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?
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.
Urbanesia: Four Pasifika Plays Courtney Sina Meredith, Vela Manusaute, Victor Rodger, Oscar Kightley, David Fane, Nathaniel Lees Playmarket, $40.00, ISBN 9780908607433 Haruru Mai Briar Grace-Smith Strange Resting Places Paolo Rotondo and Rob Mokaraka Playmarket, $32.00, ISBN 9780908607440 In 2012, nearing…