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  • Writer's pictureTE RĀKAU

Remembrance of things past

Updated: Dec 3, 2022

Tom Cardy for The Dominion Post | 20 January 2015


Wellington's history is brought to life in the first of a projected quartet of plays, starting in 1840.

 

A man with a beard gestures with his hands while speaking, a woman with dark hair watches him in the background
Making history: Helen Pearse-Otene, left, and Jim Moriarty – the creative partnership behind The Ragged.

Wellington playwright Helen Pearse-Otene has always been intrigued by history and the past.


But a pivotal moment came when she was 16 and snuck into a pub.


"An Irish backpacker asked 'what do you know about the Treaty of Waitangi?'


"I said 'I don't know. That was all in the past. We are all just sort of getting along.'


"He actually sat me down over a couple of pints and told me about the Treaty of Waitangi. He had learned [about] it in Ireland.


"I went away from that experience with a hangover, but also a very profound longing to know why I didn't know my own history."


Read more on the Dominion Post archive website.


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