Hannah McKenzie Doornebosch
Hannah researched representations of women and mothers onstage in New Zealand, and wrote several plays exploring how this representation has changed over time.
PhD awarded 2014
Hannah is a scriptwriter who commenced her PhD in 2011, focussing her attentions on the New Zealand stage. The contextualizing critical component of Hannah's research ('Keeping Mum, Performing Marriage and Growing Women') shines a spotlight on the representations of women, and particularly mothers, depicted on stage in New Zealand between 1920 and 2012.
Alongside her research, Hannah wrote several full length plays that explore the changing representations of women and mothers within New Zealand’s theatre history.
Hannah graduated from the IIML's MA programme in Scriptwriting in 2009. Her MA thesis project, and arguably the start of her fascination with writing family drama, was the play 'McKenzie Country'. 'McKenzie Country' was joint winner of the David Carson-Parker Embassy Prize in Scriptwriting for the best major project, received the Dominion Post Scholarship, was read as part of Writers on Mondays, shortlisted to the final four for Write Out Loud Wellington 2009 and received its stage premier at BATS Theatre in June 2011, produced by Hannah and mounted by her company of Page Left playwright producers.
Hannah's first theatre script after completing her MA was a second family drama entitled 'The Avon Lady', which made the shortlist for the Adam Play Award (for best NZ play) and was joint winner of Write Out Loud Wellington in 2010.
When Hannah's not in the theatre, she writes for a Government department and is involved with a great number of creative projects including short films and role playing events. Hannah has a passion for acting and the visual arts and often employs these skills on stage or around it though designing stage posters, flyers, and theatre programmes etc.
Hannah spent many of her formative years abroad but has always called New Zealand home. Alongside her love of language and literature Hannah has a passion for cricket, Rockabilly, classic Hollywood and 1950s Broadway. Above any genre, Hannah has an unswerving interest in people and their stories. Whether on stage or screen, what moves her most are credible characters and their incredible journeys which begin in the everyday.