North Dunedin The history of coastal Otago relates to the tradition of the waka Arai Te Uru and provides the basis of tribal identity, recalled in place names and tribal histories. Muaūpoko (Otago Peninsula) provided shelter for settlements, and Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu, who all visited and lived in the vicinity. At one time up to 12 kāinga existed in the lower Otago harbour. Local resources were important to iwi, and with the Pākehā settlement in the late 1840s there was a significant loss of access to land-based food sources. When Dunedin was established in 1848, the traditional use of the harbour changed forever. A Worker’s Cottage From the 1860s North Dunedin developed into a densely populated suburb spotted with tiny worker’s houses. The scale is in contrast to the generous residences overlooking the tight streets. In 1862, the land along the single lane Titan Street was subdivided into 52 allotments. John Roberts owned the section on which the cottage stands, part of his two section holding running from Titan Street through to Dundas Street. The neighbouring sections were owned by Mary Heads, Elizabeth Girvan and Richard Tilbury. Roberts sold section 10 to Elizabeth Girvan in 1897 and his remaining land to Thomas and Edward Hitchcock in 1903. In 1907 Edward transferred his share to Thomas who sold the property to Tilbury. The house was built for ‘Express proprietor’ Tilbury in 1909, probably by A. Mitchell, and was most likely rented out. In the twentieth century the house has remained a modest residence: cook Edwin Girvan bought the house in 1920, fireman Thomas Souness bought the house in 1924, and civil servant William Fogarty owned the house from 1949. Through the 1970s, it was owned by a series of Chinese families – including fruiterer Peter Ming Wong and wife Mary, fruiterer George Wong and Hing Man, a Dunedin Woollen worker. In the 1980s, the house changed hands several times before Robert Lord bought it in 1988. Playwright Robert Lord and New Zealand Theatre Robert Lord was born in Rotorua, studied for an Arts Degree at Victoria University and in 1969 was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Young Writers Award. His first full length play It Isn't Cricket premiered at Downstage Theatre in 1971. From 1970-74, he was on ACT magazine’s editorial board and he cofounded the pioneering and successful writers’ agency Playmarket. Lord was a larger than life, energetic and engaging man – irreverent and subversive - he christened Downstage’s show-stopping centre of attention theatre cat ‘Fucky’, who specialised in walk on roles, and provided another item to pre-show list of things to do for the stage manager: lock Fucky in the box office. His plays are even more irreverent. Scholar Susan Williams writes that drama was ‘the slowest of the arts to develop an authentic New Zealand “voice.”’ Considering the work of five playwrights (Bruce Mason, James K. Baxter, Mervyn Thompson, Renee and Robert Lord) she describes their significance in enlivening New Zealand culture while at the same time extending the margin the voices of women, Māori and gay people. She writes that in ‘less than forty years, they have helped facilitate the transition of New Zealand theatre from amateur to professional status and have been instrumental in providing the practical framework whereby future New Zealand playwrights may find an outlet in their work.’ Before the 1950s New Zealand theatre ‘mimicked the theatre of the perceived ‘centre’’, often feeling it necessary to set their plays in the British Isles in order to ‘make them acceptable to theatre-going audiences.’ Exploring the ‘margin’ enabled New Zealand dramatists to discover a ‘representative national ‘voice’ and so ‘develop a new individual’ dramatic tradition. The importance of drama as a form of literature in New Zealand is under-represented. In the introduction to their interviews with contemporary playwrights, Michelanne Forster and Vivienne Plumb write that a recent anthology of New Zealand literature includes just 20 pages out of 1,048 on dramatic writing, but is outdone by The Penguin History of New Zealand Literature, which fails to mention dramatic writing. They consider that playwrights ‘have a vital voice in defining who we are as a people and as a nation.’ Academic Hilary Halba writes that Lord’s work was miniaturist, quoting Lord’s friend, American director Jack Hofsiss who describes Lord’s particular brilliance as his ability to ‘honour the little and understand it as a gateway to the larger’ –studying large scale social issues by investigating small-scale social situations. Halba writes that these ‘microcosmic “small” universes were made “big” through the vitality of Lord’s language, which features repetitions, lurid and baroque descriptions, complex minutiae of plot points, language patterning, and an exuberant specificity in adjectives and adverbs.’ John Thomson’s history of New Zealand drama records that Lord was one of New Zealand’s successful playwrights. He was, Thomson says, the least ‘obviously concerned with “society”’, and exploited the new interest in New Zealand. He wrote during the ‘Professional Years’ (1970-1980) where professional theatre was being established, and where theatres were interested in performing New Zealand plays. Playmarket In the 40 years since Playmarket was founded, ‘the art of New Zealand playwriting has changed beyond recognition. Once it was a rarity for a locally written play to be performed by a professional theatre company, now it is the norm.’ Co-founder Nonnita Rees writes that the ‘premise for establishing Playmarket was to do what needed to be done to get New Zealand plays into theatres where they could be experienced by New Zealand audiences.’ Robert Lord worked at Wellington’s Downstage Theatre in the early 1970s (as part-time publicity officer for Downstage and ‘defacto playwright-in-residence’). Lord, whose play It Isn’t Cricket (1971) was selected at one of the first Australian National Playwrights’ Conferences, came back inspired to get New Zealand writing into theatres. He gathered together Judy Russell, Nonnita Rees and Ian Fraser – and came up with the idea of a writer’s agency called Playmarket. Playmarket worked first to encourage script writers, assess new scripts, and later to represent writers’ interests and to workshop new scripts. Playmarket established the play workshopping process in New Zealand, transforming the opportunities for the country’s playwrights. Theatre historian Howard McNaughton writes that Lord began writing at a time when theatre was turning from the proscenium and raised stage towards more intimate productions where ‘confrontation between actor and audience was almost entirely on a personal basis, unqualified by any decorative element other than the nonrepresentational effects of light and music.’ Dramatists, like Lord, wrote to exploit these conditions (which were in part a reflection of low budgets and limited resources). McNaughton writes that Lord ‘remains an important transitional writer for his sustained attempt to reconcile the intimate reality of most New Zealand theatre with the generic and abstract possibilities of a severely economical dramaturgy.’ Making a home In 1974 Lord travelled across the United States on his way to the O'Neil Playwrights Conference in Connecticut. He relocated to the States, but kept close personal and professional ties with New Zealand. In the 1980s Lord was based in New York, where his play Well Hung was well received at the Trinity Square Repertory. Lord became a leading figure in the New Dramatists group. His work was seen throughout New Zealand as well as in Australia, Canada and the United States. He was playwright in residence at Auckland's Mercury Theatre and Burns Fellow at Otago University in 1987, while also writing television programmes and screen plays. He was represented by Gilbert Parker of the William Morris agency – one of the few New Zealand dramatists to secure a major agent. He never lost his connection to New Zealand. In 1988 Lord returned to home – finding audiences more receptive to New Zealand drama; writing a play was no longer seen as a perversion. He looked for a property in Dunedin– choosing finally this small, central, easy-to-maintain dwelling, with the potential for a tower and studio out the back. In November 1990, he returned to Dunedin, and in 1991 was appointed Fortune Theatre’s playwright in residence. Lord set about organizing the garden, planting trees, and altering the house to his requirements and aesthetic. He lived at Titan Street until his death in January 1992 – a month and thirteen days before his last play Joyful and Triumphant (an ‘epic and a miniaturist’ New Zealand drama) opened at Circa Theatre. His funeral at All Saints Church was followed by a wake at Titan Street – attended by family and friends – including figures such as John McDavitt from Playmarket, Sunny Amey (ex-Downstage), writer and journalist Mike Nicolaidi, actor Sam Neill and Michael Houstoun. Robert’s body was cremated and his ashes returned to his mother Bebe who buried half of them on her Auckland property, in 1993 burying the other half under the kowhai tree at Titan Street. When Lord returned to Dunedin, he was aware he was dying of an AIDS-related illness, and with the future in mind set up the ‘Writers Cottage Trust’ to allow his cottage to be used in perpetuity writer-in-residence accommodation. The Trust’s aims were to ‘foster the growth and development of New Zealand literature and writers’, ‘to bring writers to Dunedin to enrich the city’s literary life’, to ‘support and assist established writers by providing accommodation in Dunedin free of rental as a retreat, to enable such writers to work on literary projects’. Writers also had the