On Wednesday 9 August from 1.30pm to 2.30pm, join our live videoconference
WordSpace: Playwriting
Join Lynda Chanwai-Earle and Briar Grace-Smith in a discussion about playwriting. WordSpace is a series of videoconference discussions between secondary school students and leading New Zealand writers, brought to you by the New Zealand Book Council and CWA New Media. To participate, your school will need to be a member of the Book Council.
The session will consider questions like why theatre is still relevant today, and what makes a good play. It will also look at why theatre is increasingly used as a medium to give voice to our country’s different ethnic communities. This session gives students an opportunity to find out what it’s like to be a working playwright in New Zealand.
Lynda Chanwai-Earle
Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a poet, multi-media performance artist, playwright and television journalist. Her 1998 play Ka-Shue (Letters Home) was New Zealand’s first contemporary theatre piece about the Chinese community. Lynda’s play Foh-Sarn (Fire Mountain), about young and new immigrant Asians, premiered at Auckland’s Herald Theatre in 2000. Both plays are being taught as prescribed texts by Professors Witi Ihimaera and Peter Simpson at Auckland University. Her play Monkey premiered with the International Arts Festival in 2004, and toured to Auckland for a season.
Lynda has published a collection of her own poems, honeypants (1994), as well as the anthology No Flowers: Writing by Women Imprisoned (1997), a collection of poetry by women who she worked with at Arohata Women’s Prison. As a script coordinator, facilitator and performer she has been involved with theatrical projects created in prisons, A Christmas Wish at Arohata Women’s Prison in 1997, and Kia Maumahara at Christchurch Women’s Prison and the Christchurch Arts Festival in 1997.
This is the second time that Lynda has participated in WordSpace. She was a panellist in the Playwriting session last year, while she was completing an MA in Scriptwriting at Victoria University of Wellington.
Briar Grace-Smith
Belonging to the Ngati Hau hapu of Nga Puhi, Briar has worked as an actor and writer with the Māori theatre companies Te Ohu Whakaari and He Ara Hou. Her early plays, Don’t Call Me Bro and Flat Out Brown, were first performed at the Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington in 1996. Waitapu was devised by the He Ara Hou theatre group and performed by the group on the Native Earth Performing Arts tour in Canada in 1996.
Ngā Pou Wahine won the Peter Harcourt award for best short play at the 1995 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. That same year Briar won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award. Purapurawhetu was judged Best New Zealand Play at the 1997 Chapman Tripp theatre awards. She co-wrote The Sojourners of Boy with Jo Randerson, produced by Taki Rua and Bats, and performed at Bats theatre in 1996.
Briar was the 2003 Victoria University Writer in Residence. Television credits include Fishskin Suit and Charlie the Dreaded. Her new play, 100 Cousins, will premiere at Auckland’s Herald Theatre in March this year.
TO REGISTER FOR THIS VIDEOCONFERENCE, CONTACT digitalconversations@cwa.co.nz or telephone: (04) 382 6515 BY Monday 31 July 2006
The Book Council will be creating a DVD of this session, which will be available for schools to purchase. If your school takes part in the session, please be aware that we will need signed permission forms from all participating students.
