Dave Armstrong
Dave Armstrong has won the award for Best New New Zealand Play at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards three times (Niu Sila, The Tutor, Where We Once Belonged) and Best Comedy Script at the 2003 AFTA Television Awards (Spin Doctors). Dave also won the fiction category of the 2008 Royal Society Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing with his story Waimate, and he was published in Six Pack Two (2007). He was the 2007 Victoria University Writer in Residence. His musical play King and Country, which marks New Zealand's role in the WW1 Battle of Passchendaele, played festivals throughout New Zealand, and the radio adaptation won best dramatic production at the 2008 Qantas Radio Awards.
His plays have had sell-out seasons around the country, and he has adapted a number of books and stories for the stage including Margaret Mahy’s The Singing Bus Queue and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. He adapted Sia Figiel’s novel Where We Once Belonged for stage production by the Auckland Theatre Company for the 2008 International Festival of the Arts in Wellington and for a season in Auckland. Subsequent productions have included a tour to Australia.
Co-creator of the TV comedy Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, which has screened in New Zealand and Australia, Dave's other television credits include Spies and Lies, Skitz, The Semisis, Spin Doctors, and Bro’town (as script editor).
Armstrong co-wrote a children's movie, Kiwi Christmas, and he is a columnist for the Dominion Post newspaper. He won Best Opinion Writer (humour and satire) in the 2018 Voyager Media Awards. He has also written a book, True Colours, about the 1996 New Zealand General Election.
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