Blog Archives

“The play’s the thing”, Sarah Ross

Posted on November 29, 2019 by NZ Books

Ngaio Marsh’s Hamlet: The 1943 Production Script
Polly Hoskins (ed)
Canterbury University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781988503134

In August 1943, as New Zealand troops in Europe began the Italian campaign, the Canterbury University College Drama Society (CUCDS) performed Hamlet to sell-out audiences at the Canterbury College Little Theatre. Hamlet had not been seen in New Zealand “for a generation”, and it was a roaring success: students were straddling the beams in the rafters, and CUCDS was reproached by the City Council for overfilling the space. The acclaimed season was produced and directed by Ngaio Marsh, the celebrated crime novelist who went on to direct several Shakespearean plays. Marsh embraced the war-time context for the production, featuring modern, military dress. Owing to its success, Hamlet returned for a second season at the Little Theatre, November–December 1943, after university exams were over for the year; and after CUCDS mounted a season of Othello in 1944, both productions toured nationally.

Tagged with: Canterbury University Press, Issue 128, Ngaio Marsh, Polly Hoskins, Sarah Ross, Summer 2019
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Plays, Review

The play’s the thing, Victor Rodger

Posted on May 22, 2019 by NZ Books

Southern Stage
John Broughton, Oscar Kightley and Erolia Ifopo, Gary Henderson, and Carl Nixon
Playmarket, $40.00,
ISBN 9780908607662

These four plays all have a connection to the mainland, via either their setting, their writers or, in most cases, both. However, it must be said that one of the writers here is a filthy JAFA (Just Another Fucking Aucklander). As a quartet what, if anything, do they tell us about the South?

Tagged with: Carl Nixon, Erolia Ifopo, Gary Henderson, Issue 126, John Broughton, Oscar Kightley, Playmarket, Victor Rodger, Winter 2019
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Plays and playmaking, Mark Houlahan

Posted on December 3, 2018 by NZ Books

Performing Dramaturgy
Fiona Graham
Playmarket, $40.00,
ISBN 9780908607648

Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa
Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell
ISBN 9781988531076

Dawn Raids
Oscar Kightley
Playmarket, $18.00,
ISBN 97809080607631

“What is a dramaturg?” I overheard that question earlier this year while sitting in a theatre waiting for a show to begin. As it happened, this was a show which listed me in the programme as “dramaturg”, and the couple asking the question were reading my notes. So I quickly said to them, “script advisor”, and left them to get on with their pre-show reading. A few months later, I was reading Fiona Graham’s Performing Dramaturgy, which offers a much richer, contextualised series of answers to the question. It would be egregious to thrust her book into the hands of someone directly waiting for a performance to start, of course, but otherwise it can be safely recommended to a broad range of researchers, students and theatre practitioners. Graham herself prefers the alternative spelling “dramaturge”, because of its use to indicate “an expanded and interdisciplinary practice”, so I’ll use that form here.

Tagged with: David O’Donnell, Fiona Graham, Issue 124, Lisa Warrington, Mark Houlahan, Oscar Kightley, Playmarket, Summer 2018
Posted in Art, Literature, Non-fiction, Pacific, Plays, Review

The play’s the thing, Mark Houlahan

Posted on September 10, 2017 by NZ Books

Best Playwriting Book Ever
Roger Hall
Playmarket, $22.00,
ISBN 9780908607600

Shift
Alison Quigan, Vivienne Plumb and Lynda Chanwai-Earle
Playmarket, $35.00,
ISBN 9780908607617

Bats Plays
Ken Duncum and Rebecca Rodden
Playmarket, $30.00,
ISBN 9781776560899

To review Best Playwriting Book Ever, I broke the first rule of playwright club. In his prologue, Roger Hall advises: “To get the best out of this book, write a play (or as much as you can of one) before you read it.” I have never written a play, though I have been watching and performing plays on various stages for almost as long as people have been flocking to Hall’s plays, since his break-out hit, Glide Time (1976). He has now written 50 plays, alongside film scripts and TV series, so he has certainly earned the right to stake his claim in the title of this book. Ticket sales from Hall’s plays have helped fund so many of our theatres, and Hall himself has managed the still rare local feat of making a living as a playwright. He has told that story entertainingly in his autobiography, Bums on Seats (1998).

