Thinkers Timeline

Nora Vagi Brash OBE CMG was a Papua New Guinean playwright, poet, actress, and director, widely regarded as the country's foremost dramatist. She was the first major woman playwright in Papua New Guinean literature and one of the founders of modern PNG theatre. She wrote in a distinctive style that mixed Papua New Guinea's three national languages, Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin, and English, often within a single play, reflecting how Papua New Guineans actually speak in daily life. She was born in Dagoda village, Central Province, Papua New Guinea, into a Motuan family. The exact year of her birth is given variously as 1944 or in the late 1940s. She was educated locally and went on to teach at Kila Kila primary school, where she wrote her first performed play. She later returned to formal education and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of Papua New Guinea in 1982. She had begun writing and performing in PNG's theatre scene in the early 1970s. She became a lecturer in puppetry, dance, and drama at the Creative Arts School in Port Moresby. She went on to become Artistic Director of the National Arts School and one of two artistic directors of the Papua New Guinea National Theatre Company. The Theatre Company toured villages across PNG to perform and raise social awareness, and toured internationally including to New Zealand, Nigeria, and England. Her most famous play, Which Way, Big Man? (1976), is widely studied across the Pacific. She wrote her first performed play, The High Cost of Living Differently, in 1975. Other major works include Black Market Buai, Sold Outright, Taurama (for which she received the PNG Independence Medal in 1985), Pick the Bone Dry, and City Spirits. She also wrote substantial poetry. She served as deputy chairperson of the PNG National Cultural Council and on the board of the Institute of PNG Studies. Oxford University Press published her collection Which Way Big Man? and Five Other Plays. She was awarded both an OBE and CMG. She died in April 2024, mourned across the Pacific theatre community.