VAIMOANA LITIA MAKAKAUFAKI NIUMEITOLU is a CREATOR of truth and beauty. She is a multi-talented Artist (She is a Painter, Poet, Playwright, and Actor and can not be one without the other). Moana can hold it down with either a paintbrush or pen and notepad in her hand; and has the versatility and vulnerability to bring her characters alive in her acting. Her muli-talents and creative skills reflect her multi-identity of being Tongan and American and Indigenous in an urban world--she can not be one without the other. Her rare voice and experience brings the "invisible" to light and expands society's views of who and what exists in our world. She was born the youngest of 5 children in Nuku’alofa, Tonga; raised in Hawa’ii and Utah; and now lives, builds, creates and loves in New York City. She is the founder of the phenomenal all female trio, Mahina Movement (www.mahinamovement.com) who has performed worldwide at over 500 stages including Time Square, Lincoln Center, Central Park, Joe’s Pub, Nuyorican Poets Café, United Nations, and community centers, homeless shelters, high schools, and Colleges and Universities. She loves that she is growing older. Life has just begun.
"Hearing publicly the voice of the urban Pacific woman is rare anywhere in the world, and New York City is no exception. The opportunity to hear such a voice must be seized, and it must be shared. Niumeitolu weaves her skills as an actor, writer, and painter in her latest solo theater work ‘Tongue-in Paint’. She is entertaining and poignant; ‘Tongue-in Paint’ is humorous and highly personal. Niumeitolu and her work is part of a larger and growing international discourse about the Diaspora of Pacific peoples: the loss and gain of culture, identity and place. The Pacific diaspora began more than 50 years ago with the exodus of Pacific peoples from their island homes to the US, Australia and New Zealand. From its inception in the late 1970s Hip Hop culture has travelled with these mobile Pacific communities - from the West Coast of the US as far south as Aotearoa/New Zealand and back again. Hip Hop is an integral part of urban Pacific expression. Vaimoana Niumeitolu is a vibrant voice borne of the Pacific Diaspora in the US. Her work as an artist gives presence to an almost invisible part of the US population. I thank her for her courage, her spirit and her vision."
-Susana Lei’ataua, Artist-in-Residence, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University
“Impressively audacious one-woman performance, Tongue-in-Paint…Right away, I was hooked. Niumeitolu is an engaging performer and her charm and chutzpah draw us to her: clearly .. in command of a theatre audience and her destiny…Niumeitolu plays about 15 different people in this show, and her versatility and especially her gift for mimicry and creating character voices is commendable…The most remarkable segment of the piece gives us our only other real glimpse at this artist: during a musical interlude, Niumeitolu paints two abstract pictures right in front of our eyes in under five minutes…Niumeitolu is a compelling performer.†–Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
I got this layout from SnazzySpace.com .
