David O'Donnell

regional managing editor

David O'Donnell is a theatre director and Professor of Theatre at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. David has directed many premieres of New Zealand plays, includingHeat by Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Te Karakia by Albert Belz, Collapsing Creation by Arthur Meek and West End Girls by Ken Duncum. His productions have been seen at the NZ International Festival of the Arts, Auckland Arts Festival, Nelson Arts Festival, Otago Arts Festival, Fuel Festival, Dreaming Festival (Australia), Downstage, BATS, Fortune and Circa Theatres. David has been nominated six times as director of the year at Wellington's Chapman Tripp Theatre awards, winning in 2004 for directing David Edgar’s Albert Speer. In 2015 he won a Po’okela Award from the Hawai’i State Theatre Council for directing Victor Rodger’s My Name is Gary Cooper at Kumu Kahua Theater, Honolulu. He has published widely on New Zealand and Australian theatre, Māori and Pacific performance and community theatre. With Marc Maufort, he co-edited the book Performing Aotearoa: New Zealand Theatre and Drama in an Age of Transition (2007) and was editor of the Playmarket New Zealand Play Series from 2010 - 2020. Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa (2017), which he co-authored with Lisa Warrington, was awarded the 2018 Rob Jordan Book Prize by the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies.