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News.com.au
14 hours ago
- Sport
- News.com.au
NRL star Joseph Tapine breaks down discussing gang member dad
Joseph Tapine's tears are for a man he isn't in touch with these days. They are for his dad. Tapine had a humble childhood in Wellington, New Zealand, with a hard-working mum and no family car; he didn't learn to drive until he met his wife, Kirsten. He and his big brother and sister walked themselves to school and footy training, or took the bus. They knew no better and were happy. His father was a gang member. 'He was in Black Power, which was one of the main gangs back home,' Tapine, one of rugby league's elite front-row enforcers, told Jake Duke on Fox League's Face to Face. 'We grew up around them. My uncles, his mates were in it as well. But I remember the good things – like we would have barbecues, we would have games of touch footy down at the park, and he'd have all his mates and all their kids play. 'I didn't … yeah, there was drinking and drugs around, which I don't remember much; I remember it's around, but it's not the main focus of my childhood when I was growing up. It was more, he'll get his mates and I'll play at the park until he was ready to go home. 'I think he maybe went to prison before me and my siblings were born. He drove us away from that life as well, he said he wanted better for us and not to follow him down that path.' Reflecting on those conversations, Tapine became emotional and whispered 'sorry' as tears came. 'We don't keep in touch. He's a good fella, but he's got some stuff to …' Tapine said, recalling how and why he moved to Australia. 'I wanted to get out of 'Wellies', I wanted to get out of New Zealand. I wanted to probably have a different life. And I had a thought, if I didn't crack league … I wanted to be a builder and they pay way better over here.' Tapine joined the Newcastle Knights in 2013, still in his teens. When not playing football, he worked in an Ingham's chicken factory and 'hated it'. His raw talent was obvious at the Knights, but so were some early demons. 'I loved the drink. I would get drunk and we would have captain's run the next day,' he said. 'So I was buzzing I was playing first grade, but I didn't realise what it meant.' Wayne Bennett gave Tapine his debut in 2014, despite one of his drinking sessions. Tapine had a big night for his 20th birthday and didn't front for training the following day … then froze when he saw Bennett's name pop up on his phone. 'He rang me and said, 'Hey mate, where are you?' And I said, 'Oh, am I in today?'' Tapine recalled with a laugh. 'And then he goes, 'Yeah mate, you're on debut this week – hope you're not too hungover from the party last night!' So they all knew.' Tapine played just 20 games for the Knights; which he now sees as a blessing in disguise, given that he's risen to stardom and the club captaincy in Canberra. But it took him time to grow into leadership; alcohol wasn't the only problem early in his career. 'Pokies was bad. I was blowing pay cheques on it,' he said. 'Because I came over, I didn't know money when I was growing up, we didn't have much and I didn't know how to organise it; didn't know you had to buy a house, didn't know all this investing, all that stuff. So I was getting money, young kid and I was, 'Oh, yeah. Drink and gamble, I'm gonna get paid next month, this will keep coming in'. 'I remember one time we, when you do pre-season, probably like just under 10 grand came into my account and that was probably gone in a week or two. 'I hate owing people money as well, that thing annoyed me. I was becoming that person and my wife gave me an ultimatum. 'I don't think I'd be where I am (without her) … I was spiralling a bit when I was at Newcastle. That was probably just when I met her, but then once we locked in and wanted to get serious, she put her foot down and said, 'We're not having that'. Which is what I needed at the time, I needed someone to tell me, 'Mate, you're not unbeatable'.' Tapine was also charged over a 2014 altercation while in Newcastle; the charges were dropped the following year. It became apparent to him that he needed a fresh start. 'I was in a bad spot but I didn't feel supported at the time as well,' he said. 'I was comfortable where I was living, I loved Newcastle as a place, had a lot of friends, but ultimately I needed to change what I was doing and change of environment's probably the best way to do that.' Tapine said then-Knights coach Nathan Brown made him train alone after he decided to join Canberra. The club said it would only agree on a release if he joined the Roosters, despite Tapine having agreed a deal with the Raiders; having found trouble in Newcastle, he didn't like his chances living in Sydney. Once he did make it to Canberra, things changed. He became a New Zealand Test player and his 100th NRL game was the 2019 grand final; a devastating loss to the Roosters, from which he still rues a lazy defensive play on the tryline that let opposition hooker Sam Verrills score. His 100th game for the Raiders also came against the Chooks and saw him score his favourite NRL try: a sensational solo effort at the SCG that destroyed the Tricolours' defence with footwork and power. A proud Maori man, Tapine continues a fine tradition of champion Kiwi props in Canberra, such as John Lomax and Quentin Pongia. He wears Pongia's Raiders player number on his training shirt, and it also adorns his locker; he fancies he'd have enjoyed a beer with the late icon. Another legendary prop, Raiders teammate Josh Papali'i, is a great mate. Yet wife Kirsten and daughter Ilua are Tapine's greatest rocks. Kirsten is forthright – as Raiders coach Ricky Stuart discovered after a 2021 game against South Sydney, when she posted an Instagram story criticising his coaching and treatment of her husband. The post went viral. 