In a career spanning more than 30 years, internationally acclaimed theatre director Nina Nawalowalo has created a platform for the telling of Pacific stories across the globe.

Artistic Director and Co-founder of Wellington-based theatre company The Conch, she is a performer, mentor and teacher who has presented at over 40 international festivals, including the London International Mime Festival, British Festival of Visual Theatre, and the Moscow Arts Festival. From her ground breaking ‘Vula’ which toured for 7 years including a 3 week season at The Sydney opera House and a sold out season at London’s Barbican Centre, to Masi, Marama and her unforgettable direction of the work of others such as Hone Kouka’s The Prophet and Edinburgh festival award winning Duck death and the Tulip, Nina is renown for her powerful visual and magical work exploring Pacific themes.

She is passionately committed to bringing our untold stories into the light and for using theatre as a vehicle to affect social change. In 2013 She established the Solomon Islands National Women’s Theatre Company ‘Stages of Change’ as a means to address violence against women and girls. The 15 strong company of women performed at the Melanesian Arts Festival in Papua New Guinea and at the EU Parliament in Brussels. Acclaimed work The White Guitar, is the powerful story of The Luafutu Family – Father John and sons Matthias and Malo aka renown hip hop artist scribe. Told by the Luafutu family themselves, the sold-out show was lauded by critics with praise: “If there’s any show that you’re going to see in the next decade, this has to be it” [RNZ National]. It was described by The Press as ‘a seminal moment in New Zealand theatre history’.

A Boy Called Piano by Fa’amoana John Luafutu, the sequel to this ground breaking work tells the untold story of thousands of Maori and Pacific children made wards of state in the 1960’s opened in its development season at BATS Theatre, Wellington in November 2019. The work was set to tour the country when covid struck, so Nina pivoted to audio and digital form – creating an audio-drama of the play for broadcast on Radio NZ, and developing a documentary film – which is now entering the film festival circuit alongside community distribution, and will be broadcast throughout NZ, Australia and the Pacific on Maori Television in 2023.

In 2017, Nina received the Senior Pacific Artist Award in acknowledgement of her significant contribution to Pacific Arts in Aotearoa. In 2018 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Theatre and Pacific culture. In 2021 she was awarded the New Zealand Arts Laureate Award by The Arts Foundation.