Abstract:
Throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand’s dramatic history, there has been a strong impulse for plays from this country to be toured and performed overseas, despite the considerable financial and geographical challenges posed. The colloquial expression OE (Overseas Experience) marks the importance of this desire, in which it is only by leaving home that the New Zealander realises their identity. The Overseas Experience of New Zealand theatre has been an overlooked aspect in scholarship. This thesis investigates how the meaning of a New Zealand theatre work might operate in a specific time, place, and moment. It is the first to consider connections between a range of New Zealand productions overseas, including touring works, and works that non-local companies have chosen to perform. The study attempts to balance breadth – giving an account of overseas performances of New Zealand work primarily from 1941-2016 – with depth, making extensive use of archival research to analyse in detail significant moments in New Zealand theatre’s OE. From these selected case studies, it builds a larger argument, drawing on concepts such as post-colonialism, transnationalism, and globalisation, to understand the wider development and reception of New Zealand theatre’s OE. Theatre is a site where issues of national identity can be raised. The core of this thesis is how New Zealand national identity is performed through drama, and how this identity is read by audiences around the world. This work demonstrates how the OE has been driven by anxieties around constructing a unique New Zealand identity through the theatre, and gaining legitimacy for this represented identity through overseas approval. This study engages with the whole theatrical enterprise as a play travels from concept and scripting through to funding, marketing, performance, and the critical response by reviewers and commentators. These findings are of global interest to academics, producers, and theatre artists as a significant resource for theatre touring and practice.