Sixth Win In Contest

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32120, 16 October 1969, Page 2

Sixth Win In Contest

Wendy de la Bere, of Christchurch, has won the British Drama League’s one-act playwriting competition for the sixth time. Her 1969 winning entry, a modem comedy, is entitled “Godzone”—an abbreviation for “God’s Own Country.” The play is set in a public bar. “Each character turns out to be one of the seven deadly sins,” Mrs de la Beere said yesterday. “AU have their particular weaknesses disclosed during the action of the play.” The British Drama League’s competition is judged by a different person every year. For the first time it was judged in New Zealand this year by Mr George Webby, a Wellington drama critic.

Mrs de la Bere has won the contest every time she has entered it. “I have put in a different type of play each time,” she said. “They include a liturgical play, a thriller, a fantasy, and this time it was an ordinary modem comedy." One of her modem plays, “The Story of Little White Riding Hood,” will be presented at St Michael’s Church on Sunday, This is a Russian fairy story with a cast of 33. Mrs de la Bere will produce it herself. “I have never produced one of my own plays before,” she said. “I have always found so many better plays than mine to do.” Mrs de la Bere teaches drama at the Christchurch Teachers’ College to postgraduate students.