Toa Fraser

Toa Fraser, born in Britain in 1975, of a Fijian father and a British mother, is a playwright and film director. His first feature film, No. 2, starring Ruby Dee won the Audience Award (World Dramatic) at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. His second, Dean Spanley, starring Sam Neill, Jeremy Northam and Peter O'Toole, premiered in September 2008. His third film Giselle was selected to be screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. His fourth, The Dead Lands, a Maori action-adventure film, was released in 2014.

Fraser moved to Auckland in 1989. He attended Sacred Heart College, Auckland and is a graduate of the University of Auckland. His father is Eugene Fraser who has worked for both the BBC and many other radio and TV stations across the world as a radio continuity presenter.

His career proved a stellar one from early on. In 1998 he picked up awards for Best New Play (Bare) and Best New Playwright at the Chapman Tripp theatre awards. Toa received invaluable assistance from Michael Robinson who workshopped the play through many drafts before directing it at The Silo theatre in Auckland. The two-hander saw Ian Hughes and Madeleine Sami playing an array of 15 characters. Metro magazine called it "an instant classic". In 1999 he won the Sunday Star Times Bruce Mason Award. The play toured internationally and enjoyed a sell out season at the Sydney Opera House.

It was his second play, No. 2 (1999) that catapulted him (and Sami) to fame, winning the Festival First Award at the 2000 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, alongside performances in Europe, Canada, Jamaica and Fiji. Set over the course of one day, as an elderly Fijian matriarch demands a family feast so she can choose her successor, the play saw Sami playing every role.

...
Wikipedia