Mason, Bruce

Bruce Mason
natal chart (Placidus)
natal chart English style (Equal houses)

Name	Mason, Bruce Gender: M
born on	28 September 1921 at 03:00 (= 03:00 AM )
Place	Wellington, New Zealand, 41s18, 174e47
Timezone	ONZT h11e30 (is standard time)
Data source	From memory Rodden Rating A
Astrology data	03°58' 10°38 Asc. 02°41'

add Bruce Mason to 'my astro'

Biography

New Zealand playwright, critic and novelist, and a leading force in founding New Zealand’s first professional theatre, Downstage, in Wellington in 1964. He was a music critic with a weekly column "Music on the Air" for NZ Listener 1964-69; theatre critic for the Wellington newspapers, the Dominion 1958-60 and 1973-80 and Evening Post 1980-82; and editor of Act magazine 1967-70.

His family moved to Takapuna when he was five where his experiences formed the basis of his most famous work, "The End of the Golden Weather." He graduated with a BA in 1945 from Victoria University College where he was active in drama and in the literary magazine "Hilltop."

After service with the New Zealand Army 1941-43, and the Naval Volunteer Reserve 1943-45, he married Diana Shaw, a Wellington obstetrician, who continued to promote his work.

From 1951 to 1957 Mason was senior public relations officer for the New Zealand Forest Service. From 1960 to 1961 he was editor of the Maori news magazine Te Ao Hou. He was awarded an honorary degree by Victoria University in 1977 and a CBE in 1980, and in 1996 the Bruce Mason Theatre was opened on the North Shore.

In his first major success, The "Pohutukawa Tree," 1960, revised 1963, first performed by the New Zealand Players Theatre Workshop in Wellington in 1957, and produced on BBC TV in 1959, Mason critiqued both Pakeha and Maori societies.

In the following decade he created what for a time he called "Te Hoe Pakaru / The Broken Gourd," but later published as "The Healing Arch," 1987. This is a cycle of five plays which focus on Maori culture since European contact. Recorded for radio in 1965 by Inia Te Wiata and the cast of Porgy and Bess (the New Zealand Opera Company), it is a simple story of unmasking youthful deception, but shows how (in the stage direction) "everywhere in their lives, Maori and European rituals are mixed without incongruity." Maori culture also gave Mason a perspective from which to scrutinize his own. His critique of Pakeha society asks, ‘What kind of a society can develop under corrugated iron?’ It began with "The Evening Paper," 1953, one of a domestic quartet of plays. It was produced as a TV play, "a sour little piece" about a New Zealander returning from overseas to a stifling suburban life.

Mason’s works revealed how he longed for a larger life than he saw possible in society today. All his works, including his fiction, draw on such literary models as

Sophocles’ Greece, O’Casey’s Ireland, Faulkner’s South, or Chekhov’s and Nabokov’s Russia, to articulate and mythologize a dull, parochial landscape. Like Bernard Shaw, Mason mingled sophisticated artistry with political activism, because he always believed in the galvanizing social function of theatre, especially amateur theatre. His own oeuvre covered the genres of fiction, poetry, theatre, radio, television and journalism. Only opera is missing, although many of his plays (Awatea, Swan Song, Blood of the Lamb) are highly operatic. His works tend to be predominately narrative in style, punctuated by ritual. One reviewer called him ‘a Don Quixote tilting away at a landscape that doesn’t quite live up to his heroic aspirations’. Highly cultured and literate, he nevertheless longed to make contact with the ‘average New Zealander’

Link to Wikipedia biography

Events

• Work : Begin Major Project 1964 (First professiontal theatre opened)

• Work : New Job 1964 (Music critic for radio, five years)

• Work : New Job 1958 (Theatre critic for newspaper, "The Dominion," two years)

• Work : New Job 1973 (Worked for the "Dominion" again, seven years)

• Work : New Job 1980 (Worked for "Evening Post," two years)

• Work : New Job 1967 (Editor for the "Act" magazine, three years)

• Social : End a program of study 1945 (Graduated from Victoria University College)

• Social : Joined group 1941 (New Zealand Army)

• Social : Joined group 1943 (Naval Volunteer Reserve, two years)

• Work : New Career 1951 (Senior Public Relations Officer, six years)

• Work : New Job 1960 (Editor of news magazine, one year)

• Work : Gain social status 1977 (Awarded honorary degree from Victoria University)

• Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1996 (Opening of the "Bruce Mason Theatre")

• Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1960 (First play released)

• Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1987 (Release of five cycle plays)

• Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1953 (Release of "The Evening Paper")

Source Notes

Sy Scholfield quotes Garth Carpenter in his "Aspects of Astrology," from Mason personally.

Categories

• Vocation : Business/Marketing : Public relations (Senior P.R. officer)

• Vocation : Writers : Critic (Newspaper and radio)

• Vocation : Writers : Playwright/ script (Noted playwright)

• Vocation : Writers : Fiction (Novelist)

• Notable : Famous : Founder/ originator (Founder of New Zealand theatre)

• Vocation : Military : Military service (New Zealand Army and Reserves)

• Lifestyle : Social Life : Groups (Literate and cultured)