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Profile
Hone Kouka has worked as a sawmiller, forestry worker, journalist, actor
and director, but he is best known as a playwright. His work is known for its
investigation of the theme of belonging – to family, friends and culture
– a theme of great emotional and political importance in contemporary
New Zealand.
Selected published works
Ngā Tāngata Toa, 1994;
Waiora Te-u-Kai-Po (The Homeland), 1997; The Prophet, 2006.
Publishers
Huia Publishers www.huia.co.nz
Biography
Hone Kouka is of Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti
Raukawa descent and was born in Balclutha in 1966. He graduated from Otago University
in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and went on to study at Te Kura Toi
Whakaari o Aotearoa: The New Zealand Drama School in Wellington, graduating
in 1990. Kouka has written more than twenty plays, one of his best-known being
Waiora, which was commissioned for the 1996 International Festival
of the Arts. Waiora toured both nationally and internationally and
began the trilogy, which includes Ahi Kaa – Homefires (1998)
and The Prophet, which premiered in 2002.
Kouka’s preoccupations are family conflict and the relationships of
people to the land, themes which are broadly characteristic of Māori writing.
He has won a number of New Zealand’s most prestigious playwriting awards
– he is the youngest playwright to have won the Bruce Mason Award, for
Hide ’n’ Seek, co-written with Hori Ahipene in 1992 –
and was writer-in-residence at Canterbury University in 1996. More recently,
he has worked as a producer for radio and as a playwriting mentor, as well as
writing short fiction, poetry, children’s books and screenwriting.
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