edBULLETIN NOVEMBER 2016

PLAYMARKET ANNUAL

PLAYWRIGHTS IN SCHOOLS
We've had great success with our Playwrights in Schools scheme this year run in conjunction with the NZ Book Council. We can bring a playwright into your school to talk about a New Zealand play in your English or Drama curriculum or run a playwriting workshop.
More information on The Book Council's Education programme is available here or contact Kathryn Carmody here for further enquiries.

SOME NEW PLAYS
ESTHER by Angie Farrow (large cast of women)
A young woman appears in the village one morning in late Spring. The authorities say she is the girl, Esther, who mysteriously disappeared three years earlier. How can this be when her sister is so clear that this girl has no resemblance to Esther?  Others say she is wrong.  Perhaps the villagers see in Esther only what they want to see: the girl they lost. And if they see Esther in the face of Esther then perhaps Esther is who she says she is. Winner of the teenage section of the Playmarket Plays for the Young Competition.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mike Hudson (large cast)
Originally written by Mark Twain in 1876, this adaptation for stage by Mike Hudson captures the story of two youths and their adventures alongside the Mississippi river. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn stumble across a murder in a graveyard at night. This triggers a series of events which finds Tom and Huck running for their lives, falling in love and finding treasure. Winner of the 8 - 12 year old section of the Playmarket Plays for the Young Competition and suitable for teenagers to perform.

COULD DO BETTER by Mike Hudson (large cast)
Billy Yzal is the boy who really could do better. He has no ambition, motivation and is quite happy to let life slide right by.  One day his perfect world of inactivity is sharply interrupted when he throws a ball into the sky and it doesn’t come back. Billy’s life is never the same again as he sets off on an adventure to find out where the ball went and to discover that maybe he wasn’t that lazy after all. Winner of the 8 - 12 year old section of the Playmarket Plays for the Young Competition.

THE TINY MAN by Elle Wootton (cast size of 6)
A tiny man searches for a way to be reunited with his love up in the moon. He sets out at night and is helped by the native birds of Aotearoa along the way.
Winner of the 3 - 8 year old section of the Playmarket Plays for the Young Competition and suitable for teenagers to perform.

If you'd like perusal copies of any of these plays you can email us here.

SOME LARGE-CAST ADAPTATIONS
THE GREAT GATSBY by Ken Duncum (8 - large cast)
Ken Duncum's sparkling adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. Set in America’s Jazz Age, the play opens with narrator Nick Carraway drawing from the shadows the ghosts of wealthy and indulgent lives lived in and around Jay Gatsby's Long Island mansion.

GRIMM STORIES by David McPhail (large cast)
An entertainment from one of the great NZ comedians, based on Grimm fairy tales and designed for secondary school drama students. It combines the original stories with contemporary themes and ideas and was first staged at Christchurch Girls’ High School in 2014. It requires students to extend their dramatic skills and hopes to encourage students to perform historic stories in a new and modern style and to extend, edit or re-write the text to suit their current environment. It’s about the fun of drama.

DREAM ON by Sarah Delahunty (15w, 11m)
A faithful retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream keeping to the original structure but using a modern setting, contemporary language and humour. The fairies have cellphones, Hippolyta has a wedding planner and Bottom & Co are a beer swilling group known as the Unemployed Workers Drama and Cultural Club. The story unfolds as Shakespeare wrote it but with a difference!

THE BOOK OF FAME by Carl Nixon (4 - large cast)
Adapted from the Lloyd Jones novel, The Book of Fame tells the story of an unlikely bunch of lads heading to the UK in 1905 on a rugby tour that made the team famous in New Zealand and around the world. This is the team known as The Originals who first bore the name 'All Blacks'. This is the birth of the legacy. "...another magnificent evening of kiwi theatre" - The Dominion Post

If you'd like perusal copies of any of these plays you can email us here.

PLAYWRIGHTS b4 25 COMPETITION
Our popular competition for young playwrights is back for 2017!
We're searching for the best plays from young New Zealand writers. There are absolutely no restrictions in style or content. Whether it's a full-length monologue or an epic for a cast of thousands, a comedy or a gritty urban tragedy, we're interested in what young people have to say.
Submissions close 1 April 2017.
Details can be found on our website here