August 30, 2018

New Zealand Theatre Month

Editor    posted 19 Aug 2018, 05:31 PM

Here is a link to the excellent Standing Room Only chat about NZ Theatre Month with Roger Hall, Renee Liang and Thomas Sainsbury. 

Editor    posted 30 Aug 2018, 09:16 PM

WHY NEW ZEALAND THEATRE MONTH MATTERS

By James Wenley, TheatreScenes

September is for Theatre 

New Zealand theatre history can be divided into two distinct periods: Before Roger Hall (BRH) and After Roger Hall (ARH).

In the year 0 ARH (that’s 1976 in our usual calendar), Roger Hall’s Glide Time – a close to home satire of the Wellington public service – debuted and was a smash hit for Circa Theatre. Roger Hall’s play (together with Joseph Musaphia’s Mothers and Fathers the previous year), marked a distinct turning point in the commercial acceptance of home grown theatre. New Zealanders were laughing at “themselves” and could now “support local drama without any sense of ‘cultural cringe’”.  (1) Ian Gordon wrote about his experience watching Glide Time for the first time with “an audience delighted to see themselves on the stage, recognising that Roger had them to a T, and responding delightedly to every line”. (2) Hall’s plays arrived at a time when New Zealand was reformulating its conception of itself following Britain officially joining the European Economic – his work was characterised as a distinctly new, popular and representative type of local play, dramatizing a uniquely New Zealand point of view.

That is not to say that theatre began in 0 ARH. In the years before Roger Hall this country had a creatively rich (if not always financially lucrative) range of theatrical activity. [More]