Each week we present an exclusive insight into the artists and works presented in 2009. This week, Natasha Hay talks to Dave Armstrong, the playwright behind the Anderson Lloyd Season of Le Sud. Playwright Dave Armstrong has twice won Best New New Zealand Play (Niu Sila, The Tutor) and Best Comedy Script at the 2003 AFTA TV Awards (Spin Doctors). His musical play King and Country has played to over 10 festivals throughout New Zealand. Co-creator of the TV comedy Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, Dave's other TV credits include Skitz, The Semisis, Spin Doctors, Bro'town (script editor) and Staunch (script consultant). Dave is also author of True Colours, a satirical account of the 1996 election.

Le Sud was commissioned for Wanaka's Festival of Colour. Your new play is set in an alternate reality that assumes the French colonised the South Island in 1839 and are at odds with their "North Zealand" island neighbours. How did it go in Wanaka?
The play received an outstanding response. All shows were booked out before the season opened. The locals loved the idea, laughed like drains, and really got into the spirit of the occasion by dressing French for the night! Given the Wanaka performance was the world premiere, I will make some relatively minor changes. And because it's a political satire of sorts, I'm always on the lookout for topical jokes to add in at the last moment.

What about Christchurch audiences, what will they like it about it?
They’ll be able to sit back and laugh at themselves and others in a good-natured way for 90 minutes. This show is an unashamed crowd-pleaser. The characters are loveable and great fun: three passionate French speakers (one of whom is also Maori) and three passionate English speakers (one of whom is also Maori). They tend to be driven by parts of their anatomy a long way away from their heads, and we all know that never happens in real politics! People from Christchurch will recognise the satire and enjoy thinking just what would have happened had the French colonised the South (which was far closer to happening than most people think). I think they’ll enjoy the message for inter-island, inter-racial and inter-linguistic tolerance that lies at the heart of Le Sud.

It’s an ingenious premise - a French South Island!! So how long has this idea been brewing in your head?
It’s been brewing since about 40 years ago when as a very young child I listened to broadcast to schools and learned all about the French at Akaroa. We’ve all had teachers who said how New Zealand or the South Island could have been French had a British warship reached Akaroa a few days later. I just took the idea to a logical (or, in the case of the French, illogical) conclusion.

You’re a Wellington playwright, so should Christchurch expect a lot of anti-South Island jabs?
Oui! Oui! Oui! Ae! Ae! Ae! Yes! Yes! Yes! But there are far more anti-North Island jabs, as well as heaps of anti-Wellington jabs. In fact, the South Island comes out pretty well overall. I’m far more worried about the show’s reception from the politicians and bureaucrats (and friends) in my home town of Wellington than Christchurch.

Reviews from Wanaka said that although your satire played to South Islanders' parochial nature, the overarching message was a plea for tolerance? Would you agree with this?
Absolutely. I’m an equal-opportunity satirist. My style of theatre is to mercilessly poke the borax at as many different social, linguistic, cultural and sexual groups as possible. That’s my job. But, in the end, I’m of the opinion that New Zealanders need to celebrate their different heritages, world views and cultural groups, not try and meld and morph them into one boring “mainstream” view.

In your plays often your “bad guys”(such as John Sellers in The Tutor) turn into “good guys” and good guys turn bad or at least become more flawed. Who are the heroes and villains in Le Sud?
Oh la la! Le Sud, c’est l’exception! At the beginning of the play everyone is a bad guy in a sense in that they can’t agree on a power price and are motivated by money and their sexual organs. I think it is fair to say all of the characters reveal their good side by the end of the show, though not before revealing much arrogance and rudeness along the way (that goes for English speakers as well as the French!)

Do you think the French would have been any better, or worse, as colonisers?
I think they would have been different in style. The coffee and wine would have been better earlier, and the Canterbury rugby team would have been far better-looking with lots of French “pretty boys” (as Fergie McCormick used to call them) but would lose all the time. I guess one of the more serious points of Le Sud is to show that colonialism is the same anywhere, no matter who is in charge. My research for Le Sud revealed that the French at Banks Peninsula were every bit as duplicitous and insincere in the way they dealt with the Maori as the English, even worse in some ways.

You have always been a writer who's poked fun at political correctness. Is it a good climate for satire now?
Now is a great time for satire, It got a bit boring after the last election as John Key hadn’t woken up from sleepwalking to victory, but now God has given us a recession, Christine Rankin telling us what a functional family is; Melissa Lee pulling down houses to fight South Auckland crime and Rodney Hide running Auckland with a board of consumers and taxpayers. I predict satirists and mortgagee sale brokers to be two of the biggest growth professions in the next 12 months.

You studied musical composition, then turned to writing, and have been writing plays and TV scripts for more than 25 years and also collaborated with Polynesian writers (such as Oscar Kightley in Niu Sila and Sia Figel in Once Where We Belonged), written short stories and a couple of comic novels, what work are you most proud of?
I don’t spend much time looking back. I’m tremendously honoured that Oscar and Sia have let me share in telling their stories on stage and I was delighted that The Tutor did so well at the Court’s Forge this year, but it’s the variety of what I do that keeps me bubbling along. Le Sud was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in the theatre cos it’s so much fun (and a bit naughty). I keep promising to get arty and serious one day, but there’s no hurry.

The director of Le Sud is Conrad Newport, who has worked on your plays before.
Yes, it’s wonderful to be working again with Con and renewing our Niu Sila and King and Country collaboration.

Would you say there is a typical audience for a Dave Armstrong play?
There is starting to be one, I think: they like intelligent political theatre with a bit of guts, but also lots of humour. They can laugh at both left and right and accept that New Zealand society is rapidly changing so they like to be challenged but not lectured at, and they adore booking early and paying full price!

What inspires you at the moment?
Deadlines. Sad but true. The good news is that I’m lucky to have some commissions for work coming up; the bad news is that they need more work before are performed. I’m also inspired by New Zealand’s rich history and the way more and more people in New Zealand are celebrating our cultural differences.

Anderson Lloyd presents Le Sud
The James Hay Theatre, 28 - 31 July, at 7.30pm