Playwright in suspense until the end

ACTING UP: Roger Hall is oneof the country's best known playwrights.

Roger Hall is one of New Zealand's most successful playwrights. Now in his 70s, he loves to escape to Hawke's Bay, with its laid-back lifestyle, for a few weeks every year. He began writing for television in the 1960s. Hall's bestknown work in New Zealand is probably the breakthrough play Glide Time (1976), depicting frustrations and petty triumphs of a group of so-called "public servants". Amy Shanks talks to Hall about his inspiration managing success and the West End.

1 How many plays have you penned in total, and what inspires you to write them?

I have a pretty high strike rate of 40 to 50 plays and shows. I just enjoy writing really, I always say a lot of people have a lot of ideas but if you write them down and they hang around long enough you turn them into a play.

I trained myself, if I have an idea in the night I get out of bed and write it down. If I'm making fun of people - I'm most often making fun of myself.

2 You are hailed as one of the country's most successful playwrights. How much time goes into keeping that title?

I'm sitting at my computer even now in my mid-70s at 8am, these days I go and start work, I don't have to do it for a living but I prefer to do it than not do it.

In my younger days I used to set myself a target, say two to three pages before I had a coffee or eight to 10 pages a day, it's not always going to be perfect it might need two or three drafts.

Sometimes the characters run away with me, I have never succeeded with writing a film, I think it's going to be one way and by the time I have finished it, it's something quite different.

I don't like to know the end of the story until I get there - I attack it at all directions - the key is to do a certain number of pages every day.

3 What is it like to know people are still performing your plays on stages throughout New Zealand, and offshore?

I have a play on in New Zealand every two weeks, I used to be on every 11 days, including amateur performance. I enjoy getting along to them and seeing how people have interpreted them.

It's a steady flow, it ticks along quite nicely, it's quite good that you can still earn money on something you wrote 20 years ago. I did go to see Love off the Shelf [while in Hawke's Bay] and it was a good evening.

4 Your play Middle-Age Spread had a 15-month run in the West End, won a Society of London Theatre Comedy of the Year Award and became one of the first New Zealand plays to be transformed into a feature film in 1979 - how does that rank as a career highlight?
Undoubtedly it was a highlight - to have it happen so early in my career was amazing. I have had near-misses for places on the West End but that one actually made it. I had been writing a long time before I wrote Glide Time but it's a wonderful occupation when the going is good.

Middle-Age Spread gave me so much and I earned enough to travel to America for a year with my family, take the kids out of school.

5 How much time do you get to spend in Hawke's Bay and what to you love about the region?
A few weeks a year. My wife comes more often than I do. I would say four or five a year - it's very enjoyable, I can go cycling - in Auckland it's a bit dangerous, but the cycle tracks here are nice and fresh.