Paul Maunder

Paul Allan Maunder (born 8 February 1945) is a New Zealand film director, playwright and cultural activist. He is best known for his 1979 film of the novel Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt, his 1983 play Hemi about the life of James K. Baxter, and his work in community-based theatre. Maunder was born in Palmerston North and attended Palmerston North Boys' High School. He played one first-class cricket match for Central Districts in the 1961–62 season. He studied at Victoria University of Wellington, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and the London Film School.

Returning to New Zealand, Maunder worked for the state-owned National Film Unit. In addition to dire cting a number of the documentaries the unit was best known for, he directed three drama productions which were screened on television: Gone up North for a While, One Of Those People That Live In The World and Landfall (the film debut of Sam Neill).

In 1971, Maunder formed the Amamus theatre troupe in Wellington, staging improvised documentary plays on historical subjects such as the Great Depression and the 1951 waterfront lock-out. The group was then influenced by the work of Jerzy Grotowski and devised a trio of plays: Gallipoli, Valita and Oedipus, which examined the Kiwi psyche. In 1975 they were invited to the Festival of the Open Theatre in Wroclaw, Poland. In the 1980s, under the new name of Theatre of the Eighth Day, the group performed a series of political plays, followed by a study on the poet James K Baxter, before embarking on a bicultural series of works, examining the clash of the Maori culture with the settler arrivals.

In 1987, Maunder was awarded a Commonwealth Study Grant to make contact with the Popular Theatre Movement in Zimbabwe. Returning to New Zealand he worked in the community-based theatre framework, setting up the Cultural Work Centre in Petone. A number of partnerships followed, for example, with the Tokelau community and with the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre.

Since 2001, Maunder has lived in the small town of Blackball on the West Coast where he works with a community-based theatre group, Kiwi/Possum Productions. The group has mounted a series of plays written by Maunder on local issues: 1080 poison (Poison and Purity), the Pike River Mine disaster (Goodnight, Irene), race relations (The Cave Above the Pa), mine closures (The Judgement of Ben Alder), heritage (Ted, Poppy and World War Two), mental health (A Brief History of Madness), and the transition economy (The Measures Taken). These plays tour the Coast and usually further afield. Maunder is also curator of Mahi Tupuna, the Blackball Museum of Working Class History. Maunder completed a master's thesis at the University of Canterbury in 2007, with a thesis on Rachel Corrie, and received a doctorate in Theatre and Film Studies in 2010 from the same institution. His PhD thesis was titled The Rebellious Mirror, Community-based Theatre in Aotearoa/

Maunder's recent publications include: Tornado and Other Stories Written Overtime (2009, Maitai River Press), Coal and the Coast: Reflections on the Pike River Disaster (2012, Canterbury University Press) and Rebellious Mirrors: Community-based Theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2013, Canterbury University Press), West Coast Plays with an introduction by Carol Dauber), Te Puawai Co-operative Society, 2017 The Visit to Grandad (for children), Te Puawai (2018), Performer, a memoir (Te Puawai, 2021. He has edited the Labour History Project Bulletin since 2019.

In the 2023 New Year Honours, Maunder was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the arts and the community.