Dave Armstrong has won the award for Best New New Zealand Play at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards three times (Niu Sila, The Tutor, where we once belonged) and Best Comedy Script at the 2003 AFTA Television Awards (Spin Doctors). Dave also won the fiction category of the 2008 Royal Society Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing with his story Waimate, and he was published in Six Pack Two (2007). Dave was the 2007 Victoria University Writer in Residence.
His musical play King and Country, which marks New Zealand's role in the WW1 Battle of Passchendaele, has played to over ten festivals throughout New Zealand, and the radio adaptation won best dramatic production at the 2008 Qantas Radio Awards.
Niu Sila (co-written with Oscar Kightley), has been performed around New Zealand and at the 2007 Pasifika Styles Festival in Cambridge, England. The Tutor has had seasons at Wellington (Circa Theatre), Auckland (Auckland Theatre Company), Palmerston North (Centrepoint Theatre), Hamilton, Wanaka and Dunedin (Fortune)
Dave has adapted a number of books and stories for the stage including Margaret Mahy’s The Singing Bus Queue (Downstage Theatre, Taranaki and Bay of Islands Festival) and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (Downstage Theatre, Wellington and Auckland Theatre Company). Most recently Dave has adapted Sia Figiel’s novel Where We Once Belonged for stage production by the Auckland Theatre Company for the 2008 International Festival of the Arts in Wellington and for a season in Auckland.
Dave’s hit comedy Le Sud, about a North Island run by the English and a South Island run by the French, has had sell-out seasons around the country. Dave’s latest comedy, The Motor Camp, premiered at Circa Theatre in 2011 and his play Rita and Douglas will premiere at the 2011 Festival of Colour in Wanaka.
Co-creator of the TV comedy Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, which has screened in New Zealand and Australia, Dave's other television credits include Spies and Lies, Skitz, The Semisis, Spin Doctors, and Bro’town (script editor).
NB: some of Dave's plays have EXPANDABLE casts - click on title to check
Dave Armstrong
Dickens' classic is hilariously updated to nineties New Zealand. A blisteringly funny attack on free market economics as well as a timeless heartwarming family yarn.
Cast: 8
Dave Armstrong
A children's opera, The show takes place over a lunch hour in a New Zealand school, where we meet Tom, a pakeha boy, who has a bit of a mouth that he can't control, Trang, a first generation Cambodian New Zealander, Serena a Samoan migrant and ever the diplomat, and Khalid, an Afghani that arrived in New Zealand via the Nauru island detention camp.
Cast: 4
Dave Armstrong
King and Country is a powerful and evocative drama based on personal accounts gathered from letters, poems and newspaper articles of the era. Entrenched in the horror, humour and heartache of war WW1. these stories are vividly brought to life with treasured New Zealand war songs, accompanied by a live brass band.
Cast: 6
Dave Armstrong
Charlie has a really BIG secret.
Knit a sweater? No sweat!
Charlie Kenny's mother is having a baby. And instead of getting the kid a normal present, like a teddy bear or a rattle, Charlie gets himself into a bet. To knit something for the baby.
Cast: 4
Dave Armstrong
Le Sud assumes that the French successfully colonised the South Island in 1839 and South Zealand or Le Sud became an independent French-speaking nation. Today Le Sud is a prosperous socialist country where people work only 30 hours a week, enjoy long wine-fuelled lunches, and the popular Prime Minister, Francois Duvauchelle, is a renowned womaniser. Crucially the country also has huge hydro-electric resources. The English-speaking citizens of the North Island are far less happy. North Zealanders work long hours for little reward, their free-market experiment ended in disaster, and race relations are at rock bottom. Starved of much-needed electricity, North Zealand lives in permanent recession. Le Sud is the story of a delegation from North Zealand, led by Prime Minister Jim Petersen, who travel south to the beautiful chateau at Wanaka au Lac to persuade their rich neighbors to provide them with cheap electricity.
Cast: 6
Dave Armstrong
Oscar Kightley
This theatrical two-hander was inspired by Armstrong's upbringing.
Two childhood mates, a Samoan and a Palagi, discover cultural difference and commonality in a '60s suburb.
Cast: 2
Dave Armstrong
Oscar Kightley
This funny and highly successful New Zealand play has been rewritten for use in secondary schools. The story of two boys growing up in New Zealand - one Polynesian and one European - resonates with true 'kiwi-isms' and a few stark home truths about race relations in this country. Originally performed by a two-man cast, the play has been reworked to be performed by large school casts.
Cast: 24
Dave Armstrong
RPM is a play about six bored young people and the cars they drive.
17-year-old girl racer Justine wants to discuss her unhappy relationship with her philandering rich-kid boyfriend Luke, but she must babysit 15-year-old Vanessa for the night. Vanessa wants to find her boyfriend Sam, who seems afraid to take their platonic friendship further. When Luke finds his best mate Phil doing more than fixing Justine's pillar rust, and Vanessa finds that virginal Sam has been up Brooklyn Hill with 'Hutt Mutt' Rose, a crisis ensues. Depressed Luke, fuelled by vodka and a full tank of gas, takes off with Vanessa, and everyone else must face up to the consequences.
RPM is a funny and touching drama about love, relationships and fast cars.
Cast: 6
Dave Armstrong
A bus queue starts to sing while waiting for the bus, incurring the wrath of Captain Hannibal, the local council and the Tone Deaf Squad. The bus queue are taken to Black Prison where their musical ability enables them, with the help of the audience, to make a daring escape.
Target audience: 3-12
Cast: 4
Dave Armstrong
The Tutor explores the themes of parenting and education. A lament for the demise of the community in New Zealand society.
Sellers is white trash, a noveau-riche millionaire with the money to transact most deals. Nathan his 15 year old son is in trouble and failing at maths at the prestigious school his father has bought him into. Holten is the Tutor who acts as a catalyst for change.
Cast: 3
Dave Armstrong
Alofa Filiga is thirteen years old. She lives with her family, the Filiga 'aiga, in the village of Malaefou, not far from Apia in Western Samoa. But Alofa isn't happy; coming of age in Samoa isn't as easy as those European anthropologists imagined it to be.
Cast: 5