Victor Rodger’s Black Faggot comes to Christchurch’s new Court Theatre venue—delivering hilarious, emotional and unflinching portrayals of queer Pasifika life.
This month, Black Faggot—Victor Rodger’s boundary-pushing, heart-wrenching, and hilariously unapologetic play—finally lands at The Court Theatre in Christchurch, and in more ways than one, it’s making history. Running from 17 May to 14 June 2025, this award-winning production isn’t just another show—it’s one of the first major performances in The Court’s stunning new inner-city venue.
That’s a milestone worth celebrating. But what better production to help break in this fresh creative space than Black Faggot—a play that defies silence, demolishes stigma, and champions queer Pasifika voices with all the power, poetry and punch Rodger is known for?
Directed by the fiercely talented Anapela Polata’ivao, Black Faggot unfolds as a series of monologues told by a kaleidoscope of (mostly) queer Pasifika men navigating identity, faith, family, and sex. It’s loud, funny, filthy, tender—and utterly unforgettable.
To buy tickets to Black Faggot at The Court Theatre – CLICK HERE!
Rodger, the afakasi playwright of Sāmoan and palagi heritage, was first inspired to write the play after seeing a group of young people marching in an anti-same-sex marriage rally led by Destiny Church. “At least one of those kids will be gay and feeling quite wretched about himself,” he recalled in a past interview with YOUR EX. That seed of empathy, mixed with his razor-sharp wit, bloomed into Black Faggot—a show that doesn’t just tell stories, it shakes people into listening.
Characters include everything from a devout, closeted Christian praying the gay away, to a Sāmoan neat freak outraged that his partner just messed up the duvet, to a fabulous fa’afafine artist explaining her work ‘Cracker Wanna Poly’. Each one is drawn with nuance, authenticity, and humour. “Sione, the hustler, was based on a guy I met—he’s a lawyer now!” Rodger laughed. “And Christian was vaguely based on me. I used to pray the gay away too.”
Rodger has always mined his own experience. Born into a conservative religious environment and raised by his palagi mother and grandparents, his journey to embracing his Sāmoan identity—and his queerness—was complex. “It only got hard when I started identifying with my Sāmoan side. Before that, I was just a Kiwi kid with a Sāmoan dad,” he explained. Coming out at 25, driven by love, was a watershed moment. “I was so in love I just wanted to share that joy with my mum.”
It’s these deeply personal tensions—love versus shame, culture versus self—that make Black Faggot hit so hard, and so beautifully. The play has drawn acclaim across Aotearoa, Australia and at the Edinburgh Fringe, where even international audiences resonated. “They had to wrap their heads around us, Pacific Islanders, black identifying—but they got it. They laughed. They cried.”
To buy tickets to Black Faggot at The Court Theatre – CLICK HERE!
And now, with Polata’ivao at the helm, Christchurch audiences will finally get their chance to experience the magic live.
There’s something poetically powerful about Black Faggot being one of the first plays staged at The Court’s fresh location. The visibility, the space, the heart of the city—it all echoes what this play has always stood for: making queer, brown, beautiful voices impossible to ignore.
Rodger sums it up best with a motto he lives by: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” In that spirit, Black Faggot doesn’t ask for your approval—it demands your attention.
If you’ve ever felt out of place, ever wrestled with love and culture, or just want to laugh your arse off—don’t miss this show.
