We Should Practice

Words

Someone with a unique outside perspective to bounce your ideas off or troubleshoot through a mental block.

Reading this, you’ll likely have a range of things you should be doing, some pressing, others not so much. It's more than likely there’s something you keep on the back burner that you'd really like to complete, but for all the reasons that life throws your way, you’ve not yet got to it.

Cue, Louise Tu’u. With a background in writing and producing, Tu’u has spent her life observing other people’s narratives, which has seen her amass a wealth of knowledge around pathways to success, failure, peoples’ motivations, inspirations, and everything in-between.

She believes that as creatives, “we often forget that outside of our circles, people a crying out for the kind of blue sky thinking we take for granted.”

A NZ Herald 2018 Trailblazer, Louise Tu’u is one of Aotearoa’s hottest writer-director-producers. From a young age her extraordinary, distinctive talent saw her receive major residencies overseas: she was the first New Zealander awarded the Royal Court Theatre International residency in 2005 in Sloane Square, London, which provided tutelage by the likes of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. She’s a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow (UK), an International Theatre Trust and Goethe-Institut Scholar (Germany) as well as the first oceanic representative to be invited to partake in Tokyo’s Culture Creation Project (Japan), and the first judge from New Zealand and the Pacific Islands at the Zurcher Theater Spektakel, the biggest theatre festival in Switzerland and European festival for contemporary performing arts.

Since 2009 Louise Tu'u has been chronicling the endeavours of creative entrepreneurs in Aotearoa, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. She has written and directed several award-winning works including Top 16, Providence, Dead Mileage, Range of Convergence, Gaga: the unmentionable, Horses and other farm animals, and Magdalena of Mangere which won second equal in the 2016 Auckland Mayoral Writers Grant.

Since 2017, she has been focussed on making screen content.

Luckily for us, Tu’u is expanding her service beyond the screen and theatre.

Tapping into her years of experience around building out narratives and producing complex productions, Tu’u is available one-on-one to help people navigate through and resolve their own projects.

We sat down with the creative polymath to find out more about her latest offering.

What can someone expect if they commission your services?

I start with listening intently to what my client is sharing, before going in for the deep dive questions. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these people have been scared to acknowledge what they want to create and complete and put out there for everyone to see. Visibility is usually equated with accountability, so I’m a disciplined mirror for them. I offer practical solutions, as well as pushing big sky thinking of their original dreams. I advocate, advise, and hold space for them to finish their project. Think of me as a midwife for their creativity.

What is behind the name We Should Practice?

I was a trumpet player at high school and when our section would get together, we would laugh at how rubbish our harmonies were sometimes and say, “We should practise.” Years later, I reflected on that comment when I was naming my company and felt that was the most honest, invigorating and a definite call to action. I also decided to use the noun, practice, as opposed to the verb, purely for aesthetics. Sometimes this name makes people laugh, so that’s an instant connection.

What is the driving force behind your mission/passion?

I’m driven to help people think about what they’re doing differently and complete that project. Being an artist for over 20 years means I’m used to coming up with a wide range of ideas quickly and under pressure. As a child of Samoan migrants, I relate to seeing the entrenched systems of different areas of life from the outside and simultaneously playing the game and hovering above it to stay ahead. So, I use that to help my clients stay focussed, breathe and finish their projects in style and as them, not me or anyone else.

How has your heritage influenced your personal journey?

I am Samoan and did my undergraduate degree in Italian and German, because I completed an exchange year in a Milanese high school of languages and science. It was a massive change in my life, which is thanks to my parents, Sale and Lafi Tu’u, who recognised the potential of travel and transformation. Ironically, both of them migrated to New Zealand reluctantly under familial expectation. I began acting professionally and then became a playwright, which enabled me to create plays that were authentic, reach audiences who looked like me, and travel to amazing places.

What has been a career highlight?

Being selected for a paid directing internship by Goethe-Institut and ITI at one of my favourite theatres, Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin. I worked in dramaturgy, checking the translations from English to German for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest/Unendliche Spass as the only native English speaker on the team – anyone who knows that novel can appreciate how arduous that was. HAU staged this as a 24-hour production, which was insane. I then moved on to being a choreographic assistant for an American choreographer for the said show and learned so much. Amazing is an understatement to describe this opportunity.

Everyone needs a little help from time to time, someone who can think outside the box, who is highly qualified with a fresh perspective, who can advise you on how you might achieve success. Having the resource of a mind like Louise Tu’u to invigorate your project is an absolute treat. To find out more head to weshouldpractice.com