Sizing and Serving Up ‘Establishment’, a talk by Dr Emily Duncan

For a small city with a short immigrant settler history, Dunedin was home to an impressive range of dining establishments during the 20th century. Each restaurant, tea rooms, café, or takeaway represented the intersection of a particular dream or ambition, cultural identity, and economic circumstances within the city.
FOHC Award recipient Dr Emily Duncan talks about how she selected and shaped the stories that make up ‘Establishment’, as well as why some didn’t make the cut. Given the scope of the project and available items in the Hocken Collections, it was both a rewarding and challenging task.
Emily Duncan is an Dunedin raised and based writer, dramaturg, and director. She won the 2020 Bruce Mason Award, the 2021 Adam NZ Play Award, Best Play by a Woman Playwright, and the McNaughton South Island Play Award for ‘& Sons’, and the 2022 McNaughton South Island Play Award for her adaptation of Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Woman at the Store’. She was the 2019 University of Otago’s Robert Burns Fellow, and received both the FOHC Award and the Arts For All Fellowship in 2023. Emily holds a PhD from Otago, trained at the Strasberg Institute in New York City, and is co-founder of Prospect Park Productions (with producer H-J Kilkelly), home of Ōtepoti Theatre Lab and Ōtepoti Writers Lab.
This public talk was held on Wednesday 15 May 2024, at the Hocken Library, Ōtepoti Dunedin.
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To find out more about the Friends of the Hocken Collections, go to: hockenfriends.org.nz/