Tagged with: Alison Quigan, Issue 119, Ken Duncum, Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Mark Houlahan, Playmarket, Rebecca Rodden, Roger Hall, Spring 2017, Vivienne Plumb
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Courage, candour and bloody-mindedness, Frances Edmond

Posted on September 10, 2017 by NZ Books

Playscripts
Victor Rodger: Black Faggot and Other Plays
Victoria University Press, $35.00
ISBN 9781776561032

“Life will always leave fiction for dead”: Victor Rodger, in the New Zealand Herald, summing up his life experience, thus far. Rodger’s upbringing is certainly uncommon – the stuff of fiction perhaps. The illegitimate son of a palagi teenage mother and an absent Samoan father, he grew up in “white” Christchurch in a Scottish born-again Christian family. His background is relevant in that he draws on it in many of his plays. His first, Sons, is a semi-autobiographical story of a young afakasi (half-caste) man in search of his origins and identity. In the same interview in the New Zealand Herald, Rodger says: “I can’t remember if I thanked him [his father] for my career because I’ve turned our fucked up relationship into an industry.” In contrast, Rodgers describes his mother as “all about love” and, indeed, in these plays the mother figures – Mama Letti in Black Faggot, Tahlz in Club Paradiso – are nurturing and forgiving, while the descriptions of dead Olivia in At the Wake are in similar vein.

Tagged with: Frances Edmond, Issue 119, Spring 2017, Victor Rodger, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Young, gifted, female and brown, Elizabeth Crayford

Posted on September 10, 2017 by NZ Books

Fale Aitu|Spirit House
Tusiata Avia
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776560646

Tail of the Taniwha
Courtney Sina Meredith
Beatnik Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9780992264895

Lucky Punch
Simone Kaho
Anahera Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9780473367510

Before Tusiata Avia’s Fale Aitu|Spirit House was published, she made a point of telling her mother what she’d written, to which her mother replied, “It all needs to come out.” Avia tells us this in an endnote, but it could stand as epigraph to all three books. Reading Avia’s work alongside Courtney Sina Meredith’s Tail of the Taniwha and Simone Kaho’s Lucky Punch is to be immersed, sometimes uncomfortably, in contemporary Pasifika culture from a female perspective. Each writer’s voice is distinctive, yet similar themes crop up again and again. Anyone who’s read Albert Wendt’s Leaves of the Banyan Tree, or Sia Figiel’s more recent Where We Once Belonged, both set in Samoa, will not be surprised by the level of violence in these new works. However, the “all” that Avia’s mother implies is alive and kicking in New Zealand in the 21^st century.

Tagged with: Anahera Press, Beatnik Publishing, Courtney Sina Meredith, Elizabeth Crayford, Issue 119, Simone Kaho, Spring 2017, Tusiata Avia, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Plays, Poetry, Review

Stories on stage, Mark Houlahan

Posted on December 7, 2016 by NZ Books

The Plays of Bruce Mason: A Survey John Smythe Playmarket and Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781776560554 Here/Now: 8 Plays by Award-Winning New Zealand Playwrights David O’Donnell (ed) Playmarket, $35.00, ISBN 9780908 607594 John Smythe’s survey of the plays of…

Tagged with: David O’Donnell, Issue 116, John Smythe, Mark Houlahan, Playmarket, Summer 2016, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Theatre for life Lisa Warrington

Posted on February 27, 2014 by NZ Books

Rebellious Mirrors: Community-based Theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand Paul Maunder Canterbury University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781927145456 Twenty New Zealand Playwrights Michelanne Forster and Vivienne Plumb Playmarket, $40.00, ISBN 9780908607471 Though differing in approach, tone and content, there are strong connections between…

Tagged with: Autumn 2014, Canterbury University Press, Issue 105, Lisa Warrington, Michelanne Forster, Paul Maunder, Playmarket, Vivienne Plumb
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Plays, Sociology

Lordania revisited, Laurie Atkinson

Posted on February 27, 2014 by NZ Books

Three Plays Robert Lord (Phillip Mann ed) Playmarket, $30.00, ISBN 9780908607464 The playwright Robert Lord died in Dunedin on January 7th, 1992. His last play, Joyful and Triumphant, was premiered seven weeks later at Circa Theatre on February 20th as…

Tagged with: Autumn 2014, Issue 105, Laurie Atkinson, Phillip Mann, Playmarket, Robert Lord
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

National theatrics, John Callen

Posted on February 27, 2014 by NZ Books

Playmarket 40: 40 Years of Playwriting in New Zealand Laurie Atkinson (ed) Playmarket, $40.00, ISBN 9780908607457 Ask an actor or director to speak at a function or write something about theatre, and there’s a good chance they’ll presume it’s themselves…

Tagged with: Autumn 2014, Issue 105, John Callen, Laurie Atkinson, Playmarket
Posted in History, Literature, Plays, Review