Celebrating Bruce Mason
Directed by Shane Bosher
Performed by Stephen Lovatt

A theatrical double-shot from an iconic playwright and one of our greatest actors.

Bruce Mason is perhaps the most significant playwright in Aotearoa New Zealand’s theatrical history. Writing with courage and insight, he was a lover of language and a champion of the underdog.

Between 1959 and 1978, Bruce toured the country, telling uniquely Kiwi stories about emerging identity, cultural cringe and social difference. From church halls to country shearing sheds to the Edinburgh Festival, Bruce would play anywhere, in any circumstance, to any audience.

To celebrate his extraordinary legacy, Brilliant Adventures and Circa Theatre are collaborating to make two of his greatest solo works resound for a new age.

Two plays: timeless, universal, distinct. Following their critically acclaimed, sold out run of THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE, actor Stephen Lovatt and director Shane Bosher return to Circa for a not-to-be missed theatrical encounter with a master craftsman.

THE END OF THE GOLDEN WEATHER
“I invite you to join me, in a voyage into the past, to that territory of the heart we call childhood.”

Bruce Mason’s quintessential Kiwi classic chronicles the friendship between a 12-year-old boy and Firpo, a social outcast who dreams of winning an Olympic medal.

Through the boy’s eyes we see the wonder of life on a perfect beach, in a perfect 1930s New Zealand, during a perfect summer. It’s a world of magic and transformation, where anything can happen and miracles seem possible.

When the boy sets out to help Firpo make his athletic dream a reality, ignoring his father’s rebukes and community ridicule, a battle rages between the eternal optimism of childhood and the harsh pragmatism of adulthood.

Gliding effortlessly between flights of poetic fancy and blunt everyday speech, THE END OF THE GOLDEN WEATHER is New Zealand storytelling at its very best.

NOT CHRISTMAS, BUT GUY FAWKES
An adolescent boy tries to find his place in an adult-dominated world. A young man retraces an intensely felt boyhood experience of bullying. A playwright in his last days reconciles the value of an artistic life and challenges the idea of New Zealand identity.

Comic disasters and confronting your own hubris. NOT CHRISTMAS, BUT GUY FAWKES is a richly autobiographical search for self-expression. Profound and true, it is a set of variations about over-reaching, cheekily confronting our very own Tall Poppy Syndrome.

Thursday 20 November to Saturday 13 December
Preview Night: Wed 19 Nov – The End of the Golden Weather
Preview Night: Fri 21 Nov – Not Christmas, But Guy Fawkes
Sunday Special: Sunday 23 November – The End of the Golden Weather
Q&A: Tuesday 25 November
Choose Your Price Night: Wed 26 November – Not Christmas, But Guy Fawkes
Circa Two
Tues – Fri 7.30pm, Sat 4.30pm & 7.30pm, Sun 4.30pm
$30 – $60 Early Bird Tickets Available

Productions play on alternate nights with an opportunity to see both productions in conversation with each other on Saturdays.