INDELIBLE FRECKLES

Just over a year ago, I reeled from a Pasifika playwrights forum.

This year, I networked at it.

Yes: I hate networking. It feels false:

(I really should just let go of such exchanges – it’s just -, it’s not often that I want to smash someone in the face [half an hour later because it didn't register with me at the time].)

What I meant to illustrate as false was something like this:

What was different this time around was that I knew more of the faces. Familiarity breeds confidence.

Now for some rampant name-dropping:

• TV and feature writer Oscar Kightley;
• I got snapped by playwright Gary Henderson;
• visual and performance artist Shigeyuki Kihara;
• playwright and producer Makerita Urale;
• film and TV director Sima Urale (and Makerita’s sister);
• film and TV director, and reluctant producer Justine Simei Barton; and
• actor and theatre director Nancy Brunning.

It wasn’t all about the laying on of hands – forum attendees were treated to works in progress:

• Ali Foa’i’s MindSex;
• Victoria Schmidt’s Then Sings My Soul;
• Jonathan P Riley’s Makigi;
• and Chetan Patel & Eric Smith’s I Don’t Do Coconut.

(A first draft of this post had one-word adjectives for each of the above. I’ve changed my mind, obviously: you can stew in anticipation.)

My plan to be in the right place at the right time has yet to bear fruit. But seeds have been sown. The competition has been reconnoitred and noted.

I am patient.

The Pasifika Playwrights Forum is TOMORROW, Saturday 2 May from 12:30pm to 7:00pm at the Aotea Centre, Auckland CBD.

The Playmarket website has more information – but most exciting to me are presentations of works in progress by Banana Boat writers Victoria Schmidt and Jonathan P Riley.

Alu la ‘ia, e.

What have I achieved this year then?

• I wrote a ten-minute play in twelve hours, and watched it premiere (and close) twelve hours after that;
• I’m facilitating a disparate group of Pasifika playwrights (four months straight and counting);
• I’m an (increasingly) active Board member of the New Zealand Writers Guild;
• I’ve had a short radio play accepted for broadcast on National Radio;
• and I did some script consulting on a couple of projects.

I’m tempted to skew my stats a la the police leadership in The Wire but, for me, a project isn’t finished unless it’s finished, knowwha’Imean?

So:

• To’ona’i crawls towards completion;
• I’m co-writing a play, to premiere in 2012;
• I have my own play to push – and thanks to the joys of misery likes company peer pressure, the first act is due by mid-January 2009;
• the diversionary feature spec has copious thematic and strucutural notes… but an actual story has yet to emerge;
• enamoured with the short radio play’s ’success’, I’m writing an hour-long radio play: I’ve got the opening and closing acts while the middle is currently all rough notes – forty pages to go!
• and the long awaited spec feature of 2007 has been roughed out and is approaching a proper first draft.

[Takes a few steps back and squints]

Okay. I suppose it’s just about perspective.