Select Page

UNESCO Playwright-in-Residence – 2024

 

Emily Duncan


EMILY DUNCAN

 

 

Melbourne Writers’ Theatre is excited to announce EMILY DUNCAN as its 2024 International Playwright-in-Residence. An award-winning New Zealand playwright, Emily will be in residence with MWT for the month of November, during which period she will deliver a series of online workshops while working on a new play. Welcome, Emily!

To read Emily’s profile, click here.

 

Q&A with EMILY DUNCAN

Tell us about your journey to become a playwright. Was there a time or event that shaped this experience? 

Before I knew what playwriting was or that it was something I could do, I was captured by the architectonics of theatre. Of course, I didn’t know what this was when I was a kid accompanying my parents to the theatre, but I was fascinated that adults – whose lives seemed often confusing and messy – would gather by their own volition in a space and be engrossed in a conjured world with its own order and moral framework. Everyone seemed wholly invested in this enterprise, and I was transfixed.

 

As the acclaimed Lebanese writer Elias Khoury once said, “Writing is always a mixture of torture and delight.” Can you briefly describe your own writing process or habits? Are there any strategies that you find motivating or productive? 

When I get stuck, I read. Reading is crucial to the work. This can be reading plays, reading books about writing, it could be “reading” films and documentaries relevant to the subject of the work.

 

When do you seek feedback during the writing process? Is there a stage when it is too early for feedback or too late? 

Not before the third draft. First draft is dabbling with an idea. Second is shaping into a script. The third is (ideally) ready to have a conversation with others and receive feedback.

 

Your writing is highly acclaimed and you are a multi-award winner. Have you ever had to deal with rejection of your work, and what advice would you give other writers about handling rejection?

Rejection is par for the course and the sting doesn’t lessen. However, it can help to remember that we don’t know everything that needed to be taken into consideration by the judges or what other works and writers were in the selection mix. Rejection isn’t because you or your work are inherently bad.

 

What do you want audiences to take away from your plays? Is there a particular philosophy or subject matter that you are interested in?

Theatre exercises our sense of empathy and curiosity. It’s one of the few communal spaces where we can set aside kneejerk judgments and pronouncements, and instead take time to journey into others’ contexts and circumstances that are different from our own. While I don’t believe it’s a play’s duty to provide answers, it can invite us closer towards an understanding that would otherwise be lost in the noise of an increasingly reactive and stance-wielding world.

 

What risks have you taken in your playwriting life to date? How do you continue to challenge yourself?

The play I’m sharing as part of my residency is my latest risk. It’s an unconventional adaptation and it will be the first time I’ve heard it outside my own head. Thank you, Melbourne Writers Theatre for enabling this risk.

 

Who are the playwrights and artists who have most influenced your work?

A mere smattering of influences includes: Paula Vogel’s How I learned to Drive, David Harrower’s Blackbird, Susan Sontag, Chekhov, Jacki Weaver’s performance in Animal Kingdom, Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Maurice Sendak, Mother Courage’s silent scream, Cindy Sherman, NZ painter Rita Angus.

 

We know that you have a great interest in neurodivergence and playwriting, the subject of your PhD. Could you tell us more about this?

The neurodivergence came later, but for my PhD I was looking at dramaturgical approaches to writing about sites and their histories, namely what sociologist Erving Goffman termed Total Institutions. From that I proposed a model whereby Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia could be employed for writing about said institutions (a TB sanatorium and borstal in my thesis).

 

And the final question … where do your ideas for your plays generally come from?

They usually come from questions. It might be a question from reading a short news article or wanting to understand what has led to someone’s action. A query glints at me like a piece of thread. Then I pick up that thread and see where it takes me and what I can weave with it.

 

ELOISE IN THE MIDDLE Dancing Image

ELOISE IN THE MIDDLE

by Emily Duncan

To read about this monologue, click here.

Photographer: Lara Macgregor

 

 

THE RESIDENCY

While in residency with MWT, Emily will present three online sessions:

Session 1 – Monday 11th November @ 7pm
Writing Strategies for Neurodivergent Playwrights & their Dramaturgs
In this workshop Emily will share findings and strategies from her Between the Lines research, which she undertook to address a gap in support for neurodivergent playwrights and the script-development process. A key objective with Between the Lines was to document a range of targeted strategies and examples to remove barriers faced by these writers. This workshop will also be valuable for the dramaturgs and artists who work with neurodivergent playwrights. *To register for this session, please email melbournewriterstheatre@gmail.com by Wednesday 6th November.

Session 2 – Monday 18th November @ 7pm
Writing for Young People
Emily has extensive experience in writing for both adults and young people. In 2018 she was the inaugural artist in residence at St Hilda’s Collegiate, for which she wrote In Our Shoes (Shortlisted for the Adam NZ New Play Award 2018). Her other works for young people include ‘Ratted’ (2024), Le Sujet Parle (Robert Lord Outstanding Script Award, Dunedin Theatre Awards, 2019; Shortlisted for the Adam NZ New Play Award 2019; Highly Commended in the Playmarket’s Plays for the Young Competition, 2014), and Eloise in the Middle (Robert Lord Outstanding Script Award, Dunedin Theatre Awards, 2018; Winner Playmarket’s Plays for the Young, 2013). *To register for this session, please email melbournewriterstheatre@gmail.com by Wednesday 13th November.

Session 3 – Monday 25th November @ 7pm
‘Ratted’ – Script Reading
A first reading with actors of Emily’s new play ‘Ratted’.  A re-imagined adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, ‘Ratted’ is a work for young people set in a fictional mining town, and exploring themes of corporate greed and climate change. Emily writes: “I’m very much looking forward to hearing this script, which has only lived inside my head until now. The reading will be the first time it has been read by actors and shared with an audience.” *To register for this session, please email melbournewriterstheatre@gmail.com by Wednesday 20th November.

 

 

DARK DUNEDIN – a podcast series by Emily Duncan

To listen for free on Spotify and all major podcast platforms, click here.

To listen to Emily’s Play: Notes podcast on Apple, click here.