"Samoan Wedding" star is Visiting Pacific Artist at UH Manoa

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Tisha Hickson, (808) 956-2652
Center for Pacific Islands Studies
Posted: Mar 23, 2007

HONOLULU — Well-known Samoan actor, playwright, and screen and television writer Oscar Kightley is the 2007 Visiting Artist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa‘s Center for Pacific Islands Studies. Kightley co-wrote and starred in the 2006 film "Samoan Wedding," a box office hit in Aotearoa/New Zealand and a popular selection for the 2006 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival. He is also a member of the Aotearoa/New Zealand comedy group, the Naked Samoans, and the co-creator of the popular, ongoing animated television series "bro‘Town."

Born in Sāmoa, Kightley emigrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand with his mother when he was four years old. A Qantas award-winning journalist, he co-founded the Pacific Underground and Island Players theatre companies and won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award in 1998. Since then, he has worked as a performer and writer for a number of television shows in New Zealand. In 2006, Kightley was one of only five winners of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand‘s Laureate Award, a career award and one of New Zealand‘s largest cash awards.

Kightley will be in residence at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies the first week in April and will be making several presentations to which the public is invited, free of charge. These include a showing of "Samoan Wedding" at the UH Mānoa Architecture Auditorium (Room 205) on Tuesday, April 3, at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A session with Kightley.

The public is also invited to hear Kightley talk about his creative work at a seminar on Thursday, April 5, at 3 p.m. in the East-West Center‘s (EWC) Burns Hall, Rooms 3121/3125. This seminar is cosponsored by the EWC Pacific Islands Development Program and the UH Mānoa English department.

A master class on screenwriting and acting with Kightley for the UH Mānoa Academy for Creative Media on Monday, April 2, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Shidler College of Business, Room C102, is also open to the public.

Kightley‘s visit in Honolulu is made possible by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant to the UH Mānoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies. Previous artists in the Visiting Artists Program have included artist and writer John Pule and award-winning choreographer and Black Grace director Neil Ieremia.

For more information, call 956-7700 or visit www.hawaii.edu/cpis.

For more information, visit: http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis