The Tree (play)

The Tree
Written by Stella Jones
Date premiered 1957
Place premiered Bristol, England
Original language English
Subject a daughter returns home after a 15 year absence, creating new strains in the family's relationships
Genre Drama

The Tree is a New Zealand play by Stella Jones that premiered in Bristol, England in 1957.

Information

Subject

The play is set on the back porch of a New Zealand home and tells the story of a daughter returning home after 15 years' absence. The central relationship is between the mother, who has not achieved her life-long goals, and the daughter, who has experienced so much through her travels.[1]

Honours and critical response

The play won second prize in the Southland Centennial Playwriting Competition in 1956, however it was rejected by a number of New Zealand theatres.[1][2] It was subsequently purchased by a London agent and debuted in Bristol.[1] After it achieved success in England, the New Zealand Players, who had previously rejected it, toured forty North Island towns with it in 1959.[3] It was met with critical acclaim, The New Zealand Herald calling it "an adult, compelling and first-class piece of work".[4] It was published in 1960 by Whitcombe and Tombs with New Zealand Literary Fund support.[3]

Contemporary critics compared The Tree to Arthur Miller's style of playwriting, and particularly his 1947 play All My Sons, with its sparse dialogue and portrayal of a family under pressure.[1] It was also compared to New Zealand playwright Bruce Mason's The Pohutukawa Tree, with comment that Jones' text read "much more smoothly" than Mason's.[1]

1980s commentators on the play point out that the father's role is relatively insignificant, and that other of Jones' works also show strong female lead characters, although this gender-based analysis may not have been apparent to audiences in the 1950s.[3]

The play is recommended reading for drama papers at the University of Auckland,[5] and was included in a Landmark New Zealand Play Reading Series in 2012.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Robinson, Roger (ed.) (1998). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Auckland: Oxford University Press. p. 545. ISBN 0 19 558348 5.
  2. ↑ McLintock, Alexander Hare, ed. (23 April 2009) [originally published in 1966]. "Prizes Commemorative of National and Local Occasions". An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Sturm, Terry (ed) (1991). The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English. Auckland: Oxford University Press. pp. 300–301. ISBN 0 19 558211 X.
  4. 1 2 "New Zealand Theatre: theatre reviews, performance reviews - Theatreview". www.theatreview.org.nz. Retrieved 2016-04-30.
  5. ↑ "DRAMA 204 History and Performance Faculty of Arts Courses The University of Auckland". www.artsfaculty.auckland.ac.nz. Retrieved 2016-04-30.
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