Bruce Mason

For three decades, playwright and critic Bruce Mason played intelligent, impassioned witness to many key developments in Kiwi theatre and culture; a number of them his own. His play The Pohutukawa Tree has spawned more than 180 productions, and was watched by 20 million after being adapted for the BBC. The End of the Golden Weather is both a classic solo play, and movie.

By the time he was touring The End of the Golden Weather, he was accepted popularly as a pioneer in the modern New Zealand theatre, and met with virtually unqualified critical enthusiasm in most towns he played in. Howard McNaughton, in his 1976 book New Zealand Writers and their Work: Bruce Mason