Joanna Ruth Randerson ONZM (born 1973) is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She is the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions, a Wellington-based theatre production company. [1]
Joanna Ruth Randerson ONZM (born 1973) is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She is the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions, a Wellington-based theatre production company. [1]
Randerson was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1973 and moved to Wellington when she was four years old. [2] She studied at Wellington Girls' College, and then went on to Victoria University of Wellington to major in English, theatre and film. [3] She wrote, directed and performed in theatre productions for the Victoria University of Wellington Student Drama Club. At the same time she also wrote for and performed at BATS Theatre Wellington, and made television appearances as a stand-up comedian. After graduating, She co-founded the theatre group Trouble in 1995. [3] In 2012 she finished her Master of Theatre Arts in directing from Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School and Victoria University of Wellington as well as participating in the Leadership New Zealand programme. Randerson was a recipient of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award in 2008. [4]
Randerson's writing has been twice shortlisted for the IIML Prize (2006 and 2008), she has won Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards and was nominated for the Billy T Award in 2005. She has earned fellowships at home and abroad – she received the Robert Burns Fellowship in 2001 (Dunedin), Winston Churchill Fellow 2003 (Russia) and completed a CNZ/DOC Wild Creations Residency in 2002 at Cape Kidnappers'. [5] Randerson won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 1997 for her first play Fold (part of the Young and Hungry season at BATS). [6] She won the Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award for Literature in 2008. Her books The Keys To Hell, TheSpit Children, Tales From the Netherworld and The Knot have all been critically acclaimed. Her work is characterized as dark social satire. [7] In a review for The Keys to Hell in Landfall 209, Anna Smith wrote
Randerson's world is a "holding tank" inside which we shriek, or remain terrified and mute witnesses to the despair that is life – a theme rehearsed over and over. Provocation, not subtlety, is the writer's special effect. [8]
In the 2021 New Year Honours, Randerson was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the performing arts. [9]
Barbara Lillias Romaine Anderson, Lady Anderson was a New Zealand fiction writer who became internationally recognised and a best-selling author after her first book was published in her sixties.
William Manhire is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate (1997–1998). He founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, founded the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2001, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career. Many of New Zealand's leading writers graduated from his courses at Victoria. He has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2018.
Downstage Theatre was a professional theatre company in Wellington, New Zealand, that ran from 1964 to 2013. For many years it occupied the purpose-built Hannah Playhouse building. Former directors include Sunny Amey, Mervyn Thompson, and Colin McColl.
David Geary is a Māori writer from New Zealand who is known for his plays The Learners Stand, Lovelocks Dream Run and Pack of Girls. For television he has written for New Zealand series Shortland Street and Jackson's Wharf.
Playmarket is a not-for-profit organisation providing script advisory services, representation for playwrights in New Zealand and access to New Zealand plays. Playmarket was founded in 1973 to encourage the professional production of New Zealand plays. The organisation represents many of New Zealand's theatrical writers. Playmarket is also a script development service and a publisher of plays.
Bruce Edward George Mason was a significant playwright in New Zealand who wrote 34 plays and influenced the cultural landscape of the country through his contribution to theatre. In 1980, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. The Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, one of the most important playwrighting accolades in New Zealand, is named in his honour. Mason was also an actor, critic, and fiction writer.
Riwia Brown is a New Zealand playwright. She is the screenwriter of the popular and award-winning New Zealand movie Once Were Warriors (1994). The Once Were Warriors screenplay, adapted from the book of the same name by Alan Duff, gained Brown the Best Screenplay award at the 1994 New Zealand Film and TV Awards. Brown has written for theatre, television and films.
Rachel Phyllis McAlpine is a New Zealand poet, novelist and playwright. She is the author of 30 books including poetry, plays, novels, and books about writing and writing for the internet.
The International Institute of Modern Letters is a centre of creative writing based within Victoria University of Wellington. Founded in 2001, the IIML offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses and has taught many leading New Zealand writers. It publishes the annual Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems anthology and an online journal, and offers several writing residencies. Until 2013 the IIML was led by the poet Bill Manhire, who had headed Victoria's creative writing programme since 1975; since his retirement, Damien Wilkins has taken over as the IIML's director.
Séraphine Pick is a New Zealand painter. Pick has exhibited frequently at New Zealand public art galleries; a major survey of her work was organised and toured by the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2009–10.
Vivienne Christiana Gracia Plumb is New Zealand poet, playwright, fiction writer, and editor.
Philippa Hall is a New Zealand stage, screen and radio script writer and actor.
Lynda Chanwai-Earle is a New Zealand writer and radio producer. Her written work includes plays, poems and film scripts. The play Ka Shue – Letters Home in 1996 is semi-autobiographical and is significant in New Zealand literature as the first authentically New Zealand–Chinese play for mainstream audiences.
Robert Lord was the first New Zealand professional playwright, and one of the first New Zealand playwrights to have plays produced abroad since Merton Hodge in the 1930s.
Sarah Delahunty is a New Zealand writer and director who was born in Wellington. An award-winning playwright, Delahunty has written over 30 plays, often focussing on works for youth.
Jean Betts is a New Zealand playwright, actor and director.
Albert Alexander Amahou Belz is a New Zealand actor, writer and lecturer.
Emily Tess Duncan is a New Zealand playwright. She is co-founder of Prospect Park Productions, an organisation aiming “to create and produce original New Zealand theatre and collaborative projects that reach into other art forms." Duncan held the 2019 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. She lives in Dunedin.
The Bruce Mason Playwriting Award is an annual award that recognises the work of an outstanding emerging New Zealand playwright. The winner is decided by the votes of a panel of leading New Zealand artistic directors and script advisors.
David John O'Donnell is a theatre director, actor and academic based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has been a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington since 2019.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: |first1= has generic name (help)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
