ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Black Friars as a distinct example of Aotearoa New Zealand applied performance practice, with deeply contextualised and culturally intelligent intentions, values and forms of practice. It also gives a sense of how the company experiences its relationship to the wider policy and funding context as a struggle within systems that enable and constrain Pasifika young people, communities and performance in particular ways. Policy and funding systems can be dispersed forms of governance, creating the ‘terrain of the possible’ for youth, communities and performance. The chapter focuses on the 'performative cultural politics' of Pasifika youth performance within this terrain. It also involves trying to embody a participatory, self-determined, culturally intelligent process through which young people use story and heritage literacies to articulate what success, leadership and performance mean to them.
