Plays 2: London Calling

Description

This book brings together Ken Duncum's three plays about the intersection of popular overseas music culture with New Zealand society, each of them showing a slice of Kiwi kids seeking an identity and a relationship to the world through different ways of dressing, talking, posing and thinking delivered to them through imported music. Generous personal introductions telling the stories behind the plays, and the stories of putting the plays on and how they were received, make this a lively and accessible cultural history.

Ken Duncum's work for screen and stage includes the plays Flipside (Chapman Tripp Award for Production of the Year 2000), Waterloo Sunset and Blue Sky Boys (Best New Zealand Play 1990), as well as scripts for major television shows like Duggan and Coverstory, (Best Script, TV Drama, Film and TV Awards 1997). His industry experience is wide-ranging: he was script editor for Greenstone, script adviser for Tiger Country, storyliner and writer for Mirror Mirror, and was head writer for Willy Nilly. Ken has directed Roger Hall's VSA piece We Must Be Crazy! and two national tours of Too Much Punch For Judy. In September 2001 Ken was the inaugural recipient of the Michael Hirschfeld Memorial Writing Award. In 2002 Ken began teaching at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters and is the Michael Hirschfeld Director of Scriptwriting - the coordinator of the MA in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting). Ken's play Cherish, winner of 2003 Chapman Tripp award for Best New Zealand Play, was published by VUP in November 2004. Plays 1: Small Towns and Sea Horseplay, Flipside, Trick of the Light was also published by VUP in July 2005. In 2009, Duncum was awarded the New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize. One of New Zealand's most long-standing and prestigious literary awards.