October 6, 2009

SHORT LIST FOR NZ’S NATIONAL PLAYWRITING AWARD ANNOUNCED

Five playwrights have been shortlisted for New Zealand’s most significant national theatre award, the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, New Zealand playwrights’ agency Playmarket has announced. They are Miria George, Pip Hall, Eli Kent, Arthur Meek and Thomas Sainsbury.

The Bruce Mason Playwriting Award has since 1983 recognised the work of an outstanding emerging New Zealand playwright who has had one or more full-length plays produced to acclaim. Previous winners include many of this country’s most celebrated writers, including Victor Rodger, Hone Kouka and Jo Randerson and was last year awarded to Paul Rothwell. The award is sponsored by the Downstage Theatre Society, The FAME Trust, Bruce Mason Estate and Playmarket. The winner will be announced at Downstage Theatre on Friday November 6.

Nominations were provided by playwrights and a national theatre panel, with the shortlist of five playwrights decided on based on the number of nominations received. The final award winner will be decided through voting by a panel made up of Playmarket and three leading directors and script advisers throughout New Zealand. The winner will be awarded a $10,000 full-length play commission.

The Award is named after the man considered to be New Zealand’s first most significant playwright, Bruce Mason who died in 1982.

Miria George’s and what remains, urban hymns and He Reo Aroha have in the last two years been produced internationally and nationally. Premiering as part of Young and Hungry in Auckland and Wellington urban hymns was workshopped in Toronto, Canada as part of the Weesageechak International Indigenous development festival, and Miria has been invited back with a new project in 2010. and what remains had seasons in London and Cambridge, England in 2007 and has since been published. He Reo Aroha written with Jamie McCaskill has toured in New Zealand (Rotorua, Taranaki and Manukau) and to Perth, Australia, Toronto, and Oahu, Hawaii.

The 53rd Victim by Pip Hall won this year’s Playmarket New New Zealand Play Award and had a workshop presentation in Auckland in March. Pip’s previous works include Shudder, commissioned by Young and Hungry and since published, and Red Fish Blue Fish, which has been produced at both Silo and Circa Theatres. In 2007 Pip co-wrote with her father Roger Hall Who Needs Sleep Anyway? for Plunket’s centenary, which played in three major centres. Pip’s latest work Up North is set for premiere in 2010.

Rubber Turkey at BATS and The Basement Auckland in 2008 saw Eli Kent win the best New New Zealand Playwright award at that year’s Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. This year The Intricate Art of Actually Caring was produced in Eli’s bedroom in the Wellington Fringe, going on to win at the Fringe Awards and transfer as part of the Best of the Fringe to Downstage. A new play Bedlam recently premiered as a commission at Toi Whakaari. A member of Playmarket’s Playwrights Studio in Wellington in 2008, Eli’s Playtime was read at this year’s inaugural Self Serve reading series at BATS. Eli is currently completing a commission for next year’s Young and Hungry Festival.

Arthur Meek’s plays include Young and Hungry commission Yolk, Mando the Goatherd, Fringe hit The Cottage and On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover which toured nationally in 2008. A member of Playmarket’s Playwrights Studio in 2008, Meek’s major stage play Collapsing Creations is being produced at Downstage in November following its premiere in Christchurch, as well as appearing at the Nelson festival. Arthur also writes and appears with The Lonesome Buckwhips.

Thomas Sainsbury is currently one of New Zealand’s most prolific and popular playwrights gaining considerable attention and praise in the past two years for productions of his dark comedies in Auckland, Wellington and London, where he has been producing his work. His plays include LUV, The Mall, Loser, Beast, The Christmas Monologues and collaboration Gas. He has been previously selected three times for Playmarket’s New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition, and The Mall was published in 2008 by The Play Press. LUV received a season at the Tristan Bates Theatre London in August and …And then you die at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.