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.
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.
Victor John Rodger is a New Zealand journalist, actor and award-winning playwright of Samoan and Pākehā heritage. Rodger's play Sons won acclaim at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards (1998) and received the Best New Writer and Most Outstanding New New Zealand Play awards. In 2001, he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Other plays include Ranterstantrum (2002) and My Name is Gary Cooper (2007), produced and staged by Auckland Theatre Company and starred a Samoan cast including Robbie Magasiva, Anapela Polataivao, Goretti Chadwick and Kiwi actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
Briar Grace-Smith is a screenwriter, director, actor, and short story writer from New Zealand. She has worked as an actor and writer with the Māori theatre cooperative Te Ohu Whakaari and Māori theatre company He Ara Hou. Early plays Don't Call Me Bro and Flat Out Brown, were first performed at the Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington in 1996. Waitapu, a play written by Grace-Smith, was devised by He Ara Hou and performed by the group on the Native Earth Performing Arts tour in Canada in 1996.
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.
Fiona Samuel is a New Zealand writer, actor and director who was raised Scotland from 1961 until the age of five. She moved to New Zealand and grew up in Christchurch before moving to Wellington to train as an actor at the New Zealand Drama School. She graduated from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 1980 with a Diploma in Acting. Samuel's award-winning career spans theatre, film, radio and television.
Vivienne Christiana Gracia Plumb is a New Zealand poet, playwright, fiction writer, and editor.
Philippa Hall is a New Zealand stage, screen and radio script writer and actor.
Robert Lord was the first New Zealand professional playwright. He was 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.
Stuart Hoar is a New Zealand playwright, teacher, novelist, radio dramatist and librettist.
Jean Betts is a New Zealand playwright, actor and director.
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.
Taki Rua is a theatre organisation based in Wellington, New Zealand that has produced many contemporary Māori theatre productions. Taki Rua has been going since 1983 and has had several name changes over that time including The New Depot, Depot Theatre and Taki Rua / The Depot. The full current name is Taki Rua Productions. Since inception the mission of Taki Rua has been to showcase work from New Zealand. Because of this and the longevity of Taki Rua many significant New Zealand actors, directors, writers, designers and producers have part of the history including Riwia Brown, Nathaniel Lees, Rachel House and Taika Waititi.
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.
Catherine Patricia Downes is a New Zealand theatre director, actor, dramaturg and playwright. Of Māori descent, she affiliates to Ngāi Tahu. Downes wrote a one-woman play The Case of Katherine Mansfield, which she has performed more than 1000 times in six countries over twenty years. She has been the artistic director of the Court Theatre in Christchurch and the director of Downstage Theatre in Wellington. She lives on Waiheke Island and works as a freelance actor, director and playwright.
David John O'Donnell is a New Zealand theatre director, actor, and academic based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught at Victoria University of Wellington since 1999, and is as of 2021 a full professor.
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