Study In The Elusiveness Of Home

Best known for her many novels, including The Room of Lost Things, New Zealand-raised writer Stella Duffy has most recently been spending her time scribbling lists on the walls of London’s Ovalhouse Theatre devising a new play, Taniwha Thames, as part of the theatre’s season of work by female artists. Together with New Zealand theatre company Shaky Isles, Duffy is using the highly collaborative open space format to devise the play. Since its first showing at Camden Fringe, Taniwha Thames, a play which looks at where we belong and the elusiveness of the places we call home. The death of her parents and the decades she’s spent in London have caused Duffy to reassess this issue personally: “It’s the physicality of the land that I miss,” she says of New Zealand, and “the emotive quality of home”. Taniwha Thames runs at Ovalhouse from 15 November until 3 December. Duffy was born in London in 1963.