Theatre Plays
The Fires of Troy
A play for a one woman actor, based on The Trojan War. This story is seen through the eyes of Hecuba, the Queen of Troy. The first half of the play is set takes place before the attack on Troy and the second part when the war is over.
(Poster available)
Moscow Antigone
Moscow Antigone won an award at the Lisbon Screenplay Awards in March 2023.It is a stage play reworking the Sophocles legend set in modern Russia with Putin as the dictatorial ruler who confronts Antigone and her values. It was written six months after Russia attacked Ukraine.
(Poster available)
1918 Flu Fever Dream
The Spanish Flu or Black Flu arrived in NZ at the end of the first World War. It hit many of the young soldiers who returned from fighting in Europe. Over 10,000 young men in the most vulnerable age groups were concentrated in the two largest camps at Trentham and Featherston, some in huts but many in tents.
Around half of them came down with the flu. The final death doll there was 177. The final Pakeha death total was 6413. Registered Maori deaths were 1679 but newspaper reports suggests a revised total of 2160 and possibly around 2500. The total number of Black Flu deaths for the country is estimated as just over 9000. The population of NZ in 1918 was approximately a million people. A NZ ship spread the flu among some of the Pacific Islands.
The play includes Dr. Margaret Cruickshank Waimate, a character. She was the second woman in NZ to graduate in medicine and the first to enter General Practice. She too became a victim of the flu with a number of other nurses and doctors.
The play was written during COVID, and submitted for a theatre competition held in Gisborne. It won an award and was work-shopped there.
Black Flu 1918 by Geoffrey W. Rice, published by the Canterbury University Press in 2017 outlines the story of “The Spanish Flu” and its impact on New Zealand.
The International Dateline – Sudesh Mishra
The International Dateline is a play written by Sudesh Mishra. He is a PhD graduate of Flinders University and Professor of Literary Studies at The University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva, Fiji.
The play is about a family who live in a shop spanning both sides of the International Dateline between a Saturday and Sunday and is set in Taveuni, Fiji. The shop in the play is owned by a local man and his wife who frequently cross the dateline changing identities when they do so. It is recorded in English but includes many local Hindi and Fiji expressions.
The International Dateline was recorded in the home of Seona Smiles as an audio production. The full audio version of the play was deposited with the USP library. This is the play opening with narrators Margaret Mishra and Seona Smiles. Play Audio
Star Child
Star Child is a story written by Oscar Wilde. Like much of his writing it has layers of understanding for the perceptive reader or viewer. It is about a child making a bad judgement in life. Star Child makes mistakes but eventually acquires awareness and some wisdom.
I adapted the story to theatre for young children with the intention of directing it as a shadow theatre production. In my adaptation I added elements of NZ. There were numerous animals including our NZ kiwi bird. A number of puppets took part in the play. They were created and operated by the cast.
The actors were both children and adults. I chose two actors for each role. One was onstage behind the shadow screen. The second actor was offstage voicing the script for the stage actor.These voice actors sat at the back and side of the stage where they could see the actors, but the audience could not see them. Each had a script and microphone and their dialogue was heard over loudspeakers.
Nicki-Marie Campbell, a Kuranui College Student created the play poster and numerous stunning back-drop images for the actors to work with. Other people, too many to mention, worked on ideas which was new and exciting. This shadow theatre production of Star Child was first created for The Greytown Little Theatre, Wairarapa, New Zealand.