Two Plays by Dave Armstrong: The Tutor/ Niu Sila

From the combined wit and talents of writers Oscar Kightley and Dave Armstrong comes the funny and poignant Niu Sila, one of New Zealand’s most loved plays. The play centres on a friendship that spans twenty years, two cultures and one neighbourhood. In 1970s Auckland, five-year-old Ioane Tafioka, just off the boat from the Pacific, moves in next door to five-year-old Peter Burton. They begin an unlikely friendship that will change their lives. Deftly exposing flaws in our society, Niu Sila is at once uplifting and deeply sad.

Dave Armstrong has a superb sense of what some New Zealanders really think, and he gleefully exposes them in the award-winning play The Tutor. Morally corrupt Auckland fat cat, John Sellers hires goody-good maths tutor Richard Holton to raise his wayward son’s grades. The Tutor is a prickly comedy that skewers equally the brash capitalist, and the po-faced liberal, yet ultimately finding a common humanity.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 149
Imprint: Playmarket
Publication date: 01/12/2009
Series: New Zealand Play Series