possibility of financial assistance in consultation with the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and its literary committee. Lord, who had had not always had the luxury of being able to write fulltime and lived on the smell of an oily rag, wanted to assist others. On Lord’s death in 1992, the cottage was transferred to the Robert Lord Writer’s Trust, with the first resident being Elizabeth O’Connor. In 2003 Bebe Lord (who had a life interest in the property), marked the tenth anniversary of Robert’s death by making the cottage formally available as a writer’s residence. Lord’s commitment to the Arts and to drama in New Zealand is shown in his bequest. Playmarket records that Lord’s ‘commitment to New Zealand writing is reflected in his decision to make his Dunedin cottage available to writers after he died at the age of 46.’ Robert Lord Writer’s Residency Writers’ residences and writer’s residencies have cultural special significance – both as places of commemoration, and as nurseries of cultural development. Cultural historian Harald Hendrix writes: ‘[w]riters’ houses have meaning, even beyond their obvious documentary value as elements in the author’s biography. There are a medium of expression and of remembrance. Planning, building and decorating a house provides a writer the opportunity not only to materialize his architectural fantasies and fictions, but also to experiment with a mode of expression fundamentally different from his own. To some authors a place to live, whether or not purposely created, means nothing more than a frame for his art, a tool that contributes to the making of literature. To others, a house is an object of prestige. It can express social or cultural status or the hope for it, and be a means to immortalize and remember such success. But expression and remembrance fuse most in houses created by authors as a work of art, as a parallel or alternative to their poetry or narrative. Such places not only are thought to be statements on art, on what is expressed and how it can be best expressed. They, moreover, perpetuate these artistic assertions, being turned into monuments by the builders themselves, their heirs, or by later generations of admirers.’ Transforming a writer’s house into a residency or a museum is a ‘second process of memory-making.’ Visiting writers participate in a kind of ‘material contact’ with Lord – contributing to the making of ‘cultural memory.’ The cottage is not a museum but an experience of sharing Lord’s space, and experiencing his vision for promoting New Zealand writing, and continuing the value that he placed in literature. Hendrix writes that building or decorating a house (as Lord decorated his house) ‘can be a tool to express and demonstrate his opinions on what literature may or may not be able to accomplish, or which direction it should take.’ Hendrix writes of the importance of place for a writer: ‘Our unconscious is ‘located.’ Our soul is a dwelling. And while remembering ‘houses’ and ‘rooms’ we learn how to dwell in ourselves.’ Writer’s houses are ‘instruments of self-fashioning’, with houses shaping the writers dwelling in them. Writers’ houses change meaning once they become a place of remembrance, sliding ‘from the sphere of personal and individual into that of collective and cultural memory.’ Meanings are projected onto the house, the writer’s own views often being appropriated by others, and ‘who in their turn may project their meaning and memories onto the house.’ ‘Hendrix considers that as a ‘medium of remembrance’, writers’ houses not only recall the poets and novelists who dwelt in them, but also the ideologies of those who turned them into memorial sites. In its use as a writer’s residence, the house may ‘condition the way in which an author thinks and works, by association or through memory, willingly and consciously or not. Besides being shaped by writers, houses shape the writers dwelling in them.’ Robert Lord’s cottage reflects both the author himself and the authors that live in his space, and who contribute something of themselves – whether by gifting chattels to the house, or contributing to the narrative of the house by writing in the visitor’s book. Writer’s residencies have played a significant role in fostering literary or artist endeavours. The Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage compares with Dunedin’s Caselberg Trust residency based at John and Anna Caselberg’s house at Broad Bay on Otago Peninsula, and to the Hone Tuwhare Crib at Kaka Point in the Clutha district. The Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage writer’s residency also contributes to Dunedin’s literary identity as recognised by its declaration as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature in 2014. By 2017 fifty writers will have benefited from the residency. Residency programmes have an important role in fostering writing. Nancy Earle, writing about Canadian programmes, argues that such programmes are ‘materially significant in supporting writers.’ Speaking of residencies, many of which were associated with academic institutions, Earle writes that a ‘writer-in-residence is not an author with a day-job as a creative writing instructor. Nor is he or she simply an author with a patron. A writer-in-residence is an author who is provided with time and space to write in exchange for the adoption of a public role’, positioned as a ‘professional freelancer’, with duties ranging from the ‘specialised to the symbolic.’ The author acts as a mentor to aspiring writers, as guest speakers, editors, a presence at functions and the like, that is performing a function that is ‘culturally and socially significant.’ A writer-in-residence acts as a ‘touchstone of the national culture, firmly ensconced within national boundaries, not languishing in a foreign garret or living it up as a expat in Paris, London, New York, or Los Angeles.’ Earle writes that writers themselves have expressed opinions about the role of the resident writer: ‘a travelling mountebank, a tamed poetic cat, a token artistic nigger, a cheap teacher, a showpiece, a placeman, an artist in performance of his art, a Court Jester, and Interesting Person, a real live author.’ The visitors’ book at Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage reflects a positive view of their experience and the privilege of being able to devote themselves to their craft. The feelings expressed by authors ‘call attention to the social and economic positions of authors.’ This kind of support is an economic necessity for writers struggling to make a living and to make connections in the literary world. Residency programmes do overcome isolation ‘between writers, between literary communities and those potential writers who have few exemplars in their everyday worlds….’ In return, the writer contributes to a developing culture – Searle writes that a writer-in residence ‘is a valuable contributor to the national culture in both the widest and the more narrow sense of the word.’ Residency programmes associated with universities tended to develop first – the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, established in 1958, aimed ‘to encourage and promote imaginative New Zealand literature and to associate writers with the University.’ As in other places, later residencies included those provided by authors themselves, focusing on ‘strengthening an association between writer and place, and encouraging others to follow in the writers’ footsteps.’ These residencies ‘imbue cities and smaller communities with a sense of a distinct literary identity’, and can construct a ‘literary past and cultural present.’ The writers who have worked under Lord’s gaze report a dialogue with the absent playwright and their environment, including the surrounding rambunctious student community. They speak of the privilege of being given time and space to devote to writing, and the importance of the house itself. When editing Lord’s plays while sitting in Lord’s front room, academic and director Phillip Mann wrote ‘a retreat is a good way to go forward,’ emphasising the pause of time and space that such a residency allows. Mann writes that someone one day will write a dissertation on the ‘influence of small rooms on the creative process…A small room becomes ones castle. It soon comes to reflect and support one’s habits, be they to scatter papers on the floor or keep them ordered in a pile.’ The house and the garden provided memory of Robert, solace, inspiration, challenge and a home – and a sense of responsibility to living up to Robert’s vision. One writer commented ‘Dear Robert Lord, dear, dear Robert Lord. I never knew him but I feel now that I do. He watched over me & my novel cheekily enough, as other writers have found, sometimes encouraging me & sometimes telling me to lighten up, and occasionally openly (when I was being dramatic) scoffing! Seriously though, my time here has been so crucial and so advantageous to the unfolding of my book, which before now was trying to fit itself into little gaps & spurts of time.’ In 2016, the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage remains home to visiting writers.

Setting The Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage is located in the inner city suburb of North Dunedin. It is an area notable for its contrast between the substantial residences on the hill and the small worker’s cottages on the flat. Recent development has seen the area evolve into a mix of high density residential and commercial accommodation on George Street, as well as commercial strip development on Great King Street. Titan Street Titan Street is a one-way single lane street running between George Street and Great King Street. The scale of Robert Lord’s Cottage is consistent with the streetscape of Titan Street – with its closely built workers’ cottages, typical of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the cottages are timber – some typical ‘salt box’ style with two sash windows and a central door, and a lean-to at the rear. Others are a little more substantial. There are some later twentieth century infill buildings. Robert Lord’s Cottage stands out because of its use of brick and its narrow footprint and firewall. As with other residences on Titan Street, Lord’s cottage is set on a small section, with a tiny front yard, and with a low wall to Titan Street. A path down the side leads to the courtyard rear garden. The Garden According to the conservation plan (2010), the enclosed rear garden is a notable feature of the property. It is formally laid out, including brick planters, specimen trees and seating. The features continue down the side of the house and to the tiny front yard. Lord landscaped the property, and it ‘reflects his sense of order, aesthetic, scale, and in the back yard, need for a private space.’ Current Description Cottage – Exterior The cottage is a small single-storey brick residence with a fire/party wall on the west elevation. The exterior walls are double red clay brick, laid in stretcher bond, with a header bond at every sixth course. The bricks are bedded in soft lime mortar, and over-pointed with a harder Portland cement type mortar to weather seal. The window and door openings are fitted with flat iron arch supports topped with a course of header bricks. Exterior joinery is timber, fitted to the original openings. Some of the joinery has been modified. The front door and a double hung sash window are in the north elevation, while there are three double hung sash windows on the east wall. The back door opens into a small courtyard garden to the rear. The roof is a central lengthways ridge with hips at each end. The west side of the roof is terminated by a raised brick firewall, behind which is a valley gutter. The drawing room chimney penetrates the east side roof. The roof is corrugated profile galvanised steel. Cottage – Interior The interior is laid out with a front door leading directly to the passage down the west side of the house, off which are the drawing room, main bedroom and kitchen. The original plans show a similar layout – but with the bathroom as an annex to a larger kitchen. The exterior walls are strapped on the inside, most likely rough timber lined with scrim and wall paper covering in the bedrooms and drawing room, and vertical dado panelling in the original kitchen. The passage appears to have had some sort of panelling, the remnants of which are evident in the kitchen). It is also likely that the bathroom was fully lined with Tongue Groove and V panelling. Interior partition walls are timber framed. Ceilings were wide timber boards fitted with moulded cover battens and composite moulded timber cornices. The original kitchen featured the current fireplace, fire surround, mantle-piece and brick chimney structure, and presumably the current coal range. The drawing room featured the existing fireplace, fire surround and mantle-piece, and presumably the coal file insert. Prior to Lord’s purchase, the original bathroom was partitioned and converted into a small kitchen (freeing up the kitchen to become the dining room), and the bathroom moved into what was originally a small bedroom. Lord stripped the paint from the dining room fire place. He also fitted a rimu timber bench top with rimu doors and trims, and rimu shelves in the kitchen. He also installed a double door hot water cupboard into the dining room. His builder was friend and set designer Jon Waite. Lord replaced the front door with a four panel door modified to include top lights. Once Robert arrived in 1990, he removed the partition wall between the kitchen and the dining room, and extended a kitchen bench and added a timber dresser. The bathroom was altered to include a large steel bathtub (in the style of a Japanese bath, nick-named the sheep dip by one visiting writer) with shower over, and the walls and ceilings of the bathroom lined with varnished timber. Lord installed a wardrobe in the bedroom. In the drawing room, he stripped the fire surround, fitting it with two cast metal heads he brought from New York. A bookshelf was added to the alcove beside the fireplace. Subsequent to Lord’s death, the exterior joinery has been repainted, the interior walls repainted, carpets installed, window sashes in some rooms replaced (where in poor condition). Steel ties have been installed connecting the brick side wall to the ceiling joists. Lord’s presence and his aesthetic are an essential part of the house and garden – his built in furniture (constructed appropriately by a set designer) reflects his height. The garden layout and outdoor shower are Lord’s choice. The bathroom with the ‘sheep dip’ bath – this is his