April 9, 2018

THE ADAM NZ PLAY AWARDS 2018  

PASSIONATE EPIC WINS TOP PLAYWRITING AWARD  

PLAYMARKET is pleased to announce the ADAM NZ PLAY AWARD winner for 2018: Shane Bosher for his play Everything After.

The Adam NZ Play Award recognises and celebrates the best in new unproduced writing for the theatre. Director of Playmarket Murray Lynch announced the win at Circa Theatre on 7 April 2018 alongside four other special award winners.

Everything After is a passionate, intelligent, modern epic grappling with the past and present of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its effects. Told through a series of bruising and tender encounters, Everything After depicts one ageing gay man’s experience in the contemporary world.

Judges described the play as “a wonderfully generous insight for ‘outsiders’ into this special world. A huge and achingly moving story.” Everything After “manages to wrap itself around every aspect of our tragic AIDS history, elegantly bridging the yawning gaps and misunderstandings between the awful past and the so much more hopeful present and to represent a wonderfully comprehensive array of its central players.”

Bosher has been a director, actor, writer, dramaturg and producer for the last twenty years. Following training at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, he has worked for all of New Zealand’s major theatre companies.  From 2001 to 2014, Bosher was the Artistic Director of Silo Theatre. During his tenure, he directed some of the company’s most celebrated productions. His credits as a playwright include Lakonsaud/Play Animal (1997), A Star is Torn (2000) and the Young & Hungry commissioned Homicidal Post-Pubescent Cheerleaders (2002). Everything After has been in development since 2014 and received support from Creative NZ and Auckland Arts Festival.

Dr Angie Farrow, Associate Professor of English at Massey University, received the award for Best Play by a Woman Playwright for Before the Birds, a large-scale community theatre piece set in Palmerston North.

This year’s award for Best Play by a Māori Playwright was shared by Albert Belz (Ngāti Porou, Nga Puhi, Ngāti Pōkai) and Jason Te Mete (Ngāti Ranginui), both faculty members of Manukau Institute of Technology. Little Black Bitch is the first play from Jason Te Mete who is well known as an actor, singer and vocal coach. This play with songs is a nuanced treatment of depression within a Māori community. Cradle Song by Albert Belz sees the playwright return to the horror genre of his renowned play Yours Truly as two young women on their big OE in Ireland encounter a supernatural force.

Actor and teacher Suli Moa received the award for Best Play by a Pasifika Playwright for Tales of a Princess, the story of a Tongan wedding set against the sinking of the Princess Ashika in 2009 in which 72 people drowned.

The Adam NZ Play Award, now in its eleventh year, is the only one of its kind for new writing. Playmarket’s only entrance requirements are that the playwright be a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident and that the play has not yet had a professional production.

The award is generously funded by the Adam Foundation. Playmarket is also very grateful for the support of Circa Theatre, and major funders Foundation North and Creative New Zealand.

ADAM AWARD WINNER 2018:
Shane Bosher for Everything After

Best Play by a Māori Playwright:
Albert Belz for Cradle Song and Jason Te Mete for Little Black Bitch

Best Play by a Pasifika Playwright:
Suli Moa for Tales of a Princess

Best Play by a Woman Playwright:
Angie Farrow for Before the Birds

Other Finalists:
Dracula by Claire Ahuriri-Dunning
Provocation by Aroha Awarau
Turn off the Lights by Sam Brooks
Twenty Eight Millimetres by Sam Brooks
Movers by James Cain
In Our Shoes by Emily Duncan
Orientation by Chye-Ling Huang (entered as Praying Mantis)
Welcome to the Murder House by Justin Lewis and Jacob Rajan
Tropical Love Birds by Vela Manusaute
Land of the Moa by Arthur Meek
Chutzpah by Joe Musaphia
Tutankhamun by Dean Parker
Stuck Pigs by Bruce Clyde Thomson
The Lazarus Lottery by James van Dyk
The Bright Side of My Condition by Roy Ward