SOURCE: McNaughton, Howard. “The Development of Poetic and Realistic Drama.” In New Zealand Drama, pp. 38-45. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981.

In the following essay, McNaughton surveys the work of several New Zealand playwrights who wrote during the time of World War II, including Allen Curnow, D'Arcy Cresswell, Ian Hamilton, Howard Wadman, and Claude Evans.

World War II altered the character of most New Zealand theaters, changing the nature of the active membership but generally not reducing it. Unbalanced resources led to a period of conservatism in the larger civic theaters and a consequent resistance to local scripts, but the war years also saw a substantial development in university drama and the emergence of socially committed theaters in Wellington and Auckland. At Canterbury University College, Ngaio Marsh directed a series of celebrated productions, mostly Shakespearean, and at Auckland University College Arnold Goodwin developed a marionette theater which also toured Shakespeare...