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Home / Northern Advocate

Teacher's starring in new lead role

Northern Advocate
3 Apr, 2012 02:29 AM2 mins to read

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A Whangarei drama teacher has won a national new play award with a story about coming home.

Mitch Tawhi Thomas started his first teaching job at Tikipunga High School in February this year.

He won the Adam New Zealand Play Award and the Best Play by a Maori Playwright Award just weeks later.



His play, Hui, brings four estranged brothers together to mourn their father's death. The brothers are forced to confront the past and find a way forward.

Hui's characters "have been absent from our stages," director of Playmarket Murray Lynch said.

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"This testosterone fuelled provocation invites the male population to look closely at themselves."

The characters bear a not too dissimilar resemblance to the life, family and friends of the playwright, Mr Thomas said.

"Those that know me can definitely hear themselves and I've been laughed at, encouraged and punched, all in the same time."

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While writing plays will always be a part of his life, Mr Thomas is embarking on a new direction with his teaching career.

"I had one of those classic epiphanies about four years ago when I was travelling around Europe. I was facing some hardship and it was like 'what am I going to do when I go back home?' and my instinct told me I wanted to work with young people."

He then decided that he wanted to help young artists get into showbusiness.

Four years later he's been through university and teacher's college and he's landed his first job at Tikipunga High School.

"Our showbusiness industry is a very small industry and I'm at the age and position where me and my friends and family in the industry are kind of running things and I can act like a bridge between our rangatahi that are coming through ... and I can point them in the right direction."

At 39 years of age, Mr Thomas has not come to teaching on a youthful whim.

"It is a change of direction but it's just encouraging something I've always been working on."

His move from Wellington to Whangarei has been "easy" and "exciting", he said.

"You know you're in the right place when you move somewhere new and certain things just start clicking, because you certainly know when it's not, and this year as soon as I arrived here things started clicking into place."

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