December 3, 2010

WINNER OF NEW ZEALAND’S NATIONAL PLAYWRITING AWARD ANNOUNCED   

Eli Kent has been awarded one of New Zealand’s most significant national theatre awards, the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. The 2010 recipient was announced at Downstage Theatre Wellington by Playmarket, New Zealand’s playwrights’ organisation, on 3 December 2010. The Bruce Mason Award recipient is decided through voting by a panel of leading directors and play developers throughout New Zealand from nominations provided by leading New Zealand playwrights. The award sees Kent granted a $10,000 cash prize.

Kent’s award recognises his dedication as a playwright and the quality of his work. His first full length play, Rubber Turkey, was performed at BATS and Auckland’s The Basement as part of the 2008 NZ International Comedy Festival, for which he won the Peter Harcourt Award for Outstanding New Playwright of the Year at that year’s Chapman Tripp Theatre awards. 

His play The Intricate Art of Actually Caring(performed in his bedroom) won “Best Theatre” in the NZ Fringe Festival 2009 and was performed at Downstage as part of the “Pick of the Fringe” season and at the Christchurch Arts Festival in July 2009. It was also nominated for five awards at the 2009 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards and won three, including Most Original Production. It is currently touring nationally to much acclaim.

His play Bedlam, a musical based on London’s infamous insane asylum, was performed in 2009 as part of the Toi Whakaari Pitched Project, with third year actors, under the direction of Robin Kerr.

Eli’s latest play Thinning was commissioned and premiered as part of the 2010 Young and Hungry Festival in Wellington and Auckland. He has just completed the Masters in Scriptwriting course at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters.

Kent was chosen from an award shortlist that also featured Arthur Meek, Lynda Chanwai-Earle 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 Toa Fraser, Hone Kouka and Jo Randerson, and was last year awarded to Pip Hall.

The Award is named after the man considered to be New Zealand’s first most significant playwright, Bruce Mason, who died in 1982. His plays are still produced widely today and many, such as The Pohutakawa Tree and End of the Golden Weather, have come to be considered New Zealand classics.