The remarkably rich archival resource held within the Otago Pioneer Women's Memorial Hall has underpinned Indignation! A verbatim theatre piece, exploring the hall’s origins and the collective effort it took to establish despite solid opposition.

The hall’s Historian in Residence, Rachael Francis, produced the play as a continuation of the Otago Pioneer Women's Memorial Association ’s 75th birthday Celebrations and as the organisations signature event for Suffrage125. Indignation! will take place at the Moray Place hall from 7pm on 13 and 14 August, and at 1pm Wed 15 August (door sales) .

“We want to remind people the hall is there and to convey the amazing richness of its archives, collected meticulously since 1936,” Rachael says. “Karen Elliot (writer and director) and I organised workshops to attract older association members or former members alongside newer, interested parties. Together we highlighted stuff that we thought was important out of all those boxes of information. We honed it down and talked about the origins of the hall.”

Taking the shape of a meeting, Indignation! is performed by professional and non-professional actors. It reveals the story of how, in 1936, fifty Dunedin women’s groups came together to suggest they needed a hall.

Rachael says, “This was fifty years after women had the vote…, but they were not allowed to hire a hall without a man’s sign off. They had difficulty finding spaces to meet, so they decided they needed their own space. This wasn’t second wave feminism; they weren’t ‘woke’. These were groups like the Dunedin Housewives’ Guild and the Homemakers’ League.”

Yet, they met significant and consistent male opposition.

“If it was on Twitter you would call it ‘trolling’,” Rachael says. “There were letters to editor in the Otago Daily Times, phrased in a very verbose, articulate way, but it was basically trolling. It went on and on. Men said no to them as publicly and privately as they could. The message was that women should be at home – they had no business going to meetings, so what did they want a hall for?

“The play doesn’t say this overtly, because the women we talked to never said it overtly. The play does say they overcame all this ridiculousness and bought and ran a hall.”

Support for Indignation! has come from all around the Dunedin community. From letters of support that led to funding, to encouragement in the shape of hot drinks.

“All kinds of people were supporting me with this. Dunedin is very supportive in general. If you want to make something happen in Dunedin, you will find someone to encourage you,” Rachael concludes.