24 Year Old Takes Out New Zealand’s Top Prize For A New Play

 Playmarket is pleased to announce the winner of the ADAM NZ PLAY AWARD for 2025: Alex Medland for We’re Gonna Kill Billy. At just 24 years old, Alex is the youngest recipient of the award in its 18 year history.

The Adam NZ Play Award recognises and celebrates the best in unproduced writing for the theatre. Playmarket Director/Tumuaki Murray Lynch announced the winners at Circa Theatre on 12 April.

We’re Gonna Kill Billy is a playful, unnerving and brilliant commentary on climate activism and inaction.

“In a messy bedroom on Dominion Road, Anushka, Manuka, Bindi and Max await instructions from an online climate awareness group: The Shepherds. They’ve kidnapped the grandson of New Zealand’s richest man to protest a marina he’s building in the Hauraki Gulf. But The Shepherds aren’t responding. And Manuka’s Mum is supposed to come home soon. As the police arrive, they begin to wonder if the plan was doomed from the beginning.”

One of the judges celebrated the teenage characters at the centre of Medland’s play: ‘It’s so refreshing to see a a piece of theatre featuring characters of this age, written with generosity and understanding of their full humanity.’ Medland explores generational frustration, environmental destruction, privilege and moral ambiguity, in this ‘incredibly funny’ and ‘really wise observation on the state of the world’. Another judge went on to say, ‘the mix of high stakes and innocent teenaged optimism make for a really compelling concoction of vibes’.

Alex Medland (Kai Tahu) is an actor and playwright, currently based in Edinburgh. She trained at the John Bolton Theatre School in Melbourne, and has been a member of both Auckland Theatre Company’s Youth Company and Writer’s Table. She produces new work with her Edinburgh-based company Half Trick Theatre, which is dedicated to making irreverent reinventions of untouchable classics. She won Playmarket’s b4 25 competition in 2024 with Becoming Jeff Bezos, a gleeful skewering of late-stage capitalism.

We’re Gonna Kill Billy also won Best Play by a Māori Playwright and Best Play by a Woman Playwright.

Described by one of the judges as a ‘breath of fresh air’, Best Play by a Pasifika Playwright was won by playwright Tui Matelau (Tonga – Foui, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Pākehā) for her play Wet, a refreshingly heartfelt and cheeky comedy, refreshing in its honest depiction of female sexuality and ‘cliterature’. Another of the judges described the play as ‘bold’ and ‘emotionally complex’

Christchurch playwrights Andrew Todd and Cathasaigh Ó Fiannachta won the McNaughton South Island Play Award for The Consummate Professional. This award acknowledges a new play written by a South Island resident, in memory of Howard McNaughton, a leading theatre academic and pioneer of Cultural Studies teaching at Canterbury University. The Consummate Professional is a thought-provoking comedy about entertaining adults, the people who do it, and the impact it has on their sense of self. This ‘brilliant piece of writing’ about the meeting between an autistic stand-up comedian and a sex worker was acknowledged not only for its boldness but its careful and well-placed subtleties.

The Adam NZ Play Award, now in its eighteenth year, is the only one of its kind in Aotearoa for new playwriting. Playmarket’s only entrance requirements are that the playwright be a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident and that the play has not yet had a professional production. The award is generously funded by the Adam Foundation. Playmarket is also very grateful for the support of our major funders Foundation North and Creative New Zealand.

Since 2008 there have been 105 shortlisted and winning plays that have been produced in 122 different productions.

ADAM NZ PLAY AWARD WINNER 2025:
We’re Gonna Kill Billy by Alex Medland

Best Play by a Māori Playwright and Best Play by a Woman Playwright: 
We’re Gonna Kill Billy by Alex Medland

Best Play by a Pasifika Playwright:
Wet by Tui Matelau

McNaughton South Island Play Award: 
The Consummate Professional by Andrew Todd and Cathasaigh Ó Fiannachta

Other Finalists:
Boy Meets Man by Sam Brooks
Three Feet Under by Helen Vivienne Fletcher
#W&TCHLIST by David Geary
& Other Personal Essays by Nathan Joe 
Second Puberty by Beatrice Onions

Te Kooti Ariki Rangi Te Turuki by Maraea Rakuraku

Hoki Wairua Mai by Baylee Watene

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