Kumu Kahua Theatre Presents MY NAME IS GARY COOPER

By: Jan. 14, 2015
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The 44th season at Kumu Kahua Theatre continues with the Hawai'i premiere of Victor Rodger's acclaimed play.

TheatreView.org called it:

"EROTIC, FUNNY AND FULL OF MACHETE-SHARP DIALOGUE" and "A UNIQUE AND SHOCKINGLY FUNNY TALE OF SEXUAL REVENGE."
My Name is Gary Cooper creates a trajectory of reckoning for a young man whose life has been roughly shaped by the effects of a Hollywood film crew on his home in Samoa. It is a political commentary wrapped in a bitter revenge story with such humor, heart, and heat, that it will leave your head spinning.

Victor says: " Hollywood's...South Pacific films...white characters entered the brown world and stirred things up. What if, I wondered, a brown character entered the white world instead, and stirred things up? What would it look like?" This play addresses those questions.

Playwright
VICTOR RODGER is a playwright and scriptwriter of Samoan heritage. Born in Christchurch, Rodger was a journalist for several years before studying at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School in Wellington. Rodger has been a writer and storyliner for the long-running television soap opera Shortland Street since 2000.

Rodger's theatre work deals with race, racism and identity. His first play, Sons, premiered at The Court in 1995. In 1997, Cunning Stunts was produced by Young and Hungry Theatre Company. Rodger rewrote Sons in 1998, and performed at Downstage Theatre in Wellington, winning four Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards including Most Outstanding New Writer and Most Outstanding New New Zealand play. Sons was published by Huia in 2008.

In 2001, Rodger won the Sunday Star-Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. His third play, Ranterstantrum(2002), was lauded by the Evening Post as 'a triumph over stereotype'.

Rodger studied writing for film at the Maurits Binger Foundation in Amsterdam in 2004-2005. The following year he was awarded the 2006 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers' Residency, based at the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Hawai'i.

In 2007, his fourth play, My Name is Gary Cooper, was produced by Auckland Theatre Company. This play was reviewed as 'a darkly witty demolition of palagi fantasies about Polynesia' by Metro magazine.



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