place. Writers speak of working alongside Lord and being supervised by him. His legacy lives on with the writers and with the house. Outbuildings Outbuildings include a laundry/woodshed and adjoining toilet. These buildings are probably located on the original ablutions site, but do not appear to be original. The toilet appears to have been reconstructed. The laundry/woodshed is a low lean-to constructed in the south west corner of the property, hard along the boundary. The toilet is a lean-to addition to the laundry. Both structures have unpainted corrugated iron roofs and are clad with a combination of recycled corrugated iron and various timber and panel products. Floors are concrete. The structures are unlined and lightly built. Comparative Analysis Robert Lord’s Cottage compares with other places (and more specifically houses) associated with New Zealand literature and theatre. There are several places already entered on the New Zealand Heritage List as Category 1 historic places due to their outstanding historical and cultural significance. These include Dunedin’s Globe Theatre, Wellington’s Katherine Mansfield’s House, Ngaio Marsh’s Christchurch residence and Frank Sargeson’s bach in Auckland. Lord’s Cottage is not a house museum (like Mansfield’s, Marsh’s and Sargeson’s residences) but rather a living reminder of Lord’s contribution to New Zealand theatre, and his commitment to New Zealand writers. Like the Globe Theatre (a working theatre), the cottage has an ongoing significance to New Zealand arts – providing inspiration, support and community for writers of the future. Globe Theatre, Dunedin (List Entry No. 3177, Category 1) The Globe Theatre is a hybrid building made up of a two-storey villa designed by New Zealand's first architect William Mason as his Dunedin residence in 1867, and the 1961 Globe Theatre designed by Niel Wales (with the nicely circuitous connection of Wales being a partner in Mason's old architectural practice Mason and Wales). The theatre sprouts from the old drawing room of the villa, with the house performing backstage functions for the theatre. The building has special significance not only because of its association with William Mason, but as a highly idiosyncratic expression of the vision of Patric and Rosalie Carey who aimed at knocking down the barriers to real life and art in both physical and conceptual fashion. Katherine Mansfield’s House, Wellington (List Entry No. 4428, Category 1). The Katherine Mansfield Birthplace has international cultural significance as the birthplace and inspiration of Katherine Mansfield, a writer whose talent has been recognised in New Zealand and throughout the world. The restored house, the first New Zealand museum to honour a woman, gives valuable insight into Mansfield's writing and highlights the importance of childhood memories in her stories. A winner of national and international tourism awards, the house is a well-patronised educational resource and has a vibrant public literary programme. The unexcavated area in the garden is an irreplaceable source of future information on Mansfield while the birthplace, the only Beauchamp home in near-original condition, is also a unique treasure. The recreated wallpapers and the traditional skills used during the restoration add greatly to the physical importance of the house and careful attention to detail allows the visitor to gain real insight into Mansfield's early life. It is also noteworthy as the early home of Sir Harold Beauchamp, who was of national importance in New Zealand's business circles. Highly regarded by both national and international public, the house truly reflects New Zealand's status as 'a young country with a real heritage'. Ngaio Marsh’s House, Christchurch (List entry No. 3673, Category 1) The house is significant as the home of Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982), the world-renowned crime writer, for over seventy years. One summer, when Ngaio was a child, her parents, Rose and Henry, were lent a cottage in the Cashmere Hills. This experience persuaded them to purchase land in Cashmere and build a house there. Samuel Hurst Seager, the noted Christchurch architect and a relative of the Marsh’s, was asked to design the house. Today, as a house museum, her former residence illustrates the three major aspects of her life; her writing, her involvement with drama and her work as a painter. The house also illustrates Seager's ability with small-scale domestic architecture. Frank Sargeson’s House, Auckland (List entry No. 7540, Category 1) The Frank Sargeson House at 14A Esmonde Road, Takapuna is recognised as a key asset in New Zealand's cultural identity. The Fibrolite bach was Frank Sargeson's private residence from its construction in 1948 through to his death in 1982. Most of Sargeson's literary work was written there: the short stories that became his strength (Conversation with