Snazzy, a new play set to take the stage this July at the New York Theatre Festival, tells the story of the Staton family, a family credited with establishing the first ever face painting company. It is a play rooted in legacy and heritage, from the story itself, to the actors on the stage, and the creatives behind it all. Among Worlds’ editor sat down and spoke with the creator of Snazzy, Joe Staton, as well as Snazzy cast member and fellow TCK, Naomi Orange.
From Families With Legacy
Naomi Orange is no stranger to heritage and being rooted in history as the granddaughter of New Zealand historian Dame Claudia Orange. Across her family tree are individuals who have traversed the world, most evidenced by her parents.
“My mom is English, but she was born in Venezuela and spent her childhood in Venezuela which I think is really interesting because she’s just an English person that spent most of her childhood in Venezuela before being shipped off to English boarding school.”
“Even my dad is a little confused because his dad was doing missionary work in Thailand, so he moved from New Zealand to Thailand, and then he moved back to New Zealand, and then he went to England for a while, and moved back to New Zealand, and then he went to England for 20 years, and then he met my mom there, so now he has like a pseudo-English accent, even though he’s like a New Zealander. Now my whole family is developing an Australian accent, which is really weird because they’ve always been deeply, deeply English accent people.”
Even so, Orange takes a lot of her identity from her family’s deep English and New Zealand roots.
“My grandparents are very much New Zealander. Then my mom’s side of the family is all English and even my New Zealand side, if you trace it back a few generations, it’s English as well. I feel like I especially appreciate my New Zealand heritage because it’s so rare on a global scale. You really don’t meet many New Zealanders outside of New Zealand. Especially my family [who are] quite deeply New Zealander on that side. I think they’ve been living there for a good few hundred years, since people started going there.”
As for Joe Staton, his unique family history forms the basis of Snazzy, the events of which happened before his own birth.
“Basically, my parents started a face painting company in the 1980s. Actually, they started the first face painting company. No one had ever done it before. It was called Snazaroo Face Paints. And they started that before I was born, so I was kind of born into that. Sadly, my father passed away when I was two years old. And when he passed away, my mom was left with the company and my mom didn’t really want to continue doing the company without him. It’s more complicated than that, but in a nutshell, that’s what happened. And because Snazaroo did really well, it’s sold all over the world now, my mom sort of had the means to really change her life and, you know, do something different.”
The TCK Stories Behind the Scenes
From these events was the beginning of Joe’s own TCK story.
“We moved to France [from England]. I was six years old when I moved. I was put in a French school, which was kind of traumati as a six-year-old. But I mean it was good. I learned how to speak French in about 10 months at school. We lived in France for four years. My mom was in a relationship that didn’t work out in France and when that ended we decided that maybe France wasn’t the best place for us after all. My older brother who is 14 years older than me was actually working in Spain in tourism and so we said okay, why don’t we move to Spain. I was about 10 years old when that happened. I moved to Spain and lived in Spain from the age of 10 to 18, so for about eight years. I went to an international school over there. I was surrounded by people of many different cultures, many different languages. And I grew up around that. When I finished school, I decided to move back to London to go to drama school, which was the weirdest experience, going back to my home country and being like, I can’t relate to anyone here. This is really weird. It’s like I can, but I can’t. I lasted about three years in England before I decided to move to America. Now I’m in New York City. My sister is in Australia. My mom and my brother are in Spain. But we’re all English. So that’s weird.”
Similar to Joe, Naomi’s TCK story began in England but soon her own TCK parents began a string of moves to a couple different countries.
“I was born in London to an English mom and a New Zealand dad. And then when I was seven, they decided to move to New Zealand. So I moved to New Zealand and stayed there until I was 10. When I was 10, I moved to Australia, which we don’t have any connection to. And then I lived in Australia for 10 years and became naturalized there. So now I have three citizenships, which is fun. And then when I was 19, I moved to America for school.”
Both Naomi and Joe appreciate their TCK upbringings and what it gave them while still acknowledging the struggles. Naomi reflected on that confusion in the simple way her and her family’s accents have shifted throughout their moves.
“I think, on the one hand, because you identify with so many cultures and nationalities you are always “the foreigner” to people. Especially in my experience, I have such a blended accent and I’ve changed accents a lot in my life. Now it’s like the most confused it’s ever been. When I was in New Zealand, I was English. When I was in Australia, I was still English, because I never picked up the New Zealand accent, funnily enough. And then I picked up an Australian accent, but I was still English to them, and now I’m Australian here [in New York]. It’s sort of never really feeling entirely included in the culture that you’re in. But I also think it’s nice because you get to be a little greedy. You get to experience feeling a part of, for me, three different places rather than just one and you get to draw from that in your life. I feel like it makes me richer as an individual to have so many cultures running through me rather than just one.”
As the child of TCK parents, Naomi understands that she’s inherited something akin to a superpower, with her attitude and ease in moving and doing big things with her life.
