Sir Roger Hall, of Auckland, KNZM, for services to theatre
Sir Roger Hall is a leading playwright with a strong international profile who has played a key role in the development of New Zealand drama.
Sir Roger was founder and co-organiser of the inaugural New Zealand Theatre Month, launched in September 2018. He has served on numerous boards, including Fortune Theatre, Frank Sargeson Trust, New Zealand Literary Fund Advisory Committee, and Governor of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand from 2002 to 2010. As well as plays, he has written extensively for television including one-off plays and more than seventy sitcom episodes in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom. His first stage plays, ‘Glide Time’ and ‘Middle Age Spread’, written in the 1970s, were successful nationally and in Australia and ‘Middle Age Spread’ ran in London’s West End for fifteen months. Since that time he has written a stage play or musical every year, all of which have been performed by the country’s professional theatres, as well as numerous productions by community theatres. His pantomime scripts were performed at Wellington’s Circa Theatre each Christmas for ten years. He established the annual performance of a scene from the Bruce Mason play ‘The End of the Golden Weather’ on Takapuna Beach each Christmas Day. Sir Roger has written many books for children and organised the first New Zealand Writers’ Week in Dunedin in 1989, an event which still continues.