John Broughton

John Renata Broughton (born 1947) is a New Zealand academic and playwright. Since 2012 he has been a full professor at the University of Otago.

Early life and family Broughton was born in Hastings in 1947, the son of Leonard Broughton, from Ngāti Kahungunu who graduated from the University of Otago in medicine in 1944, and Margaret Evans, who was the granddaughter of Tame Parata. He attended Hastings Boys' High School. In 2012, he was appointed as a full professor at Otago, jointly in preventive and social medicine and Māori health, within the Department of Oral Diagnostic and Surgical Sciences. He is the associate dean (Māori) of the School of Dentistry at Otago. and is a justice of the peace.

Playwright career While studying in 1988 at the University of Otago, Broughton joined a playwright course run by Roger Hall. Subsequently, Broughton wrote several plays. His best-known play, Michael James Manaia (1991), was a one-person play about a New Zealand Vietnam veteran, first performed by actor Jim Moriarty and included an international presentation at the Edinburgh Festival. Significant in part because of its central Māori character, the work paved the way for other Māori playwrights. Twenty years after first being performed, it toured New Zealand and Australia in 2012 – performed by Te Kohe Tuhaka, produced by Taki Rua Productions – to critical acclaim.

Broughton received the New Zealand Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 1990. Marae, 1992 Michael James Manaia, Downstage Theatre. Frankie and Hone Mana is My Name, Musical about unemployment, disability, adoption and drink driving centred around a freezing works closure in New Zealand. The Private War of Corporal Cooper