Village Shows

May 10, 2013

There was a concert in my village tonight, now I don’t mean with a stage and huge speakers and pyrotechnics but more think of it more like Shakespeare in the Park. Instead of the stadium however, imagine grass, and instead of the classically trained thespians, there were Tongan men dressed in drag- which oddly enough may be more Shakespearian…. The show (some outer island’s church fundraiser) drew out the whole village, all excited to see Tinitini. Tinitini is the Tongan equivalent to a movie star- he is well known all around (although I guess the island is so small I am pretty well known too) and he has video recordings of his past shows at the knockoff DVD shop in town. I couldn’t really understand any of his jokes but with the way the crowed was cackling I could imagine he is a pretty funny guy- of course some of the jokes weren’t in Tongan so much as just Tongan humor, like hitting fellow actors really hard with a big stick. Between the hitting people and the drag I realized that Tongans have a very refined since of humor….Of course that is the best thing about Tonga really, they really laugh at anything, and meaningfully laugh- it is pretty awesome. If I were to ever go into standup comedy I know that I would always want to plant Tongans in my audience for their infectious belly laughs.