My Uncle and Other Sketches; A Man and His Wife; and That Summer and Other Stories), three novels, two plays and three volumes of autobiography. It is a shrine for lovers of New Zealand literature, just as in Frank Sargeson's lifetime it attracted virtually every established or emerging writer in the country, including Janet Frame, Maurice Duggan, Kevin Ireland, C.K. Stead, R.A.K. Mason and Bruce Mason. Mementos these writers brought with them remain in the house, together with many of Sargeson's personal belongings. Items include Sargeson's old Olivetti typewriter, a sickle for the rough grass around the bach, a patchwork quilt by Janet Frame and an Atlas Stove, whistling kettle and an old radio. Many of Sargeson's books also line the walls. Considered to be New Zealand's first literary museum, it forms a monument to his life and works. Writer’s Houses Poet April Bernard writes that it is a mistake to think that ‘art can be understood by examining the chewed pencils of the writer. That visiting such a house can substitute for reading the work. That real estate, including our own envious attachments to houses that are better, or cuter, or more inspiring than our own, is a worthy preoccupation. That writers can or should be sanctified. That private life, even of the dead, is ours to plunder.’ While visiting a writer’s house is no substitute for engaging with their work, the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage asks its residents to contribute to the art of writing itself and live up to Lord’s wishes. Lord wanted to encourage writers to get the chance to what Anne Trubek describes as the ‘precise, generative, “aha!”’ Unlike literary museums, what Trubeck describes as ‘theaters of Zeno’s paradox’ – writer’s houses are ‘at once themselves (marks on paper; a desk) and something else (emotions; a site of literary creativity). They are teases: they ignite and continually frustrate our desire to fuse the material with the immaterial, the writer with the reader’. Lord’s house provides an active place to confront an author’s own creativity, inspired (or terrified) by those who have gone before and recalling Lord’s own work that sits in the bookshelf and with Lord himself watching over the process. Robert Lord’s Significance Robert Lord has special significance as New Zealand’s first professional playwright. Lord’s entry in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature describes him as an ‘internationally known playwright, and New Zealand’s ‘first professional playwright’ and the first since Merton Hodge in the 1930s to have his plays produced abroad. Retired Professor of Drama and founder of the Department of Drama at Victoria University Phillip Mann writes: ‘Robert Lord’s contribution to New Zealand theatre has been enormous. Not only is he one of our most celebrated playwrights, but his generosity towards other writers lives on in the form of his small house in Dunedin which he donated as a writers’ retreat. In the early 1970s, the time when Lord began writing, New Zealand theatre was experiencing its own ‘Great Leap Forward,’ and Lord was very much a part of this. Living in Wellington, he felt drawn to theatre in general, and Downstage Theatre in particular. In those early days, his tall, enthusiastic figure with his loud laugh and boundless energy could be found at the theatre whether serving as a publicist, or assistant editor for Act Magazine, or stage manager, occasional actor and director, or cleaning the dressing rooms when necessary. He seemed to know everyone and be everywhere. But what no one knew was that, in his time away from the theatre, Robert Lord was writing plays. His first play, It Isn’t Cricket, (1971) is astonishingly original and his confidence as a writer of sharp, crisp dialogue is everywhere apparent. A year later he wrote Well Hung which is one of New Zealand’s most memorable and enduring dark comedies. His later plays and especially the highly successful Joyful and Triumphant, reveal him as one of New Zealand’s most gifted playwrights. As a writer he went from strength to strength, always inventive, always ready to re-write, always willing to help other writers. As has been said before, we can ill afford to lose the plays he would have written had he lived longer. Apart from his own writing, Lord was concerned to see other New Zealand playwrights prosper. He was one of the founders of Playmarket – surely one of the most successful Writers’ Agencies in the world – and this, as well as the many plays he wrote, will stand as a memorial to his generosity, his abundant talent and his serious concern for the health and necessity of New Zealand playwriting.’ Although Lord only lived in this house for a tragically short period, he intended his legacy to be larger and to recognise the importance of New Zealand writing, giving his cottage a special place in the development of New Zealand writing.