“I feel like children of TCK parents, people who do that much moving around have very distinct qualities about their personalities that makes them do that. And I think they definitely pass that down to their children. I mean, people who haven’t moved around their whole lives, they are like moving is a huge, terrifying thing to them. Whereas when I was 19, I was like, right, I’ll just move to America then. No biggie. And I did that. And I feel like it sort of leaves you with the impression that you can do anything.”
Humorously, Naomi did have to add that official paperwork becomes more tedious as a result of the many countries she has accumulated citizenships with.
“I feel like they never trust anything I’m saying. They’re like, what’s your nationality? But where were you born? And why is your driver’s license from a different country? And I’m like, here’s my Australian license, my New Zealand passport, and I was born in London, here you go, and now I live here. And here’s my social security card.”
Joe acknowledged in himself the classic TCK urge, the need to always keep moving, which comes as both a blessing and a curse.
“I’m even reaching a point now where I’m wondering if New York is the right place for me. I’m 31 now. By the time I was 22, I’d lived in four countries. And I don’t know if New York is even going to be in my future at all. I have no idea. [With] my mom, we call it the 10-year itch. That’s what we call it. We say every 10 years, we start to be like, where do we go now?”
“I’ve always thought that the best part about being a TCK is that if you need to up and leave, it’s pretty easy to do that. You know, if you need to just get up and change your life, you’ve done that before many times. I’ve had some relationships in the past where they’ve not really understood that. People feel very close to home and haven’t really understood the whole idea, [that] it’s very easy to say goodbye. I think that’s kind of the best and the worst thing, actually.”
The Creation of Snazzy
In all of this emerges the story of how Joe was inspired to write Snazzy. Joe, from the start referred to himself as “an actor, occasional producer,” with “playwright” not initially being in the mix. But, inspired by his mom’s memoir, Joe found what he needed to take a stab at writing his family’s story and potentially adding new vocabulary to his list of self-descriptions.
“I’ve never thought of myself as a writer before. My mom wrote her memoir about 10 years ago, in 2018. I knew that it would be good on stage and good on screen as well. I was trying so hard to get someone else to write it for me because I just didn’t have the confidence to do that. Some people tried to, but they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what it was that made it a special thing. So in the end I was like, okay, I’m just gonna have to do it myself. And I think I’ve surprised myself. We did a reading of my second draft of the play in December and it was so cool to hear audiences react to that and laugh and everything, but also so cool to see what the actors did with it. So it’s my first thing that I’ve written. It’s obviously very close and personal, but I think I’m going to write some more stuff afterwards because I think I might have caught the bug.”
Ultimately, Joe’s motivation to write Snazzy, as well as produce and share it with the world, came from a desire to explore and honor the story that gave him the life he was born into.
“I’ve written this play about my parents because, well, my dad died when I was two. So part of writing the play was to learn a bit about the stuff that I missed and the stuff that I never got to see. My heritage is pretty cool. My parents started a face painting company. That’s a really cool piece of heritage. And another reason I wrote this play is [because] I think my mom in particular doesn’t understand how cool that actually is. I wanted to show her in a way. It’s awesome when people grow up with family businesses and all of that. But how many people get to say when you see someone with their face painted, “Oh, my parents did that”? The reason that’s happening is because of my parents. That’s a really weird and really cool thing. I really love that so much. And I want people to know about it. I don’t want my mom’s story to be forgotten. Because it’s something that’s brought a lot of joy to people, especially for children, and myself included.”
The Gift of Snazzy
These stories have shown that this show has been a gift to both its cast and its creator. As for the audience, Naomi believes it won’t be hard for them to find something to love about this show.
“I think [for] the audience [it] is a very easy job. I think the show is a very meaty show. I feel like it leaves you the exact way you want to leave the theater, which is, you know, I’m a bit heartbroken, I’m a bit sad, but also I’m so fulfilled and I laughed and I had a good time as well. It has a little bit of everything.”
“They’ll find the show funny and I think they’ll relate to it because I feel like the driving theme of the story is that regular people can do anything. That is something that is so quintessentially New Yorker. That’s just New York, it’s regular people working as hard as they can day in day out to do incredible things and this story is very reflective of that.”
It’s clearly a show close to Joe’s heart, but it’s also a show that continues a legacy of touching people’s lives.
“I really hope people feel inspired. I really do. There’s a lot of obstacles that happen. The idea of building a face painting company, is that going to make any money? Like, what a weird thing, what a weird project idea. I think for people to watch something like this play and realize that it doesn’t really matter if you have an idea that’s super super weird, the idea can work if you are passionate about it. All you need is passion. My parents weren’t particularly great academics or the most genius or intelligent people in the world or anything like that, but they had a lot of passion. And that passion ended up making them really successful. And in spite of a lot of people telling them that it’s a stupid idea, I hope that people will walk away feeling that and feeling that passion is everything.”
“What an awesome thing to be able to say that my parents brought joy to millions, you know? And hopefully with continuing their story and bringing this play, I can hopefully help people revisit some of that joy, but also bring more joy to people.”
