Category: Scriptwriting

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One More Schmooze

Playmarket Auckland: F5, 99 Queen Street, CBD.

The other week, I went to the changing of the guard at the Auckland Playmarket office: Stuart Hoar is moving on to less reading (of other people’s writing) and more writing (of his own) (which is as it should be), and will be replaced by Allison Horsley, formerly Court Theatre Literary Manager.

There was food and drink on hand, and there were a few more familiar faces than I expected — should be no surprise after being in this writing gig for so long, but still —and the hour I had set aside to pay my respects very quickly became almost two hours of catching up and talking with:

  • Jo Smith, recent Kingswood dramaturg, whose upcoming writing projects I look forward to;
  • Philippa Campbell, Auckland Theatre Company literary manager (and film and television producer);
  • Roy Ward, current freelance theatre director and, although I should let it go, will forever be the person who rejected my application to write for Shortland Street;
  • Murray Lynch, Playmarket big cheese;
  • Sam Brooks, dramatist, critic and man-about-town (I didn’t actually talk to him — but I waved as he flew by);
  • and the very lovely Roger and Dianne Hall — yes, that Mr Hall — and he was refreshingly to-the-point with our brief discussion on writing for theatre and developing audiences in competition with the small, small screen.

This has been quite a year for shoulder-rubbing and such: there was the 2016 Arts Market in Wellington*, and the SWANZ Awards and Big Screen Symposium in Auckland, not to mention a workshop here and there. It might explain why I’m a little frazzled.

There’s going to be more of it in 2017 and, somehow, I’m rather looking forward to it.

 

* I don’t know why I didn’t blog about this. But it was nice to be in my hometoon.

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Singing for Supper

I have to write a treatment.

I can whine all I like — why, I could even choose to not write a treatment — but there’s a consequence: if I don’t cough up a treatment, I don’t get paid.

It’s so, so hard being a writer.

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STILL LIFE WITH CHICKENS: a clinic

The script, post-workshop.
The script, post-workshop.

Last weekend, thanks to the administrations of the indefatigable Salesi Le’ota at Playmarket, Still Life With Chickens enjoyed a workshop directed by Andrew Foster, dramaturged by the redoubtable Stuart Hoar, and with the collective acting prowess of Iaheto Ah Hi, Jess Robinson and Louise Tu’u.

Where the last Kingswood workshop generated the words offensive, adolescent, puerile and crass to describe the play, this latest workshop elicited symbolism, surrealist and existentialist.

Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are.

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Permissions

OS X disk permissions (a considerable stretch, I know).
OS X disk permissions (a pathetic stretch, but hey).

Sometimes I’ll get to an early stage of developing a project and I’ll stop.

It’s not writer’s block, or a gap in character, story and/or background knowledge. You likely already know that at Fortress Mamea, writer’s block is never an issue, the characters write themselves, story is always a cakewalk, and I never let ignorance and incuriosity get in the way of a first draft.

I used to think it was a crisis of confidence — What the hell am I doing, thinking I can write? — but what it really is is a crisis of permission: Who the hell gave me the permission to write about [SOMETHING POTENTIALLY FAINTLY/REMOTELY CONTROVERSIAL]?

With Kingswood, a love play to my friends and our misspent youth, the question of permissions were sidestepped by accident: the acts of writing and development (and rushing to meet deadlines) meant that actual-event-inspired truths quickly gave way to more dramatically efficient emotional truths. At this point in time, I would have no hesitation in comping my friends to a production.

As for Still Life With Chickens, basing it on my mother’s adventures with poultry gave rise to concerns about my excavation of Mamea family history. I don’t actually recall a crisis of permission. And when I wrote the first dozen or so pages in a blur of creativity and read them back, I found I’d repeated what I’d done with Kingswood at some subconscious level: dramatic emotional truth trumped the source material.

Those are terrible examples, aren’t they? I was rescued by circumstance and dumb (creative) luck, respectively.

So. There’s another project I’ve added to my development slate: it’s an all-female four-hander period piece.

Who the hell do I think I am to write four female characters?

