When playwright and novelist Renée started working in professional theatre, it was 1979 and she was in her fifties, a “mature student” doing a BA at the University of Auckland and paying her way through it by cleaning at Theatre Corporate.
Six years later, she returned to Theatre Corporate as a Playwright in Residence. By then, she had written her first play, Setting the Table (1981), while her best-known work, Wednesday to Come, had been performed for the first time at Downstage in Wellington in 1984. In all, Renée wrote 10 books of fiction and a memoir, more than 20 plays, numerous short stories and essays and, for a decade, a weekly blog. The output cemented her reputation as one of our most notable writers and writing teachers, with friends and fans around New Zealand and the world.
Today, the literary community, friends and family are marking her passing, peacefully in Wellington, at the age of 94.
Her publisher, Mary McCallum, agent and Playmarket director Murray Lynch, and her eldest son and literary executor Christopher Taylor announced her death, saying that until recently, she had “continued to be an active force in the literary world, writing and publishing work; teaching and mentoring other writers; and presenting at literary events in New Zealand, and overseas via videocall”.
Born Renée Gertrude Taylor in Napier in 1929, but long known only by her first name, Renée was of Ngāti Kahungunu and Irish, English and Scottish ancestry. She described herself as a “lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals”.
She became interested in drama at school. “I was in two or three plays, and I loved it. I loved being someone else, even if it was only for a short time.” She left school at the age of 12 to help support her widowed mother – Renée’s father had committed suicide eight years earlier – working first in the local woollen mills, then later in a printing factory.
Renée started acting in the Napier Repertory Theatre, and eventually directed plays locally. She began writing when her three children were young but took up writing seriously at age 50. She moved to Auckland and started her BA.
Her best-loved played, Wednesday to Come, about the women in a working-class family during the Depression, was famously set around a coffin and including scones being baked on stage. In a 1982 interview with New Zealand feminist magazine Broadsheet, Renée said she “wanted to write a play that showed women as intelligent, humorous, and strong. I wanted to write a play with very good parts for women – that also put forward some political themes.”
A longtime fan of thrillers, she published her first crime novel, The Wild Card, with the Cuba Press when she turned 90, and the sequel, Blood Matters, three years later. Both books were shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Awards’ Best Crime Novel.
Renée was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006, for services to literature and drama. She was awarded the Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka in 2013, for a lifetime contribution to ngā toi Māori, and the Playmarket Award in 2017, for significant artistic contribution to theatre. In 2018, she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. A lifetime reader, she described losing her eyesight to macular degeneration in her 80s as a tragedy, as it stopped her doing what she loved most.
Renée lived in Ōtaki until a couple of months ago, moving to a Wellington retirement home. She is survived by two of her three sons, Christopher and Timothy, and her mokopuna.
In 2017, aged 88 and on the release of her memoir These Two Hands, Renée was interviewed by Kim Hill. You can listen to that interview here.
Two years ago, she spoke of the life-changing power of reading and literature in the annual Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Pānui (formerly the Book Council Lecture), where a leading writer discusses an aspect of literature important to them. She titled her address If you don’t get your head out of a book, my girl, you’ll end up on Queer Street. You can watch it here.
