Sam Brooks
Sam Brooks (1990 –) is a Native American and German playwright and journalist born in Auckland, where he currently resides. He graduated from Unitec Institute of Technology in 2011 with a Bachelors in Performing and Screen Arts and achieved a postgraduate degree in Communications and Media Studies at Auckland University of Technology in 2015.
Brooks has spent many years as a critic, writing for various media outlets, including The Spinoff, where he wrote for seven years across many beats. These mainly focused on arts and culture, but he also dabbled in stories about politics, gaming, and sport. His most popular pieces range from a ranking of the original 150 Pokémon, trying to spend 24 hours in a Dennys, and an 8000-word rundown of the chronology of Kingdom Hearts. He has also written profiles of luminaries such as Roger Hall, Rawiri Paratene, Anapela Polatai'vao, Louise Potiki Bryant, and Rodney Bell.
Besides playwriting, Brooks freelances as a writer, primarily through his newsletter, Dramatic Pause. In addition to freelancing, he has been the playwriting tutor at the National Youth Drama School since 2024.
Brooks is best known for his prolific and award-winning career as a playwright. He has written over 50 plays, more than 20 of which have been produced. The Ockham Collective have credited his work as making a significant contribution to representing queer male voices on New Zealand Stages.
In 2014, Brooks was nominated for the Chapman Tripp Award (succeeded by the Wellington Theatre Awards) for Outstanding New Playwright, and in 2022 won the Wellington Theatre Community Voice of Reason Community Award. In 2016, he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting award, New Zealand’s most prestigious award for playwriting. Brooks currently holds the record for most plays shortlisted for the ADAM award, numbering 17, and his work has twice won Playmarket’s B4 25 Award (2012 and 2013).
Brooks’ work has been performed across New Zealand, winning multiple awards. His play, Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys (2014, 2016) was Highly Commended in the 2014 Adam NZ Play Awards and was included in Playmarket’s 2015 anthology Here/Now. In addition, it toured nationally in 2016 and enjoyed a revival in 2019.
Another notable play, Burn Her (2018), was Highly Commended in the 2017 Adam NZ Play Awards and won the Aukland Theatre Excellence Award for Outstanding Production in 2018. His more recent production, Lads on the Island (2024) premiered at Cira Theatre in Wellington. This is My Story of Us (as yet unproduced) won the 2024 ADAM New Zealand Play Award.
In a review for Theatrereview, Lexie Matheson ONZM wrote: “I’ve seen most of [his plays], reviewed a few, consider Brooks to be among the best playwrights in the land … I like all of his writing but it’s his plays that really hit my sweet spot. They’re constructed beautifully for both performance and presentation, incredibly easy to speak and listen to, his characters are crafted with nuance and subtlety, and his plots are credible and rich in surprises.”
Brooks has two new plays set to premiere in 2027. The first is a black comedy about real estate in Auckland, commissioned by Silo Theatres for their 2027 season. The second is a verbatim play about queer men in Aotearoa over the age of 60, produced alongside Arts Laureate Shane Bosher.
