PART ONE – the Inspiration, the Man, the Workers. 

VT. What inspired you to write this play? 

SF. I was asked by Professor Emma Sutton of St. Andrews University, Scotland four years ago to write a paper on the influence of Pacific music on Stevenson’s writings. I told Emma I wanted to use a genre that Stevenson himself would be interested in. One that would be accessible to both Samoan and European audiences.

VT. What approach did you take in writing the play? 

SF. At first there was sheer excitement. Then I visited Scotland to get a sense of Edinburgh and to visit Stevenson’s home to see where he grew up. I had conversations with the President of the RLS society and he was very welcoming and excited about my project. 

In all that time I had the idea of scripting a faleaitu (Samoan theatre that literally means House of The Spirits), which as you know is not scripted. Other friends had suggested a musical. 

But it wasn’t until I returned home and met Uelese Petaia in Pago, that I knew instinctively he was the actor for it. He was more introspective, not a classic faleaitu actor which led to the evolution of tone. Two weeks later when I visited Valima on a very rainy day and saw the workers rushing to protect the building that I found my hook. And once I did, it was basic dictation. 

VT. Why did you decide to write the play about RLS through the eyes of his Samoan workers and not through his eyes and voice?

You see, historically, everything we know about the Stevenson’s at Vailima have been either from their own diaries, as all of them were literate in that way and kept diaries, including Stevenson's own Vailima Letters, or through scholars who wrote about them after they were gone. 

This is perhaps the first time that the workers’ voices are heard. As a proponent of social history seen through the eyes of ordinary people, I am honouring those voices and am putting them at centre stage as they are often marginalized to the point of oblivion.

VT. RLSs’ life was dominated by constant reminders of his own mortality. He lived largely in his imagination, and while physically fragile he was mentally and emotionally strong, a charismatic conversationalist who loved to be the centre of attention. RLS was both the charming appealing persona living within an outrageous egotist, good and evil living restlessly within the same body.

How did you connect these complex dualities and – finding a way through the darkness to light? 

SF. I should have known that Stevenson was plagued by some inner turmoil that is separate from his physical struggles. When we consider The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he lays out his thoughts on the duality of man’s personality at a time when psychiatry was still in its infancy. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was seen by some scholars as Stevenson's own struggle with his sexuality but there's never been proof of an actual homosexual relationship between Stevenson and anyone. 

There were times when Stevenson was severely depressed at Vailima, and some argue that the pressure of expectations from Fanny who was obsessed by his earning potential and gave up her own artistic endeavours and worked in the garden so that Stevenson could write. Stevenson told Fanny one time that she had the soul of a peasant. Something Fanny never forgave him for as she considered herself an artist, a writer, which is clear in her diary that was later published as Our Samoan Adventure. 

Fans rejoiced in him going off to the South Pacific to live in his fantasy world, but Stevenson soon realised, he wanted to be a quasi-journalist, someone with a front seat to the developing strife among the factions of Tamasese, Laupepa, and Mata’afa. He witnessed how the great powers manipulated these high chiefs and documented this in A Footnote to History. 

Once I discovered this, my tone towards him changed. I had considered him a classic colonist in my l’enfant terrible days, which is how I had presented him and Fanny in my first novel, where we once belonged. Learning of his struggles and his fight against incompetent European leadership in Samoa, gave me a deeper sense of empathy as his struggles.   

VT. How did you select the characters who became the voice of RLS and his life in Samoa?

SF. In O Tusitala, character development was essential, and I started with 28 and had to cut 10 out, otherwise we wouldn’t want the audience to be in a Wagnerian 4 hours. I knew Stevenson’s last public speech was about the opening of the Road of Loving Hearts, so in a way the second act needed to have characters who spoke to that. Historians will recognize the characters Stevenson surrounded himself with and they will also see the fictionalized ones which I took poetic license in creating to give the play that umf. 

VT. Does the play touch on themes of love, loss, family, and culture?

SF. There’s unrequited love between Pulu, a young fa’afafige (male identifying as female) character and Stevenson. That is my tribute to all my faafafige friends and family members. Then there’s joie de vivre in the activities that happened at Vailima, balls, tennis, birthdays, visiting British sailors and music, always music, and cultural fiafia (events), ava, celebrations. And then there are moments of melancholy, grief, lament and loss which our lead, Uelese Petaia brilliantly conveys.

Stevenson was determined to learn as much about Samoan culture and language, and myths and legends, and how to use them in his own work. There’s a development of love or rather, respect, throughout the play by workers who were sceptical at first and then bonded with the Stevenson’s in a way that no other colonial family at the time did. 

Stevenson modelled himself after a Highlander chief or a matai and held himself firmly to that post. So, there are those classic themes of the theatre sprinkled throughout. Unrequited love, family, war, peace, betrayal, respect, etc, etcetera. 

• Sia Figiel grew up in Matautu Tai, on the island of Upolu, in Samoa. Her father was Polish-American and her mother Samoan. Sia is a novelist, performance poet, and playwright. This year Sia will travel to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where she will perform her play O Tusitala Teller of Tales. The interviewer, Dr.Vanya Taule'alo has lived over 40 years in Samoa where she is an artist, and educator, and has written widely on Samoan and Pacific art.