Renee Taylor (writer)

Renée Gertrude Taylor, ONZM (born 1929), is a feminist writer and playwright from New Zealand. Renée is of Māori (Ngāti Kahungunu), Irish, English, and Scottish ancestry. She is known mononymously as Renée. Renée has described herself as a lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals. She wrote her first play Setting the Table in 1981. Many of her plays have been published, with extracts included in Intimate Acts, a collection of lesbian plays published by Brito and Lair, New York.

Renée was born in Napier, New Zealand. She attended Greenmeadows School in Hawke’s Bay.

I liked school. I got a lot of approval there. Except when it came to sport. I was uninterested. I preferred to read...My interest in theatre started at school. They used to have a concert every year. The first half would be items by individuals or groups and the second half would be a play. I was in two or three plays and I loved it. I loved being someone else even if it was only for a short time.

Renée left school at the age of 12 to work in the local woollen mills and then a printing factory.

In 1979, Renée completed a Bachelor of Arts at Auckland University. Completed over ten years, much of her B.A. was gained through extramural study from Massey University.

Renée is a pioneering figure for women in the New Zealand theatre landscape. Fellow New Zealand playwright, Lorae Parry, has said:

Renée opened the stage door and strode in, announcing her arrival and standing centre stage. She opened the door with a bang, not with a whimper and many of us followed. It was time. Someone needed to do it. Renée had the guts.

Renée began writing short stories, reviews and humorous columns for newspapers when her three children were young. She also began acting in the Napier Repertory Theatre. For twenty years she directed plays for a number of theatrical groups and schools in the Hawke's Bay area.

Renee’s attendance at the United Women’s Convention in Wellington in 1975 was an important experience. The convention enabled her to recognise that “...a lot of the things I thought and felt resentful about were things other women thought and felt too.” A feminist perspective became an important part of her theatre work and writing from that point onwards.

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