Ken Duncum
The Michael Hirschfeld Director of Scriptwriting,
International Institute of Modern Letters
Phone: 04 463 6882
Email: address
Street Address: Room 403, 16 Waiteata Road, Kelburn Campus
Nearest Fax: 04 463 6865
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Introduction
The Michael Hirschfeld Director of Scriptwriting, Ken was a member of Victoria's precociously talented 1984 Original Composition Workshop (fellow writers included novelist Elizabeth Knox and poet Jenny Bornholdt).
Subsequently his career as a full-time writer for screen and stage includes the plays Flipside (Chapman Tripp Award for Production of the Year 2000), Waterloo Sunset and Blue Sky Boys (Best New Zealand Play 1990), as well as scripts for major television shows like Duggan and Coverstory, (Best Script, TV Drama, Film and TV Awards 1997). His industry experience is wide-ranging: he was script editor for Greenstone, script adviser for Tiger Country, storyliner and writer for Mirror Mirror, and was the head writer for Willy Nilly.
In September 2001 Ken was the inaugural recipient of the Michael Hirschfeld Memorial Writing Award.
Ken's play Cherish, winner of 2003 Chapman Tripp award for Best New Zealand Play, was published by Victoria University Press in November 2004.
His play Picture Perfect, premiered at Circa Theatre, Wellington in 2006. Over the last two years he has also had productions of Cherish in New York and Edmonton, Canada.
Ken’s most recent play, a commissioned adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, premiered at the Court Theatre, as part of the Christchurch Arts Festival, in August 2009 and opened at Circa Theatre, Wellington on 31 July 2010.
In October 2009, Ken was awarded the 2010 New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize. As the third Menton Fellow since New Zealand Post became the Prize's principle sponsor, Ken travelled to Menton, France in 2010 to work at the Villa Isola Bella, where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote in 1919 and 1920. David Geary is convening the MA Scriptwriting workshop in Ken's absence, during 2010.