Transcript
The "Story of Us" tells two stories of teenagers growing up in the 1980s in Cannons Creek - one about a group of teenage boys - good friends who hang out on the streets, sometimes getting into mischief.
The boys' real challenges, though, are at home, sometimes having to deal with violence and other abuse.
The other story is about Jewels, who struggles with being moved from foster home to foster home after the death of her parents.
The stories play out against a background of 80s fashion and break-dance competitions with hip hop music blaring out of large ghetto blasters or tape decks.
The playwright, Manu Tevita, who grew up in Cannons Creek, says it was a challenging time for young people back then.
"So when I looked at my life and also the people around my families life, I sort of thought, we are quite successful in terms of just coming out of Cannons Creek, we could have ended up in all sorts of places, bad places and I wanted to tell that story."
Mr Tevita says creative people from Cannons Creek have had to battle against negative stereotyping.
"That it was possible to come from this dark place, and success wasn't necessarily about money or the material things. It could be just about having a great job or having a great family, and those are the things I wanted to focus on.
Mr Tevita wanted the audience to have a sense of hope.
"Now the story itself tells it from that dark place, I don't give sort of an ending to it, because I think people find there ways of getting out of it, I just wanted to say it was possible."
The production touches on some very challenging subjects like family violence, suicide, assault and trouble with the law.
"I'm very conscious that New Zealand has a high youth suicide rate especially, that's not the reason why I wrote it, I also wanted to say look, you can past those places, there is a way out, there is a hope."
Sasha plays the young teenager Jewels who's contemplating suicide.
"Yeah, I guess with this role, I used my own experience as well to put everything into the character to portray it well"
She says it was a very challenging role.
"My character is, I guess one of the naughty boys in the Creek and I guess showing up about how big I am."
Isaiah plays the leader of a gang in the show.
He says he was shocked to hear that the stories actually happened.
Manu Tevita says he felt it was important to tell the story of his community.
