Shuriken: A play by Vincent O'Sullivan

Vincent O'Sullivan

Apr 2014 · Victoria University Press

About this ebook

The Japanese Military Field Code was explicit: 'Japanese forces do not surrender to the enemy under any circumstances.' How then would the eight hundred or so prisoners who found themselves in the first Japanese prisoner-of-war camp anywhere in the world behave? They had been brought from the Soloman Islands to Featherstone in 1942. Six months later an incident occurred in which forty-nine prisoners and one New Zealand guard were killed. Vincent O'Sullivan explores the implications of this event in a play which immediately rises above mere documentation to consider what happens when people of two cultures are brought together in such extreme circumstances, and when even the best intentions of those who try to offer sympathy and understanding fail in the face of ignorance and prejudice.

About the author

Phillip Mann, who has directed many notable productions for Downstage Theatre in Wellington, worked closely with the playwright in devising a visual and theatrical presentation which would enhance the significance of the text. Many of his innovations are now recorded in the stage directions of the play. Vincent O’Sullivan was born in Auckland, NZ in 1937 and is one of New Zealand’s leading writers. He graduated from the universities of Auckland and Oxford and has lectured in the English departments of Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato. He is the author of two novels — Let the River Stand, which won the 1994 The Montana NZ Book Awards, and Believers to the Bright Coast, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Tasmania Pacific Region Prize — and many plays and collections of short stories and poems. His poetry collection Seeing You Asked (Victoria University Press 1998) won Best Book of Poetry at the 1999 The Montana NZ Book Awards, the same year that Believers to the Bright Coast was runner up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction. His 2001 collection of poetry Lucky Table (Victoria University Press) was shortlisted in the poetry section of the 2001 The Montana NZ Book Awards. Nice morning for it, Adam was published to acclaim in 2004 and it won the Poetry category of the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In April 2007 Blame Vermeer, was published by Victoria University Press. Michael Hulse reviwed it in New Zealand Books and said, "Blame Vermeer is the real thing, wise beyond the attitudes of wisdom, deft beyond the posturing of deftness, brimming with O'Sullivan's exciting ability simply to talk his understated way into sheer bloody poetry." The movie may be slightly different (2011) offers a rich harvest of recent poems displaying the wit, intellectual agility and arresting beauty for which Vincent O’Sullivan is renowned. Further Convictions Pending: Poems 1999-2008 gathers the best from his recent collections and includes f