Since the first performance more than 100 years ago of a play written in this country, the story of New Zealand drama has not been an impressive one. There has been only sporadic production of local work and no body of dramatic writing of any consequence. Billed as a “new Shakespearean drama in two acts”, the first locally written play was Marcilina or The Maid of Urnindorpt by James Henry Marriott who presented it at the Britannia Saloon, Wellington, in 1848. Six years later the nautical farce Our First Lieutenant by David Burn, an Australian writer who spent the last 20 years of his life in New Zealand, was performed by the Gentlemen Amateurs in Auckland. In 1862 a company of New Zealand actors visited Sydney in two melodramas, Whakeau or The Pakeha Chief and The Maori Queen, by R. P. Whitworth, who was better known for his farce Catching a Conspirator. During the sixties of last century, Otago saw Life's Revenge and a number of burlesques by Benjamin Farjeon, the novelist, then resident in Dunedin. In 1877 Mr and Mrs F. M. Bates commissioned Check and Counter Check, a tale of the American Civil War, from the journalist J. J. Utting, author of The Two Vagabonds. Another journalist-playwright, W. J. T. M. Hornsby, was the author of The Kelly Gang or The Career of Ned Kelly, the Iron-Clad Bushranger which met with a vociferous reception all over the country in 1880.
From the seventies of last century to the First World War, resident stock companies occasionally produced a locally written piece, and during this time touring managers like Walter Reynolds, George Darrell, George Leitch, and Barrie Marschel included their own works in their repertoires. Reynolds, author of 11 melodramas, presented several of these in Christchurch, among them being Tried and True and The Sprissaun, the story of an Irish family on the New Zealand goldfields. Darrell began his career in Dunedin. A prolific author of highly coloured melodramas, such as Struggle for Freedom, Transported for Life, The Pakeha, and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, the last an adaptation of Fergus Hume's novel, Darrell scored his greatest success with The Sunny South. George Leitch wrote the spectacular The Land of the Moa and the melodramas Hands Up, The Old Homestead, and The Kelly Gang. Another actor-manager of the nineties, Barrie Marschel, wrote and produced Murder in the Octagon, Humarire Taniwha or The Greenstone God, and The Hut in the Red Mountain.
The earliest New Zealand drama was ephemeral stuff, either sensational drama or sentimental pieces with virtue triumphant. By the end of the century their authors were drawing more and more upon local colour for their settings and upon colonial stories for their themes.
The stream of New Zealand drama has flowed more significantly in the twentieth century. An increasing number of full-length plays with New Zealand idiom, locale, and theme have been written and performed, although few writers have had more than two such plays to their credit and have seldom seen more than one production of each play. There has been some bridging of the gap between production and publication, particularly in the one-act field. (The first published New Zealand play was J. C. Firth's political comedy, Weighed in the Balance, 1882.)
Expatriates who achieved success in the theatre overseas include Arthur H. Adams (1872–1936) whose political comedy Mrs Pretty and the Premier was staged in London. Adams also wrote Tapu, set to music by Alfred Hill and played by the Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company. Cry Wolf, The Unhallowed Saint, and the other light comedies of Stafford Byrne reflect the English rather than the New Zealand scene. Two playwrights who made considerable theatrical reputations overseas were Reginald Berkeley (1890–1935), author of French Leave, The White Chateau, and The Lady with the Lamp, and Merton Hodge (1904–58) whose romantic comedy of student life, The Wind and the Rain, had a long run on the West End stage; but he was not so successful with Grief Goes Over, The Island, and The Story of an African Farm. Most distinguished New Zealand born dramatist is the poet and playwright Douglas Stewart (1913–). His radio play The Fire on the Snow, based on Scott's Antarctic expedition, is a recognised classic. The Golden Lover and the radio play The Earthquake Shakes the Land have New Zealand themes. All these playwrights left New Zealand in early manhood and most of their work has been performed elsewhere.
Douglas Stewart's verse drama, Ned Kelly, was an early production by the New Zealand Players Company which also presented A Unicorn for Christmas by Ngaio Marsh, Bruce Mason's study of Maori-Pakeha relations, The Pohutukawa Tree; Mason's comedy, Birds in the Wilderness; and The Tree by Stella Jones. In 1961 The New Zealand Theatre Trust played Three Women and the Sea by James K. Baxter, author of The Wide Open Cage, and Free by Joseph Musaphia. The Auckland C.A.S. Theatre toured in 1959 with Moon Section by Allen Curnow, whose verse play The Axe has had stage and radio performance. The poets Baxter and Curnow, with Frank Sargeson the novelist, head the creative writers in other fields who have turned their attention to drama.
The more progressive amateur societies have presented work by Baxter, Sargeson, Campbell Caldwell, Patricia Davidson, Jean Lawrence, J. A. S. Coppard, Isobel Andrews, Marie Bullock, Bruce Mason, Terence Journet, and Alexander Guyan. Unique among New Zealand dramatists, Claude Evans has seen all his plays published and produced locally: Overtime, Rich Man Poor Man, and So Laughs the Wind.
By promoting festivals of one-act plays and play-writing competitions, the New Zealand branch of the British Drama League has played a major part in creating a market for original work, particularly in the field of one-act plays. The Drama League founded the New Zealand Playwrights' Association in 1958. Four years later, the association had more than 60 members.
The New Zealand Broadcasting Service (now the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation) has played its part in nurturing New Zealand drama, and each year sees more and more locally written plays being presented over the air. Among those writers who have made a reputation in radio drama, both here and elsewhere, are John Gundry, Bruce Stewart, David Yerex, John Dunmore, Ruth Park, and Douglas Stewart. Since 1958 substantial works by New Zealand authors have included John Dunmore's A Masque for Old Bones and The New Candide, An Occasion for Fireworks by S. Y. Ray, James K. Baxter's Jack Winter's Dream, Bruce Mason's The Pohutukawa Tree, The Exiled by Jean Lawrence, Allen Curnow's The Axe and the Overseas Expert, an adaptation of the Ruth France novel The Race, and The Tree by Stella Jones. In the year 1960 the Service could boast that it presented a local play every four weeks.
by Nola Leigh Millar, B.A., Director, New Theatre Company, Wellington.