A Master of None: Brown Fala

A Master of None: Brown Fala marks celebrated tenor Lila Crichton’s debut as writer, composer, and director. Created together with Woven Collective and presented as part of the Kia Mau Festival, the production melds artforms, influences, and modes of narrative into a cohesive aesthetic world that feels simultaneously radically creative and profoundly grounded.

The story is told through a plethora of techniques, but music is key, with all of the cast contributing voice talents and most also serving as musicians. The compositions celebrate Samoan roots and the influences of Māori and Black culture, and feature magnificent choral sections.

The narrative addresses the issue of violence against women and tamariki in Samoa through the fala, or woven mat. Fala are used by the cast as gathering places, sites for work, storytelling, intimacy, and violence. The action is structured around the communal activities required for making fala: harvesting pandanus leaves, boiling, drying, and finally weaving the strands together. The ensemble’s movements and choreography (Luchiano Tuioti) are deftly executed and enrich the worldbuilding.

Fala also feature in the practice of ifoga, when an offender covers themselves with a fine mat as an atonement for an offence. At one point a sobbing woman is confined under a mat by her partner, and the discomfort of the ensemble (and audience) is left to grow as she continues to cry, isolated in the dark from the rest of her community. The ifoga, and by extension the weight of shame, is then moved by the community onto the offending partner. The following sequence in which the woman is restored to her full dignity through community care, and the contrite offender is reintegrated, is perfectly paced and poignant.

A Master of None: Brown Fala is a superbly well-crafted show from a multi-talented virtuosic team. All elements of the production from wardrobe (Masi Smith) to videography (Inti Resende) deserve their own paragraph of praise. Grounded in pride and identity, this is powerful contemporary theatre that manages at the same time to be gentle, and to hold space for our human complexity.