Youngest ever winner of the Adam NZ Play Award Announced

The Adam NZ Play Award, which celebrates new plays, has gone to 24-year-old playwright Alex Medland for work that examines climate change activism gone wrong.

The playful writing in We’re Gonna Kill Billy tells the story of four teenage girls who turn from climate activists to vigilantes when they kidnap the 13-year-old grandson of New Zealand’s richest man to protest his planned marina in the Hauraki Gulf. However, nothing goes to plan.

It touches on the generational divide that is often felt by young people who are acutely aware that they are inheriting a climate problem with little solution in sight.

Medland is the youngest awardee in the Adam NZ Play Award's 18-year history.

“Why I wrote this play is basically because I was a teenage girl. When I was a teenage girl, I cared so much about so many things and so did all my pals. I think that teenage girls have this fangirling, puppy-saving, heroic grit that they aren't often given credit for,” Medland told RNZ's Culture 101 shortly after she was notified of her win.

The play looks at teenagers who grew up in an age when climate activism has been driven by a younger generation. This includes Greta Thunberg who in 2018 started a global revolution amongst teenagers - and adults - when she was 15 years old.

“[The play’s characters] feel the weight of these environmental repercussions every day all the time and what happens when they take that into the personal.”

Medland (Kai Tahu) says We’re Gonna Kill Billy doesn’t condone vigilantes, but she was interested in “exploring a world in which [climate activism or damage] is taken to the extreme from both parties.”

“The [teenage girls] do some pretty heinous things.”

“They are responding to a world in which their care for the world is not acknowledged and they aren’t given the agency to fight for the world in any other way.”

The inspiration for the play came partly from the 2021 protests against Auckland’s Kennedy Point Marina in Pūtiki Bay, Waiheke Island. Medland attended those protests where the group occupied the site of the yet-to-be-built marina for 120 days.

Protesters claim the marina, which has since been built, would endanger a nearby kororā (little blue penguin) colony. At times, there were violent clashes between the construction site’s security guards and some protests.

Medland also researched eco-terrorism groups and pulled material from the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, whose wealthy, but tight-fisted grandfather J. Paul Getty refused to pay the NZ$30 million ransom.

“What I was interested in critiquing in We're Gonna Kill Billie is people having the drive to fight for the climate is often not conducive with being a law-abiding citizen...”

What jumped out to one judge on the award’s panel was teenage characters “written with generosity and understanding of their full humanity,” according to a media release announcing Medland’s award on Sunday morning.

“The mix of high stakes and innocent teenaged optimism makes for a really compelling concoction of vibes,” was the remark of another judge.

The play is yet to be produced and there are no concrete plans to see it on stage - yet. When it does get to the stage, Medland hopes teenagers will be cast as the main characters. She also wants the story to resonate with those who feel hopeless about a situation where there is rarely good news.

“I think it is really easy reading about the climate news and feeling like the whole weight of the world is on your shoulders, especially as a young person.”

“It feels like it has been handed down through generations and the problem keeps getting bigger.”