Kōrero: Plays and playwrights

Once on Chunuk Bair, 1982

Once on Chunuk Bair, 1982

This photograph from Maurice Shadbolt's play Once on Chunuk Bair shows its first production, at Auckland's Mercury Theatre in 1982. The action takes place between dawn and dusk on 8 August 1915, the day New Zealand soldiers took the hill of Chunuk Bair on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey during the First World War, suffering savage losses in the process. Shadbolt questions the wisdom of New Zealand participation in a remote European conflict, and undercuts the myth of the heroic Anzac soldier. A filmed version of the play appeared in 1991.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Auckland City Libraries - Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero, Sir George Grey Special Collections
Reference: NZMS813(Chunuk Bair)
Photograph by Michael Tubberty

Permission of Auckland City Libraries Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Ngā whakaahua me ngā rauemi katoa o tēnei kōrero
Te tuhi tohutoro mō tēnei whārangi:

Murray Edmond, 'Plays and playwrights - Plays of the mid- and later 20th century', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/mi/photograph/43948/once-on-chunuk-bair-1982 (accessed 21 April 2024)

He kōrero nā Murray Edmond, i tāngia i te 22 Oct 2014