Playing it out

Theatre that takes a therapeutic approach to stories of incarceration, addiction and abuse is touring the country.

- SARAH CATHERALL

Saulo Kolio stands on stage in a makeshift theatre and acts out the role of a drug dealer. It's night three of Te Rākau theatre's new play, Out the Gate, and Kolio, 49, is among the cast of 16. The themes feel hauntingly close for the Samoan amateur actor, who was addicted to drugs and alcohol until six years ago, and was jailed in his 30s.

Out the Gate is the latest work by veteran actor Jim Moriarty and his creative and life partner, psychologist Helen Pearse-Otene, and is based on hard truths about the impact of prisons on Māori and their whānau.

The play is being performed in marae and community settings, because Moriarty and Pearse-Otene, through their Māori theatre company, Te Rākau Hua O Te Wao Tapu, aim to use theatre to help at-risk communities transform their view of the world.

Kolio is one of eight in the cast who've been in prison. The stories and the fictional characters they act out are real for the Samoan father of seven, who conducted some of the research for the play.

A poignant moment comes at the end when Kolio shares his own journey away from prison life and drug and alcohol addictions, but tells the audience that demons still haunt him. Afterwards, he wells up when he tells the Listener about a moment seven years ago, when he joined a men's behavioural change group run by Moriarty and Pearse-Otene at Kōkiri Marae, in Seaview, Lower Hutt.

At the time, Kolio was at rock bottom: violent to his partner and mother of his children, and an addict. He had suffered sexual abuse as a child and grew up in a violent home. Jailed for drugs, he mixed with the same circle after his release and thought he could continue his lifestyle.