He's arguably New Zealand's most successful and well-known playwright, and this October Roger Hall will be at Baycourt sharing stories about his lost plays.

On Saturday, October 14, Roger will be delivering his talk ‘The Ones That Got Away', which covers some of the plays he's written, but didn't make it to the stage.

'It's about the plays that didn't quite work. To get a play on stage you need all the planets to align, not just a perfect script.”

Earlier in the day, he'll also be running a ‘playwriting boot camp' for aspiring playwrights.

'It covers the basics of playwriting in a very intense way – I cram a whole day's course into a couple of hours.

'It talks about the difference between writing a novel and writing a play. A novel is much freer to switch from place to place and time to time, for instance, whereas playwrights really only have one weapon: dialogue.”

After years of hard work, Roger achieved success with his 1976 play ‘Glide Time', which portrayed public servants in a government office. It was later adapted into the 1980s televisions series ‘Gliding On'.

He says he started writing plays, rather than novels, because he found he 'couldn't write description very well”.

'When I'm reading novels, I find myself skipping the description anyway. I did try to write a novel, but found my pages were covered in dialogue.”

The success that followed ‘Glide Time' eventually allowed Roger to become a full-time playwright.

'After ‘Glide Time' I received the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, which was at that time the only university offering writing fellowships. It helped me make the transition between writing part-time to full-time.”

Roger has written more than 35 plays over his career, including his latest production ‘Last Legs' which will be presented by the Auckland Theatre Company at Baycourt from October 13-15.

For information on tickets to either Roger's talk, workshop, or ‘Last Legs' visit www.baycourt.co.nz