Rowley Habib

Rowley Habib (24 April 1933 – 3 April 2016), also known as Rore Hapipi, was a New Zealand poet, playwright, and writer of short stories and television scripts.

Rowley Habib
Habib in 1969
Habib in 1969
Native name
Rore Hapipi
Born(1933-04-24)24 April 1933
Died3 April 2016(2016-04-03) (aged 82)

Biography

Of Lebanese and Māori descent, Habib identified with the Ngāti Tūwharetoa iwi. He was educated at Te Aute College and then attended teachers' training college for a time, before working in a variety of jobs including in a bookshop, timber mills, freezing works, and on hydroelectric dam construction sites.[1]

He was the first Māori to write an original television drama: his 1979 work The Gathering looked at tensions around an elderly woman's tangihanga.[1]

He also wrote the play, Death of the Land, in 1976, a courtroom drama which sets in conflict opinions about the proposed sale of a block of Māori ancestral land.[2] This play marks a beginning point for contemporary Māori theatre, the company Te Ika a Maui Players was formed to present it, which they did around the country in community halls, and marae.[1][3][4]

The 1978 television adaptation of the play includes footage of the 1975 Māori Land March and was the first television drama written by a Māori person.[5][6] Habib's television drama The Protesters won the award for best script at the 1983 New Zealand Feltex Awards. The cast of The Protesters included Merata Mita, Jim Moriarty, Billy T. James and Don Selwyn.[1]

In the field of short story writing, from 1956 to 1971 Habib was a regular contributor to Te Ao Hou / The New World, a magazine for Māori.[7]

In 1984, Habib was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.[8] In 2013, Creative New Zealand awarded him a Ngā Tohu a Tā Kingi Ihaka Te Waka Toi Award in recognition of his lifetime of service to Māori arts,[9] describing his play Death of the Land as a "landmark in the development of Māori theatre."[1]

Habib died on 3 April 2016.[10]

Selected works

Television scripts
  • 1976 – Death of the Land (aired in 1978)[3]
  • 1979 – The Gathering
  • 1983 – The Protesters

Poetry
  • 2006– Poetry anthology, The Raw Men. O-a-Tia Publishers

Plays
  • 1976 - The death of the land[3]

References
  1. "Rowley Habib (Rore Hapipi)". NZOnScreen. 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  2. Trisha Dunleavy. Ourselves in Primetime - A History of New Zealand Television Drama. Auckland University Press 2005
  3. Derby, Mark; Grace-Smith, Briar (4 October 2014). "First Māori theatre companies, 1970–1990". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  4. Maunder, Paul (2013). Rebellious mirrors : community-based theatre in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Christchurch, New Zealand. ISBN 978-1-927145-45-6. OCLC 861221640.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. "Death of the Land (video)". NZOnScreen. 1978. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  6. "Death of the Land | Television". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
  7. Ed. Maggie Awadalla and Paul March-Russell. The Postcolonial Short Story: Contemporary Essays. Palgrave Macmillan 2013
  8. "Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship: list of fellows". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  9. "Creative New Zealand mourns the passing of Rore Hapipi (Rowley Habib)". Creative New Zealand Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. 5 April 2016. Retrieved 6 April 2016.
  10. "Prominent Māori writer Rowley Habib passes away". Māori Television News. 4 April 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
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