# Violet Targuse

Violet Targuse (née Healey, 1884 – 1937) was an early female playwright in New Zealand. She has been described as "probably New Zealand's most successful and least acclaimed one-act playwright", and "the most successful writer in the early years" of the New Zealand branch of the British Drama League. Active during the 1930s when her plays were widely performed by Women's Institute drama groups, they focused on women, especially the experiences and concerns of rural women in New Zealand. Set in locations such as a freezing works, a sheep station, a shack on a railway siding, and a coastal lighthouse, her plays were seen as essentially New Zealand in setting, character, and expression. (Exceptions to this are Prelude, which revolves around the life of Anne Boleyn, and Auld Lang Syne, which is set in Scotland and based on the novel Nancy Stair by Elinor Macartney Lane).
Targuse wrote at least 18 plays, 16 of which were one act, and 2 of which were three acts. At least 12 of these were performed in New Zealand, meanwhile some of her plays have been performed in Australia, England, Portugal, Spain, and Wales. Among her plays that were performed, 8 of them are now described as "lost," as surviving copies of the text cannot be currently located.
During the second half of the 20th century, Targuse's plays slowly disappeared from repertoires, until her work received renewed attention–initially by feminist scholars–starting since the 1990s. In 2000, both Fear and Rabbits were revived and performed at the Circa Theatre in Wellington. A version of Rabbits was translated and performed as part of a multimedia production in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, and Lisbon, Portugal, in 2009.

## Personal life

Violet Healey was born in Timaru in 1884. She played first violin in the Timaru orchestra. She worked first as a nursemaid, then at the department store Ballantynes in Timaru, where she met her future husband Alfred George Targuse (1878–1944). When Alfred was transferred to Christchurch, she accompanied him and found work as a seamstress.
Alfred and Violet had two daughters, Nancy May (1910–1980) and Marjorie Joan (1912–2008). Targuse died in Christchurch in 1937.

## Drama career

Targuse authored her plays between 1930 and her death from cancer in 1937. She wrote her first play, Rabbits (1930), for a competition run by the South Canterbury Drama League, and won first prize. In 1932, her plays Fear and Touchstone won first-place-equal in the first playwriting competition held by the New Zealand branch of the British Drama League. She was also the inaugural winner of the Radio Record trophy, and a prize from the Chelsea Drama Club of Sydney.
British actress Dame Sybil Thorndike praised Fear and Touchstone as "highly dramatic, novel situations, and full of a life that must be expressed."

## Plays

* Rabbits (1930)
* Sentiment (1931; unpublished; currently considered lost)
* Fear (1932)
* The Touchstone (1932)
* The Tramp Scamp (1932; unpublished during Targuse's lifetime, published 2025)
* Volte Face (1933; performed but unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Wild Oats (1933; performed but unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Responding to Treatment (1933; performed but unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Ebb and Flow (1934)
* The Fugitive, performed in New Zealand as Beyond the Walls (1934)
* Men for Pieces (1934)
* Auld Lang Syne (1934; unpublished during Targuse's lifetime, published 2025)
* Passing Discord (1934; unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Mopsey (1935)
* The Hikers (1935; performed but unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Scene Macarbe (1935; unpublished, currently considered lost)
* The Reaper (1936; unpublished, currently considered lost)
* Prelude (1936)