Paul Maunder


Paul Maunder is a film director, playwright and "cultural activist" from New Zealand. He is best known for his 1979 film of the Albert Wendt novel Sons For the Return Home, his 1983 play Hemi, about the life of James K. Baxter and his work in community-based theatre.

Biography

Maunder was born in Palmerston North and attended Palmerston North Boys' High School. He studied at Victoria University of Wellington, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and the London Film School. He received a doctorate in Theatre and Film Studies from the University of Canterbury.
Returning to New Zealand, Maunder worked for the state-owned National Film Unit. In addition to directing a number of the documentaries the unit was best known for, he directed three drama productions which were screened on television: Gone up North for a While, One Of Those People That Live In The World and Landfall.
In 1971, Maunder formed Amamus theatre troupe in Wellington, staging improvised documentary plays on historical subjects such as The Great Depression and the 1951 Waterside Lockout. The group was then influenced by the work of Jerzy Grotowski and devised a trio of plays: Gallipoli, Valita and Oedipus, which examined the Kiwi psyche. In 1975 they were invited to the Festival of the Open Theatre in Wroclaw, Poland. In the 1980s, under the new name of Theatre of the Eighth Day, the group performed a series of political plays, followed by a study on the poet James K Baxter, before embarking on a bicultural series of works, examining the clash of the Maori culture with the settler arrivals.
In 1987 Maunder was awarded a Commonwealth Study Grant to make contact with the Popular Theatre Movement in Zimbabwe. Returning to New Zealand he worked in the Community-based theatre framework, setting up the Cultural Work Centre in Petone. A number of partnerships followed, for example, with the Tokelau community and with the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre.
He played one first-class cricket match for Central Districts in the 1961-62 season.
Paul Maunder currently lives in the small town of Blackball on the West Coast where he works with a Community-based theatre group, Kiwi/Possum Productions. The group has mounted a series of plays written by Maunder on local issues: 1080, Race relations, Mine Closures ; Heritage, Mental Health ; and the transition economy. These plays tour the Coast and usually further afield. Maunder is also curator of the Blackball Museum of Working Class History.
His recent publications include: Torndao and other stories written overtime, Coal and the Coast- reflections on the Pike River Disaster and Rebellious Mirrors- community-based theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Canterbury University Press.

Filmography

Most of Maunder's plays are on subjects related to politics, class, activism, the history of the labour movement or the NZ experience.