Playwright wins award
A Lower Hutt performance group could be acting in Beijing, thanks to an international leadership award.
The founder and chief executive of 2Face Drama, Chalizza Harris, was one of 10 recipients of the Minister for Youth’s International Leadership Award.
Part of the prize was a trip to China from September 5 to 11, where the winners attended the second-ever New Zealand China Young Leaders Forum in Beijing.
As a result, she was able to link up with the New Zealand Embassy with the hope to take her performing group to Beijing within the next couple of years.
The playwright and social worker has received other international awards for her drama group whose plays address social issues such as domestic violence.
In 2011 she was selected as one of two ambassadors at the Chrysalis Awards in Sydney.
The next year she was awarded the New Zealand Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Young Entrepreneur of the Year.
The Waiwhetu resident, originally from Maraenui, in Napier, had also done a bit of travelling.
In July last year a group of 20 performers went to Sydney and a group of 10 went to Hawaii in April this year.
That was her second time in Hawaii, in 2011 at age 17, she went with community performing arts group, Taiohi Morehu.
Closer to home the 22-year-old was currently working on a show to be performed in December about youth suicide called ‘‘The Secret Life of a Wellington Teenager’’.
She formed InOvation Trust last year when she realised that the name 2Face DRAMA wasn’t broad enough.
‘‘We were already known for our performing arts, but somehow along the way the entrepreneurship aspect of the company had been lost and so, as an attempt to revive it, we formed InOvation Trust after receiving the Ministry of Youth Development’s Youth Enterprise Fund,’’ she said.
The trust teaches social enterprise and business development to Maori and Pacifica youth.