and also prominent groups like Polynesian Panters who were celebrating anniversaries.
But this play was written at the end of the
nineteen hundreds, and it looks at a family's experience. It
looks at the race through a Syone family's experience, and

(02:44):
the way Pacific Underground to theater was quite extraordinary. It's
not like mush as you would see. Is part of
the player set in a nightclub that there's a like band.
You see the bands and they play some really beautiful
music that kind of helps kind of soothe some of
the painful stuff that unfaltered during the show. But it's
just a fantastic production. And Wellington Theater lowers and I

(03:07):
know they're still there. This was written in the Hey
there Wellington Theater when it was the place to be
and everybody wanted their show on in Wennington, it's on stage.
So did it.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Used to be good?

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Did it really used to be Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Are you talking about Hannah's Playhouse.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
I'm talking at Hannah's Playhouse downstage, I'm talking about Circle,
I'm talking about ticket Law, I'm talking about back. And
that's just town. And you know there were buildings in
the city that were used for rehearsals, actors, musos, all
flattered in town because you could still afford to You
could live on Tuba Street and you know in Jusney
Street and Wellington just really was an extraordinary placed. That's

(03:46):
why the International Festival of the Art started there, and
I think it was ninety six.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
What is this show? In response to sorry, sorry, I
ask you for interrupting. I got so many questions that
I'm so excited to tell you about. What does this
show actually mean to you personally? Were you Eyeinger involved
in this and any formal anyway? Of course they were, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah, they were. I was aware of relatives that came
quickly and then disappeared, and it was always something I heard,
measured and harsh, serious talks of all the adults in
the lounge. We lived in west Auckland, so we weren't
in the thick of it, but it was something I
was always curious about. So when I was an angry
young man, that was a topic that I decided to

(04:29):
kind of delve into just because I wanted to know
what happened, because there wasn't a lot about it at
the time.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
You were kind of, I don't know, crossed all barriers.
You've been a writer for the Sunday Star Times. You've
been an actor, you've been a comedian, you've been a producer,
a director. You've been crossed all barriers. I mean, you're
obviously a very smart man.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, thank you. I'd like to think I am. To me,
it's all the same things. You know that, it's just
different ways of doing it. Whether you're talking into a
mica on a radio station, or writing a play, or
presenting a TV show or acting in a film if
you're lucky enough, it's all the same thing. It's just storytelling.

(05:14):
So I don't kind of overthink these things too much.
I'm just thinking what cool stuff can I do until I.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Die, you know, as a person. And I'm telling my
own personal story here. Who grew up in Western My
parents were school teachers there, so I.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Spent there, right, we.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Were Tani and we're on both islands actually, but I
left there as eleven year old. And the thing that
gets to me a little bit about some are some
on theater is it's always trying to almost take the
piss out of itself instead of being playing it serious.
Does that offends you and it sometimes offends me a

(05:51):
little bit, I guess.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
I mean, you're only unique position in that you'd experienced
it a bit from the other side, because you were
a minority in some more when you were a young
boys there and so you would have experienced someone people
quite differently. You would have seen them as the people
in charge, you know, as as as the bank managers,
as the lawyers, as the doctors, as the police, as

(06:13):
the politicians, you know, which is quite different to how people,
especially back then, experience some warn people. Back then, we
were the factory workers and the ones brought over to
do doctor key we didn't want to do. And so
I guess it's a big part of being so I
want to be honest NK. It's like, instead of kind

(06:35):
of just wallowing the pain, you know, what's the point
of that? Really? I guess making jokes about it and
telling stories about it is a more palatable way of
processing that stuff that has been some of the more
painful stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Why should people go to the show tomorrow and it
starts tomorrow night? Why would Why should I go? Will
I be offended? Will I be hurt? Will I be educated?

Speaker 3 (07:01):
I think you I think it'll be different for you, Nick,
because you grew up from Sarmo a little bit. But
it's just a fantastic might of theater at the honestly,
and to me, When I think of Wennington, I always
think of theater, and there are people there that really
know stuff. I've seen all kinds of work, and this
is really special and it's been over over twenty seven

(07:24):
years in the making. You know, it was written that
long ago, and as you said, it was a Sarmon
family in Winnington that put a stop to that nonsense.
And so it's almost like a crime that it hasn't
played in Wennington before. And so this is you only
get two nights tomorrow and Thursday at the Opera House,
and you know, I urge you all to take this

(07:45):
out just because it's it would be a theater shown
unlike any you've ever seen before.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
On another note, a lot of people will know you
from Brotown, but not many people will know there's only
two TV shows that Ken Charles has ever made an appearance,
and he's actually in some next week, and I thought,
what a wonderful way to tell us the story of
how that all happened.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
So he was visiting and I think it was two
thousand and three, and part of the activities they put
on for him, the then Prime Minister, was to see
a play at the Awkward Festival of the Arts and
one of those players was a play I'd written with
Dave Armstrong from Wellington, a play called New Sealer. And
so we knew that King Charles, Prince Charles as he
was then, was coming. So one of our studio work,

(08:32):
we were doing Brotown at the Climbing One of our
studio workers at the time was ushering at the theater.
So we got out of hide a mike in the
dressing room backstage because we knew we were going to
meet him, And so me and Dave Fani, who starred
in the show, got to meet him, and Dave said, look,
we do this cartoon, which of mine, you know, just

(08:52):
saying a line for us to save mornings like for life.
And he says, oh, I'm not sure about that. But
Elizabeth Mitchell had had our producer, had organized the whole thing,
and so it was a big moment. And then having
Clark spoke up and said, I'll go on, I've been
in the show, and he says, oh, all right then,
and we said, oh, we have a participantry conveniently placed.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Oh what a fantastic story, What a fantastic story. The
other other show, by the way, was Corrow Street that
Prince Charles or King Charles has been on. Thank you
so much, Oscar Kly for joining us this morning. Really
appreciate it and I hope the show goes extremely well
in Wellington. I hope Wellington people get off their backsides

(09:35):
and support it. What a great story, what a great
representative you are for New Zealand and some fuffer TI
Telly Lover well.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
All love and next see you at the show tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Thank you. I really enjoyed talking to you, Oscar Kightly
there Dawn rated. The show is at the Wellington Opera
House tomorrow night and Thursday night. Tickets are from ticket
Master and I suggest that a lot of us should
go along and support it.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news talks It'd Be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
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