New Zealand Plays

THE WOMEN'S PLAY PRESS

The Play Press grew out of The Women's Play Press collective, launched in 1994 by Lorae Parry, Viv Plumb, Fiona Samuel, Cathy Downes and Jean Betts.

WPP was formed initially to publish plays of ours performed in 1993 in a festival we organised to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage in NZ. Since then, several of our plays have had excellent sales, productions nationally and abroad, and inclusion in school and university curricula. We still publish plays under this name; however in 2001, feeling that there were still too many good scripts languishing unpublished that needed to be made available, The Play Press was established as well.

THE SUSAN SMITH BLACKBURN PRIZE
Since 2007 The Women’s Play Press has chosen a woman’s play from the Adam New Zealand Play Award (formerly the Playmarket New Play Award) entries, to submit to this prestigious international competition:-

2007  Julia’s Daughter by Jennifer Compton
2008  Fucking Parasites by Ninna Tersman
2009  The 53rd Victim by Pip Hall 
2010  The Liar's Bible by Fiona Samuel

Available later 2010 -

BLOOMSBURY WOMEN & THE WILD COLONIAL GIRL  by Lorae Parry
 
Published by The Women’s Play Press (in association with The Play Press)
ISBN 978 0 958 2310 15
Cast – (minimum) 2 women, with doubling

The play focuses on Katherine Mansfield’s friendships and relationships with women, in particular her relationship with Virginia Woolf and her ongoing friendship with Ida Baker (L.M.) It is compiled entirely from the words of Katherine Mansfield, Ida Baker, Virginia Woolf and other members of The Bloomsbury Group.

               'The past twenty years have seen Mansfield credited with her rightful place as one of the important figures in twentieth century Modernism.  For much longer than that she has held the imagination of writers who attempt to catch that glinting, elusive, compelling personality - at least a dozen plays, numerous poems, several novels.  Few, in my view, get closer than does Lorae Parry's short, incisive play in suggesting Mansfield's instinctive engagement with life, and her finding the way to talk of it with originality and flair.
               Parry's K.M., the 'colonial' girl at large in a hard and dazzling world, takes us close to 'the real thing'.  It is a play that does justice to that amusing, clever, compassionate, constantly self-examining personality it engages with.  And it shows us Virginia Woolf as well in a freshly slanting light.'
             Vincent O'Sullivan. 

Lorae Parry was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and moved to New Zealand in 1973. She is a playwright, actress and director with an extensive writing and acting career. Lorae was awarded the Stout Fellowship at Victoria University (NZ) in 1994 and was the first woman playwright to become Writer-In-Residence at Victoria University in 1999. She has a Masters Degree in Scriptwriting, and in 2004 was awarded a Queen’s Honour, M.N.Z.M., for her services to the Performing Arts.

Also by Lorae Parry:-

Frontwomen; Cracks; Eugenia (VUP); Vagabonds (VUP)