'You have an international player warming your bench for 50 minutes … Your interchanges are killing us!!!' she wrote on her story. 'Refs call count means jak (sic) when coaches are (rubbish bin emoji).' The fallout became so big there were suggestions Tapine, who was down on form at the time, may leave the club. Instead, it was a turning point in his relationship with Stuart, one where he put his ego to the side and matured. 'I thought after that I might be on my way. Thankfully not, I love this club and I'll probably play the rest of my footy here,' he said. 'But at the time I thought, yeah, maybe I'm not wanted and for me, that's a huge part … when I play, I want to play for someone that wants me. 'I think the thing with me and 'Stick', we're similar people. We just needed to sit down and have a chat man to man. 'We always had a good relationship, me and 'Stick', but that brutal honesty probably brought it forward a bit more. He can come to me now whenever he wants, text me, and say, 'I need this', or, 'I need you to do that'. 'And it's easy now, where before I was probably hard to coach. That ego thing, you know, some people don't want to be wrong and that's something I had to work on. I'm grateful it happened, even though it was in the media.' Tapine, 31, is now a Raiders great. He has been at the club almost a decade, was made captain for this season and just brought up his 200th NRL game, wearing lime green against Melbourne last month; which Kiwi teammates celebrated with a haka in the Raiders sheds. He is intent on winning that elusive premiership, the club's first since 1994 – though he says he'd be almost as proud if it arrived after his retirement, having laid the foundation just as he does every game for Canberra.
Daily Mail
19 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Famously tough footy star Joe Tapine breaks down in tears as he recalls growing up with dad who was in feared Black Power gang
Canberra Raiders hardman Joseph Tapine was overcome with emotion after recalling his challenging upbringing with a father who was in one of New Zealand's most notorious gangs. Tapine, who recently celebrated his 200th game for Canberra, has shed light on his childhood growing up in New Zealand with a hard-working mother and a dad with whom he has a complicated relationship with. 'He was in Black Power, which was one of the main gangs back home,' Tapine said on Fox League's Face to Face. 'We grew up around them. My uncles, his mates were in it as well. But I remember the good things – like we would have barbecues, we would have games of touch footy down at the park, and he'd have all his mates and all their kids play. 'I didn't … yeah, there was drinking and drugs around that, which I don't remember much; I remember it's around, but it's not the main focus of my childhood when I was growing up. 'It was more, he'll get his mates and I'll play at the park until he was ready to go home. 'I think he maybe went to prison before me and my siblings were born. He drove us away from that life as well, he said he wanted better for us and not to follow him down that path.' The emotional weight of those memories overcame Tapine, who whispered 'sorry' as he broke down in tears. 'We don't keep in touch. He's a good fella, but he's got some stuff to…' Tapine said. 'I wanted to get out of 'Wellies', I wanted to get out of New Zealand. I wanted to probably have a different life. And I had a thought, if I didn't crack league … I wanted to be a builder and they pay way better over here.' The talented prop got his start for the Knights in 2014 and has established himself in Canberra as one of the most respected players in the NRL in recent years. However, the Kiwi international has revealed he struggled with addiction in his early days. 'The harshest lesson was probably that I got addicted to pokies,' Tapine told Nine's Marlee and Me podcast in March. 'I was living in a share house and one of the boys said "let's go for dinner". We go in this pokie room and like everyone's first time, just luck - I put a freaking $20 in and won big. 'Three years later I was trying to have to shake that addiction. Pokies and a bit of drinking was big in the culture and that was pretty hard for me to shake. 'Those things get you. I think athletes as well and we want that adrenaline kick and that's what it gives you. It took a while to get off it. 'I didn't learn about finance or anything back home. I had to learn all of that on the go and Kirsten [wife] taught me a lot of that. After I met Kirsten, she gave me an ultimatum. 'I think the move here helped, it was around that time when I had that drama at Newcastle. The change in environment really helped me.'
Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
