May 14, 2013

Name of 1990s play??

Germaine Woltman         posted 14 May 2013, 05:49 PM

Can anyone help me?  During the mid 1990s there was a theatre company toured NZ and produced a play based on letters found at National Archives.  It was based in the 1800s in colonial NZ about a European woman whose Maori husband died.  She was abandoned or ignored by both cultures thereafter.  I didn’t see the play but have always wanted to find out more about this.  Does anyone remember it?

John Smythe      posted 14 May 2013, 10:36 PM / edited 14 May 2013, 10:39 PM

That sounds like

The Bellbird by Stephen Sinclair

Set in Marlborough in the late 1860s, The Bellbird brings the worlds of Maori and Pakeha together in a haunting play of passion, family politics and despair. A touching, tragic romance between a Pakeha woman and a Maori man. On the death of her husband she is no longer welcome back in her own community and her deceased husband’s family want nothing to do with her.

See the Playmarket website: http://www.playmarket.org.nz/node/3257