What does it mean to be Black and gay and an immigrant living in Tāmaki Makaurau? Playwright Estelle Chout, an Afro-Caribbean queer actress attempts to answer that question in Po' Boys and Oysters, a comedy loosely based on her life.

The show was part of the Auckland Pride Festival, which has been cancelled due to the Omicron outbreak and the red traffic light setting, but will go ahead with vaccine passes and audiences of fewer than 100.

Chout also plays the starring role in the show, which was nominated for an Adam NZ Play Award last year, and will have its world premiere at Auckland’s Basement Theatre next month.

The comedy follows Mission Bay locals Flo and her wife Jo, who are in the final stages of adopting a child, and are ready to share the big news with Flo’s highly conservative big sister.

“I rarely see someone like myself – a proud Black queer mother – represented on the stage,” said Chout, who was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, and who moved to New Zealand from London six years ago.

When you’re not given a seat at the table, sometimes you have to get another table.

“I’m a French-speaking Caribbean, so there have never been many roles available for my accent. I wrote Po’ Boys and Oysters to give these characters a voice and provide a platform to a group that have rarely been seen or represented in our theatre,” she said. The inspiration for the play was a family Zoom call that took place in 2020, during the first big lockdown.

“During this troubled time, my family came together [digitally], and very quickly things went pear shaped,” she said.

“My siblings and I reverted to our childhood habits. We all started arguing. I thought it was quite amazing how after all this time, we’re all adults, but the same dynamics were in play between us.”

Chout was provoked to write about a good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry, although her own siblings are not as conservative as the characters in Po’ Boys.

Furthermore, she wants to write about Black queer mothers, “because that is what I am."

She has two primary-school-age sons with her ex-partner, a Pākehā New Zealander. Their kids were carried by Chout’s ex-partner, but adoption was something they talked about.

Adoption is incredibly difficult for queer New Zealanders, she said, because there are only a handful of children available for adoption in Aotearoa each year, and very few countries allow international gay adoption.

“As queer people, how do we have children?” is a big life question that bears exploring, she says.

Chout shares the stage with two other Black actresses; renowned author, poet and African-American activist Sonya Renee Taylor, and Zimbabwean-born actress Sandra Zvenyika. Local Pākehā actors Andrew Johnson and Jack Briden round up the cast.

“There is a very small Black community in Aotearoa, though it is growing, and it’s been in New Zealand for a long time. There is not a lot of Black representation, but it’s starting to change,” Chout tells us.

Po’ Boys and Oysters is directed by Dione Joseph, founder of Black Creatives Aotearoa (BCA), a collective of more than 500 members of Black New Zealand artists of African and Afro-Caribbean heritage who now call Aotearoa home.

The range of talent within the group include playwrights, poets, chefs, creative entrepreneurs, hair braiders, rappers, visual artists and more.

Po’ Boys and Oysters is BCA’s first theatre production, and it has been written and supported through the organisation’s playwriting lab.

When writing, Chout thinks of the stories of her ancestors, grandparents, and even immediate family which have been lost. “The voices of women of colour have been muffled more than any other demographic. We have to make the point that we are here as well, and we need to be heard just the same,” she said.

“The problem when the world tries to discriminate against so many groups – the Blacks, the gays – the world deprives itself of so much beauty and so much talent.”

The Adam NZ Play Award judges praised the work, saying: “It is playful, loving, complex and sexual.”

• Po’ Boys and Oysters is scheduled for its debut season from February 22-March 5 at Basement Theatre, Auckland. For tickets and further information regarding Covid-19 restrictions, visit basementtheatre.co.nz