Greg McGee
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Greg McGee is a New Zealand writer and playwright.
[edit] Biography
McGee was born in 1950 in the South Island town of Oamaru. In his early 20s McGee was a Junior All Black and an All Black trialist. He graduated from the University of Otago with a law degree in 1972.
In 1980 his first play, Foreskin's Lament, was an immediate success. A drama set in rugby changing rooms, and the after match party. The theme is the title nickname's attempt to fit in with university liberals and rugby playing conservatives. In New Zealand a rugby player is an everyman, and the game and play present a model of society in the end of the 1970s, and on the eve of the 1981 Springbok Tour. The play has a stylistically unusual ending, with the main character directly addressing the audience with a very long speech — or rather interrogation — questioning their own values; "Whaddarya?".
McGee has struggled to achieve the same success in later works.
- Tooth and Claw, 1983, retained the same microcosm, but used the courtroom as a metaphor.
- Out in the Cold, 1983, moved the scene to a freezing works, and extended the women's rights sub-themes of earlier plays.
- Whitemen, 1986, returned to rugby, tackling the Cavaliers' tour, but was a box-office failure.
McGee script wrote for television, notably two well-written mini-series (Erebus: The Aftermath, an examination of the inquiry following the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 in Antarctica, and Fallout, a dramatisation of David Lange's government and the end of ANZUS), but also more mundane work for shows such as Cover Story, Marlin Bay, Street Legal and, more recently, Orange Roughies. He co-wrote movie scripts for Crooked Earth, Via Satellite (1998), with Anthony McCarten and the Kiwi Welsh rugby comedy Old Scores with Dean Parker. He returned to the theatre with This Train I'm On in 1999. Foreskin's Lament is being reprised for the screen, as Skin and Bone.
McGee was a founder of the Screenworks TV production company, is a member of the New Zealand Film Council and a past President of the New Zealand Writers' Guild.
[edit] Principal Work
- Foreskin's Lament. Wellington : Price Milburn, with Victoria University Press, 1981.
- Tooth and Claw. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 1984. First performed March 1983.
- Out in the Cold. Wellington : Victoria University Press, 1984. First performed May 1983.
- Whitemen, unpublished play, performed 1986.
- Erebus : the aftermath. Script by Greg McGee, produced by Caterina de Nave
- Old Scores (film, screenplay written by Greg McGee and Dean Parker), 1991.
- Fallout, television docudrama, with Warren Barton, 1994.
