November 21, 2019

THE MANA OF NANCY BRUNNING  

Graeme Tuckett – Dominon Post online, Nov 20 2019 (in print 21 Nov)  

Nancy Brunning (1971 – 16 November 2019) was of Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāi Tūhoe descent. Her funeral will be held today.  

After moving to Wellington in 1990 to pursue a career in the arts, she was admitted to the Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School at a precociously young age and won a leading role in Shortland Street, which would quickly become New Zealand’s best known and most popular television drama, on her first audition after graduating.

At the age of just 20, Nancy would be a household name.

Almost 30 years later, it is difficult for some New Zealanders to remember that a Māori actor playing a nurse or a doctor on a mainstream television production was a talking point and an eye-opener for much of the Shortland Street audience. Nancy and Temuera Morrison were among the very first to inhabit traditionally Pākehā typecasts and to make those roles their own. [More]

NANCY BRUNNING’S LIFE CELEBRATED, FAREWELLED AT RAUKAWA MARAE

Joel Maxwell, Dominion Post online, Nov 20 2019 (in print 21 Nov)

It was an evolving script – with a surprise appearance by Temuera Morrison – but in the end everything, metaphorically, and literally, came back to Nancy Brunning.

The woman in the simple, beautiful casket, would always be the heart of this story.

Ōtaki is a town steeped in the history of its iwi and hapū, a place where te reo Māori is spoken more, in the town, schools and homes, than most other places in Aotearoa.

On Wednesday, under high cloud on the Kāpiti Coast, it was where the service marking Brunning’s life took place. [More]