Wow Productions Trust Presents - Farley's Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town

Dunedin celebrates 150 years of city status with an original multi-media performance presented in association with biennial the Dunedin Heritage Festival. Farley’s Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town will be a guided, immersive theatre experience that envisions Dunedin’s former premier commercial district as it might have been in 1865; the year it became New Zealand’s ?rst city.

‘The audience will promenade through the historic and cavernous Athenaeum Building in the Octagon, through literal and metaphorical layers of the city. Their journey includes an exploration of early Dunedin features such as Bell Hill, Farley’s Royal Arcade and the Toit? stream’ said Producer Gareth McMillan.

‘We will create an interactive environment reminiscent of gold rush era downtown Dunedin, a la Deadwood, complete with amusements, oddities and mud’ he said. ‘The audience will experience the carnival of a Saturday night in the Arcade and engage with its colourful inhabitants including a troop of Victorian actors presenting a bespoke mini-melodrama titled The Golden Handkerchief, written by Richard Huber speci?cally for the performance’.

Borrowing the retro-futuristic ethos of steampunk, Farley’s Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town also draws inspiration from an article written in 1862, by a reporter who documented his visit to the original arcade and concluded:

‘...the Arcade of all Arcades. It is, sui generis, a thing of itself - the creation of a bold speculator, and deep financier - a universal emporium - a public mart - a commercial multum in parvo, and a depot for the reception of every description of merchandise, edibles, drinkables, wearables, and (if the word be good English) smokables. It is an inlet and an outlet; a rendezvous - a trysting place. There is no word or number of words, in the English language which could convey to a stranger what Farley’s Arcade is, or is not like. It is an Otagonian phenomenon...’ - Otago Daily Times Issue 205, 5 August 1862.

Farley’s Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town will be presented with the assistance of Creative New Zealand, the Otago Community Trust and the Dunedin City Council. It has been devised by the WoW! Productions Trust, the city’s leading theatre collective responsible for 27 performance events since 1996.

The performance season of Farley’s Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town is Friday 28 August to Sunday 6 September.