BROKEN HEARTED

Remembering Nancy Brunning

A POWERFUL VOICE FALLS QUIET

Trailblazing playwright and actor Nancy Brunning has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 48.

Nancy, who grew up in Taupo, became a household name in the early 1990s when she played no-nonsense nurse Jaki Manu in the original cast of homegrown soap Shortland Street.

She is credited with leaving a lasting legacy of Maori stories and characters, both in the theatre and in cinema.

Nancy won many awards during a career that spanned three decades, including the best actress award at the St Tropez Festival de Antipodes two years ago for her leading role in Mahana, and the best actress award at the 1999 New Zealand Film and Television Awards for What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

Within 24 hours of her death, she was awarded the Bruce Mason Award, New Zealand’s top playwriting honour.

In delivering the sad news, broadcaster Stacey Morrison paid tribute to the artist’s beautiful and rich contribution to her craft and community.

“Nancy’s passion was to bring unheard stories to the light, to remind our people that our voices are a powerful tool, and aroha is the most important thing of all. And while she was loved by the world, she was loved even more by us. She was the person that bound our whanau together.”

Celebrated novelist Witi Ihimaera described her as an “enormous, immense presence”.

“Above all else, I would call her an activist for Maori and New Zealand theatre.”

He said Nancy and fellow actor Tanea Heke “assembled a group of Maori women around them, just to make sure there was the strength of mana wahine in all of their theatre productions”.

Award-winning playwright Albert Belz posted a poignant message on social media:

”We lost totara today.”

One of Nancy’s final projects was Witi’s Wahine, a play in which she brought together some of Witi’s poignant female Maori characters.

She told Te Ao Maori News: “Wahine Maori are often dumbed down for the screen and many have their stories altered or diminished in order to bring the male characters into the spotlight. They are portrayed as leaders by default rather than by design.”

In a touching tribute, Witi is considering adding Nancy as a character in her own play.