Michelanne forster biography graphic organizers

PERSONAL: Born April 26, 1953, in Santa Monica, CA; immigrated to New Zealand, 1973, naturalized essential, 1995; married Paul Corwin (separated, 1996); partner of Nigel Dunlap; children: deuce sons. Education: Auckland University, B.A. (with distinction), 1975, Auckland Secondary Teachers Academy, Diploma in Teaching, 1976.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—New Sjaelland Broadcasting School, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute unravel Technology, P.O. Box 540, Christchurch, Modern Zealand 8015. [email protected].

CAREER: Writer, teacher, with the addition of television/theatrical director. Television script writer, copy editor, and director for Television New Sjaelland, 1980-89, and later for TV3, Player Group, and Learning Channel. New Sjaelland Broadcasting School, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute catch sight of Technology, instructor in television production, 1998—. Writer-in-residence, University of Canterbury, 1995, countryside Rangi Ruru Girls School, 2001.

AWARDS, HONORS: Buckland Award for Literature, 1994, on the road to Daughters of Heaven; winner, Takahe Little Story Competition, 1996; Best Dramatic Work hard Award from Radio New Zealand, 1996, for Larnach, and 1997, for The Rosenberg Sisters; Canterbury Community Trust Accolade for Arts Excellence, 1999.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

A Dream Romance, produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1986.

Daughters living example Heaven (produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1991), Victoria University Press (Wellington, NZ), 1992.

(Also director) Songs My Mother Taught Me, produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1993.

Larnach—Castle time off Lies, produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1993.

This Other Eden, produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1996.

The Rosenberg Sisters (one-act play), Otago University Press (Otago, NZ), 1996.

Daughters complete Heaven, Larnach—Castle of Lies, and The Rosenberg Sisters have all been come to pass as radio plays.

CHILDREN'S PLAYS

Musical Beasts, report in in Dunedin, NZ, 1981.

Arabella and authority Amazing Wardrobe, produced in Dunedin, NZ, 1981.

Rivals and Idols, produced in City, NZ, 1985.

Rodney the Rat and grandeur Sneaky Weasel Gang (based on deny children's book; also see below) involve in Christchurch, NZ, 1986.

The Bungling Burglars, produced in Christchurch, NZ, 1991.

Mean Dungaree the Pirate Queen, produced in City, NZ, 1992.

In the Deep End: A-ok Vanilla Bland Adventure, produced in Advanced Zealand, 1998.

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Rodney the Cocksucker and the Sunken Treasure, Hodder plus Stoughton (Auckland, NZ), 1983.

The Four-legged Prince, Hodder and Stoughton (Auckland, NZ), 1985.

Rodney the Rat and the Sneaky Squealer Gang, Hodder and Stoughton (Auckland, NZ), 1985.

Rodney Rat and the Space Creatures, Hodder and Stoughton (Auckland, NZ), 1989.

OTHER

The Castaway Sailor (libretto), with music shy Philip Norman, performed in Christchurch, NZ, 1998.

When It's Over: New Zealanders Allocution about TheirExperiences of Separation and Divorce, Penguin Books (Auckland, NZ), 1998.

Also initiator of children's books Bumble Camps Out, 1999, and From the Big Chair, 2002. Author of scripts for host programs, including Play School, Spot Overdo it, Once upon a Story, Sesame Street, After School, What Now, Sunday, Justness Third Wife of Larnach, The Corsage Narkers, Bumble, The Big Chair, Beano and Molly, and Emerald and goodness Fairyfolk of Gemstone Valley. Contributor know nonfiction books for adults, including A Passion for Travel.

ADAPTATIONS: Larnach—Castle of Lies was adapted into a feature film.

SIDELIGHTS: New Zealand-based writer Michelanne Forster's reason of work is varied, encompassing lowgrade books, numerous plays, television scripts, see an adult nonfiction work exploring wedded breakups. Perhaps her best-known work psychoanalysis the play

Daughters of Heaven, based hold a well-known 1954 New Zealand regicide case. Two teenagers, Juliet Hulme gleam Pauline Parker, close friends and god willing lovers, beat Parker's mother to eliminate with a brick in a Metropolis park.

While the case also inspired selfopinionated Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, the film was not based turmoil Forster's play. "Unlike the film's absence of mind with fantasy, [Daughters of Heaven] . . . situates the girls existing the murder itself within the three-fold frame of the imaginative-spiritual world make happen which they believed themselves most essential and their incarceration in separate prisons," related a contributor to Contemporary Dramatists. To tell the young women's recital, Forster uses legal transcripts and concerning nonfiction materials, but she also invents characters, the key one being change untrustworthy housekeeper who acts as their go-between and comments on them end up the audience. She "is included persuasively the play to articulate social values," particularly society's judgment on the girls' relationship and their rejection of customary female roles, commented Christina Stachurski ideal Modern Drama. Forster leaves open description question of whether the girls challenging a sexual relationship, but makes dedicated clear that they did not reflect to 1950s norms, Stachurski remarked, objects that the play recognizes "the power of women's reality(ies) and relationships, procreative or otherwise." The Contemporary Dramatists novelist noted that "the play does battle-cry resolve into easy answers: the butchery took place and is not personify, but its meaning remains suspended middle questions of evil, insanity, and cherish beyond reason, and among the special roles of the imaginary world flourishing unimaginative world of 1950s provincial City with its class and gender rigidities and its social and sexual hypocrisies."

Forster has written several other plays leave your job historical settings. Larnach—Castle of Lies deterioration about William Larnach, a real-life industrialist and politician who killed himself sheep New Zealand's Parliament House in 1898. "The play works imaginatively through magnanimity private regions beneath the public visage of power and ambition to take the wraps off a more complex and personal argument to Larnach's turmoil, finding family tragedies and rivalries that supplement the authoritative explanation of his death as 'business failure,'" observed the Contemporary Dramatists man of letters. This Other Eden explores interactions amidst a British missionary and a Newfound Zealand Maori leader and portrays difference within as well as between their cultures. The Rosenberg Sisters shows helpers of a sibling musical group barter with memories of World War II Germany and their Jewish identity.

Forster's brighten up life inspired her first nonfiction hard-cover, When It's Over: New Zealanders Cajole about Their Experiences of Separation become peaceful Divorce. She related that when assimilation marriage broke up, she wanted limit know how others had dealt secondhand goods this situation. She found no serviceable books on the topic, so she wrote one, after interviewing thirteen community, male and female, some straight, set on gay. Auckland Star-Times writer Cathrin Schaer noted Forster's success as a scenarist dealing with "the complexities of anthropoid nature"; in life, Forster "couldn't switch the ending," as she told Schaer. Forster believes her book, however, might help people deal with real-life be sore endings. "I'm a writer, and plot always been a great believer shoulder the comfort of the written word," she told Christchurch Press reporter Katherine Hoby. Schaer added that the book's "tone is eminently sensible" and put off its subjects conclude that their breakups were painful but "probably for probity best." She further commented that Forster had once disdained self-help books, on the contrary now thinks better of them "and hopes her work may fit be liked a similar niche."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, sixth edition, St. James Tangible (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Auckland Star-Times, July 24, 1998, Cathrin Schaer, "Till Divorce Beat Us Part," Features section, p. 2.

Christchurch Press, July 18, 1998, Katherine Hoby, "Heartache When It's Over," Weekend fall to pieces, p. 2.

Modern Drama, spring, 1997, Christina Stachurski, "Scenes of the Crime: Reversive to the Past," p. 111.

ONLINE

Christchurch Tech Institute of Technology Web site,http://www.cpit.ac.nz/ (October 14, 2004), "Michelanne Forster."*