Gary Henderson was born in Geraldine in South Canterbury, and gradually spiralled his way north to Auckland where he has lived for eight years.

Gary's plays have been professionally produced around New Zealand, in South Africa, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and the United States. His most well-travelled play is Skin Tight which won a coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1998 during a sell-out season at the Traverse Theatre. It was also produced in New York in 2006, UK in 2007 and Canada in 2008.

Gary received a Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for the best new short play in 1996 for Mo & Jess Kill Susie, and a Fringe Award for Excellence for The Big Blue Planet Earth Show at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 1992.

Home Land, commissioned and produced by Fortune Theatre in Dunedin (2004) and Peninsula, commissioned by the Christchurch Arts Festival and directed by Gary at Court Theatre (2005), were written in Dunedin while Gary was resident in the Robert Lord Writers Cottage, and teaching at Allen Hall, the home of the Otago University Theatre Studies Programme.

More recent commissions include Lines of Fire for Wow! Productions, a site-specific work presented at the Dunedin Railway Station in the Dunedin Festival of the Arts 2006 and Stealing Games for Capital E National Theatre for Children.

Gary has also directed the work of other New Zealand playwrights; in 2000 he directed Ken Duncum's Horseplay for Dunedins Wow! Productions at the Fortune, and in 2003, Carl Nixon's The Book Of Fame based on the novel by Lloyd Jones, at Downstage in Wellington. He has also served many times as a director and mentor in the development of scripts by new writers.
Gary currently teaches playwriting at Unitec's School of Performing and Screen Arts in Auckland.

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An excellent analysis of Gary Henderson's three published plays can be found here in a review by Lisa Warrington, published in the Australasian Drama Studies Journal.

 
Purchase Gary's Three Plays