Blog Archives

The play’s the thing, Victor Rodger

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?

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Courage, candour and bloody-mindedness, Frances Edmond

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.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

The one and the many, Helen Watson White

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

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review

Driven by secrets, Frances Edmond

When Sun and Moon Collide Briar Grace-Smith Huia, $21.88, ISBN 9781869693169 Sons Victor Rodger Huia, $21.88, ISBN 9781869693039 Why publish a play? Well, a book is a nice thing to hold, material and solid: a small package containing something intriguing,

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Plays, Review
Search the archive
Search by category