I don’t know but I’m not going to let that stop me.

 

Postscript: In looking up earlier thoughts on writing female characters, I found something I posted a few years back. Sometimes, I just surprise myself.

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BSS

Late last month I attended the 2016 Big Screen Symposium in Auckland. It was the second network-y thing I’ve done this year (ah yes, I neglected to mention I attended the 2016 PANNZ Arts Market in Wellington in March).

Cue shameless name-dropping as I saw:

As for the speakers, highlights were:

  • creative couple Cate Shortland (Somersault, The Slap) and Tony Krawitz (Devil’s Playground, The Kettering Incident) on writing and directing Australian television drama;
  • Jonathon Raymond on screenwriting for Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff) and Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce); and
  • producer and BSS keynote speaker Heather Rae (Frozen River) on decolonising the screen.

Nice work, all around.

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STILL LIFE WITH CHICKENS: another play

Une poule.
Une poule.

Sharp-eyed (and long-suffering) readers of this blog may have put lua and two together to know that I’m working on a new play called Still Life With Chickens. It’s about an elderly Samoan woman who reluctantly adopts a barnevelder chicken and learns that there’s more to her sunset years than waiting for death.

I don’t usually announce projects in development but since Creative New Zealand has kindly provided a grant (and I’m a week behind on feeding this blog), I thought, What’s the harm in putting pressure on myself by announcing a work-in-progress that I’ll probably be asked about ad nauseum?

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Fork

Ice cream fork, Shreve & Company, Iris service, silver, 1903-1917.jpg
By Wmpearl – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17718251

I’ve reached a point in a project where I can go one of two ways:

  1. go for the laughs — they’ll be earned laughs, but laughs nonetheless (not that there’s anything wrong with laughs); or
  2. go for the pathos — it’ll be painful but resonant and truthful (though painful).

Laughs are easy — at this point in development anyway (in front of an audience it’s a whole other thing). Pathos is a bit of a balancing act of grabbing an audience member’s heart and squeezing it just enough to leave an impression (and not, like, killing it).

A handy reminder at this point of development is to do what best serves the story — except that, with this project, it’s character-driven, so it’s down to how I best serve the character.

And if I want to serve the character to the best of my ability, then I must be honest with it, and see where that takes me.

… Well. That’s sorted, then.

 

(There’s a third way, of course: I could write both versions and test-audience the shit out of them.)

(Once upon a time I wrote a post where I said characters [are] only part of the story I want to tell — there’s something karmic going on here, I think.)

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Stand Alone

Rogue One, A Star Wars Story poster.png
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50076808

Despite feeling burned and scammed by the prequel trilogy, then underwhelmed by the first of the sequel trilogy, I’m finding myself watching and rewatching the Rogue One teaser and trailer.

Why am I returning to this franchise after so much disappointment?

One, it’s directed by Gareth Edwards whose Monsters and Godzilla balanced big-creature spectacle with believable characters and emotions.

Two, it has a scrappy band of rebels that includes Forest Whitaker, Donnie Yen, and Jiang Wen.

And three, we know how it ends. The teaser and trailer have a Dirty Dozen or Wild Geese vibe so it’s not so much the destination but the journey.

Hell yeah, I’m in.

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Endings

Two six-ep mini-series were consumed recently:

Both have excellent casts, are slickly directed and written, jet set around the Continent, and are absorbing thrillers with compelling and flawed characters.

So why have I forgotten most of one while still mulling over the contents of the other?

It was the endings that sorted these two out — I was fully invested in each of them through the first five eps. In one show, the final ep was a stomach churner of suspense that followed the main players to inescapable and sometimes bitter resolutions. In the other, what began as a tense finale went limp partway through as it copped out with an ending where good triumphs over evil.

Who am I to say that it copped out? Well… what was I supposed to expect after five eps of betrayals and reversals and sacrifices? It certainly wasn’t what I got, I can tell you.

And what the heck do I know about inescapable and sometimes bitter resolutions? We’re all doing life, aren’t we? And, like it or lump it, betrayals, reversals and sacrifices come at a price.

So: beware endings.

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