Riwia Brown

The daughter of a Pākehā father and a Māori mother, Riwia Brown grew up "between the two worlds" — partly in Wellington, partly in Thailand, and partly in a Maori boarding school in Hawke's Bay.

Brown spent her early childhood in Wellington, with some visits to her mother's family, who were from the Bay of Plenty town of Te Kaha. While hanging out with her grandparents in Wellington, the children were encouraged to put on skits and songs. When she was nine, her mother passed away. After her father remarried, the family moved to Thailand. Brown returned to Aotearoa to attend St Joseph Māori Girls College, then spent three years working in London. 

In her early twenties, Brown got involved in theatre. She was inspired to write after the excitement of seeing her brother Apirana Taylor's play Kohanga. Her brother Rangimoana Taylor and sister Hania Stewart are also theatre practitioners. She credits initiatives at Wellington's Taki Rua Depot Theatre to get more Māori involved in theatre as key to her success — "That's my genealogy as a writer."

Roimata, a play about two sisters —a  city slicker and a country bumpkin — was based partly on her own youth. This first play had originally been written for television; eight years later, stage and screen versions ended up appearing within a year of each other. Evening Post reviewer Samson Samasoni commented on "the short filmic scenes" of the stage version, but wrote that Roimata was important because it "overflows with honesty", and "is written by a sincere and instinctive writer".

In 1989 Brown made her screen directing debut, when she adapted Roimata for Māori anthology series E Tipu E Rea. Roimata was chosen to open the series. Brown picked East Coast teenager Dianne Reynolds to star as the shy East Coast teen of the title, while Rena Owen played her half-sister from the city. E Tipu e Rea set out to showcase Māori stories and talent; the only Pākehā on the set of Roimata's 10 day shoot was cinematographer Alan Locke. 

In this early period Brown was both acting and writing (on-screen, she can be seen in 1979 tangi drama The Gathering and 1986 road movie Mark II). A week after deciding to quit her day job at a children's museum to concentrate on writing, she bumped into director Lee Tamahori, who invited her to be a 'project consultant' on a movie adaptation of Once Were Warriors.

Within weeks, Brown was enlisted to write the script. The hope was that she would shift the focus of Alan Duff's much discussed book from aggressive husband Jake Heke, to his wife Beth.

"I feel very connected with the film, a lot of emotional heart and soul went into it", Brown said when Warriors was released. She was keen to make it clear that her political views had little in common with Duff's. "I felt with the book it didn't explain why the family was in crisis — just that it was. In the film, the key for Beth is discovering her Māori identity." The film became a sensation, igniting debates, travelling widely and breaking local box office records. Brown writes about Warriors here, describing it as "one of the most challenging and yet creative times" of her writing career. Her work earned her the Best Screenplay Award at the 1994 New Zealand Film and Television Awards.

In 1995, Brown was one of a number of writer/directors enlisted to work on Steve Sachs' docudrama series True Life Stories. Each episode explores how a young person overcame a particular difficulty.

Brown's next film project was interracial love story Flight of the Albatross (1996), whose budget came in at three times that of Once Were Warriors. A tale of adventure and spiritual redemption between a troubled Māori man and a German teen, it was based on a book by American Deborah Savage. The film's funding and making betrayed similar multi-national complications.

Although written as a television series, Albatross was released unsuccessfully as a movie in New Zealand. Reviews crossed the spectrum, although it won the prize for Best Children's Feature Film at the 1993 Berlin Children's Film Festival.

In 1997 Brown's script for Ngā Wahine was one of seven chosen from 100 plus local submissions for that year's Montana Sunday Theatre. Based on her play of the same name,  the one-hour teleplay was directed by Brown. It contrasts life for a well-heeled lawyer (Simone Kessell) and an impoverished student (Nancy Brunning) who are both pregnant.

Since then Brown has written episodes for anthology shows Mataku (The Pathway of the Spirit) and historical drama Taonga: Treasures of our Past (including opening episode Till Death Do Us Part). In 2012 Irirangi Bay screened as part of anthology series Atamira. Brown adapted it from her play of the same name. Atamira involves a 50s-era married couple, and a mākutu laid during the New Zealand Wars. In 2014, Brown wrote and directed animated short In the Rubbish Bin.

In 2021, she won Best Drama Script at the NZ TV Awards with co-writer Kathryn Burnett, for The Tender Trap. The telemovie is based on the story of Sharon Armstrong (played by Rima Te Wiata), a senior public servant who was arrested in Argentina after falling victim to an online romance scam. 

Brown also co-wrote little-known American feature The Legend of Johnny Lingo, (2003) a comedy fable whose impressive cast includes Kiwis George Henare, Rawiri Paratene, Hori Ahipene and Sima Urale.

In 2001 Brown was named an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit, for her work in film and theatre. She has spent time on the board of the NZ Film Commission, and joined Kara Paewai and Dorthe Scheffmann, produced six Film Commission-funded short films.

Profile updated on 24 May 2024

Sources include
Riwia Brown' Atamira' (broken link) Māori Television website. Accessed 28 May 2012
'Riwia Brown' Playmarket website. Accessed 24 May 2024
Kate Coughlan, 'Nurturing the Warrior' (Interview) - The Evening Post, 19 May 1994
Kate Coughlan, 'Warriors - a scriptwriter's story' (Interview) - The Evening Post, 21 May 1994, page 12
Samson Samasoni, 'Promising debut for actor-writer' (Review of Roimata) - The Evening Post, 25 July 1988, page 39
E Tipu e Rea press kit
Unknown writer, 'Aspects of Māori life in series' - The Dominion Sunday Times, 5 November 1989, page 24
Unknown writer, 'Script-writing Career Takes Off' (Interview) - Te Puni Kōkiri newsletter 21, April 1994, page 5