 Imagine that I'm a New Zealand play. What would I be about? Perhaps I have something to say about life here in Aotearoa. I'm looking for audiences to connect to. Each night I'm recreated live to win over the hearts and minds of a new group of people watching me in the theatre. Now the audience for New Zealand plays here are small and my form is not very economic. If I'm to have an ongoing life there is significant appeal in capturing a much larger audience in overseas destinations. I want to know how plays like me have represented New Zealand to the world and how the world has received us in turn. There weren't many plays before the 1960s. New Zealand theatre was ready to be invented. Playwrights sent their plays overseas and from the 1970s more companies began touring productions. Overseas offers opportunity, escape, validation. Plays in this period attempted to show what makes New Zealand culturally unique and they looked for legitimacy that was mostly Pakiha identity via overseas approval. But how do you know that I'm a New Zealand play? Is the Rocky Horror Show a New Zealand work because there's a statue of the author in Hamilton? What about New Zealand's most prolific playwright Roger Hall who actually grew up in England or how about a company performing Shakespeare in London's Globe in Torreo? Yes, yes, yes. Because national and cultural identity itself is a performance, it's the assumptions that become naturalised by the very act of repetition. This is the feedback loop, the self-referential markers of identity that the ideal local knowing audience is meant to recognise as their own. It includes and it excludes and it resonates differently when placed outside of this country. Now, if I want to gain international commercial success, go to the Edinburgh Fringe and then get picked up by producers, what's my best strategy? Is my cultural difference or should I adapt myself for their culture? Many of us have gone for adaptation. Markers of New Zealand identity are exchanged with markers intended to stimulate recognition for the new audience. So Wellington becomes London and New Zealand is written out of the work. Generation of Z, an immersive zombie show, zombies that played in London last year, rejected New Zealand locality in an attempt to enter an international paradise where an endless horde of zombie fans awaits. Now, that's one way to make theatre for a globalised world. Another is to emphasise the local specificity, embrace New Zealand identities, and that's work two. Now, imagine that I'm a theatre scholar. Difficult I know. I have found that audiences find ways to relate anyway and actively search for markers of cultural equivalence. Through research and reviews, I have investigated what does and does not resonate, what remains outside of the feedback loop. Some markers travel, some remain here. My thesis tells the story of New Zealand theatre's overseas experience for the very first time. Thank you.