Nathan Joe: 2021
Emerging Writers Residency

Nathan Joe: 2021
Emerging Writers Residency

Nathan Joe: 2021
Emerging Writers Residency
1707 1708 Michael King Writers Centre

Nathan is an award-winning writer, theatre-maker and performance poet based in Ōtautahi. His work largely focuses on the slipperiness of identity and the politics of desire.

As a playwright, Nathan won the Playmarket b425 award two years in a row (2015 and 2016), and has been shortlisted for the ADAM NZ award. His show I am Rachel Chu was the recipient of two Auckland Fringe Festival awards in 2019. He was also the 2019 inaugural NZ Young Writers Festival writer-in-residence, and one of the 2020 Ursula Bethell writers-in-residence at The University of Canterbury. His most recent play Scenes from a Yellow Peril is expected to be presented in 2021/2022.

He is the Otago Regional Slam Champion for 2019, the 3rd Place National Slam Champion for 2019, and is the current Christchurch Regional Slam Champion for 2020.

As a critic, he is a regular contributor to Theatrescenes and was previously the theatre editor at The Lumière Reader.

A our eighth writer-in-residence for the year, Nathan is working on the final draft of a play Losing Face – a return to and a rewriting of his first play originally written in 2013, (then titled Flesh off the Boat). It was never produced but was awarded development through Playmarket’s Asian Ink programme and was subsequently selected to be a part of Proudly Asian Theatre’s, Fresh Developments programme. Via this Nathan has been given resources (a dramaturg/collaborator) to dive into the work through a series of journals and essays. It is a love story grappling with race, sexuality and family; part awkward comedy of manners, part domestic drama, this work is an examination of the ways we try to keep our identities compartmentalised and separate.

*Photo by Ankita Singh