After all my kvetching, Kingswood has been short-listed for the 2015 Adam New Zealand Play Award.
Nice.
KINGSWOOD: Update
KINGSWOOD: One Year On
I know. I know. You and I know what kicked this venture off, don’t we?
How hard could it be to write about four friends driving from Auckland to Wellington in a Kingswood stationwagon?
I have friends. We’ve had some adventures. We’ve fallen out and reunited. Some friends I’ve known for more than half of my life. No matter the physical distance or the years between catch-ups, I love them because they’re virtually family — the difference between them and blood relatives is that we chose each other.
So how frickin’ hard could it be to write about a bunch of friends travelling long distance in a classic car?
Harder than I expected. I first wrote it in a skeletal beatsheet form, rewrote it with some bits of dialogue and action in it, took it apart, reassembled it, rewrote it with more dialogue and action, pimped it this time last year, rewrote it, disassembled/reassembled/rewrote it, threw my hands up in exasperation, sulked, got over myself, rewrote it to a full and complete draft, then, despite vowing never to revisit it, revised that draft and…the first proper draft is finished. It’s currently with readers for their consideration.
What took so long? I hear you ask. This play took longer because it has much more of me in it than I bargained for: writing about love and friendship and history and forgiveness required an honesty that no amount of imaginative tap dancing could hide. It was exhausting.
I’m thoroughly sick of this play and hope to never see it again. But should a rehearsed reading be arranged and I get to hear and see it interpreted by people who have no agenda other than Let’s pretend, don’t be surprised if I think to myself, How hard could it be to revisit ‘Kingswood’ just one more time?
GOODBYE MY FELENI: por ahi
They’re playing our song stateside at the Rainbow Theatre, University of California, Santa Cruz, on Thursday 13 November, Saturday 15 November, and Friday 21 November 2014.
If you’re in the neighbourhood and you’re curious about all the brouhaha, check it out (and report back, please, because I’m dashedly curious myself).
(Translation of “por ahi” — Spanish for “over there”.)
GOODBYE MY FELENI: toe sau
It’s back, this time as part of the 2014 Going West Books and Writers Festival.
Tickets are on sale now from Eventfinder.
The 2014 season is 28–31 August 2014 at the Playhouse Theatre, Glen Eden.
Returning for their second — and for some, third — tour of duty are:
- Amelia Reid-Meredith, director;
- Shadon Meredith, Lance Corporal Simi Bishop;
- Ruby Reihana-Wilson, operator;
- and Jenni Heka, producer.
Freshies for the 2014 season are:
- Shimpal Lelisi, Sergeant Ete Masani;
- Pua Magasiva, Private Tama Apara;
- Dominic Ona Ariki, Private Sione Make;
- Jane Hakaraia, lighting design;
- Posenai Mavaega & Tania Muagututi’a, sound design;
- and Venus Stephens, costume design.
Onwards ho!
(Translation of “toe sau” — Samoan for “come again” or “return”.)
Kingswood
Below is the text of a two-minute pitch I presented at PANNZ Marketplace earlier this week.
I have an old VHS tape at home. It’s got a road trip my friend Stevo and I did of the South Island. Partway through the video there are a couple of minutes of some shaky-cam of the road, then panning to me behind the wheel studiously ignoring the camera, and all the while Stevo is singing along to Carole King’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.
I think that at that time in our trip we weren’t talking to each other.
I also think that at that moment I was looking for a quiet spot just off State Highway 6 where I was going to kill him and dump his body.
Those two minutes of video were the inspiration for Kingswood: how music is integral to that portion of our lives we spend going somewhere in a car; and how the past, love and forgiveness hold together our relationships.
Kingswood is a play about four thirtysomething friends who drive from Auckland to Wellington in a classic Holden station wagon — the same station wagon that was their ride at university, that took them to parties all over town, and carried them on long road trips around the country.
But it’s ten years after uni now.
And so, over two days and seven hundred kilometres, the audience will watch these four friends share unreliable reminiscences, sing along to Fur Patrol, Ardijah and the Exponents… and try to deal with decisions they made when they were twentysomething and thought that life was going to be a piece of piss.
Kingswood is about the people and things we hold on to in this life.
A revised first draft of the script is scheduled for delivery at the end of March for a workshop and rehearsed reading.
As the writer, I’m looking forward to a development season in the second half of 2014. The producer is witholding any comment until she sees the March draft.
Thank you for listening. I’m David Mamea, and I look forward to considering offers for Kingswood.
Where Themes Come From II
INT. REHEARSAL ROOM -- DAY -- FLASHBACK
DRAMATURG
What is “Goodbye My Feleni” about?
WRITER
(shrugs)
It’s about a bunch of Pacific Island soldiers mucking about.
Our Writer sees this will not fly with the Dramaturg.
WRITER
It’s ah, it’s um about... brothers...?
You’d think after all this time I’d know what I was doing more often than not.
2013 in Print
A terrible year for the reading diary: a meagre 72 titles passed through my grubby fingers.
Still — stand–outs were:
Comics
iZombie Volume 1: Dead to the World by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred
Beast by Marian Churchland
The Hive by Charles Burns
Books
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Good War by Studs Terkel
Glitz by Elmore Leonard
Scripts
Tyrant by Gideon Roff
Modern Family — S01E07 by Danny Zuker
Law & Order — S08E09 — Burned by Siobhan Byrne
Baghdad Baby! by Dean Parker
Midnight in Moscow by Dean Parker
Usually, whatever gets listed in these end–of–year posts is culled from a larger short–list of what made an impact. Not so 2013.
Late new year resolution: Read more.
Legacy
Last month I was asked what kind of legacy I wanted to leave behind – that if I had ten years left in my writing career, what would I want to be known for – film? television? theatre?
I was stumped in that moment as the following questions fizzed and Twister-ed through my head:
- did I want to keep writing for the silver screen?
- or did I want to try a running jump for the golden-age-of-television train?
- or was theatre – with all its in-built ‘Nam-movie-like flashbacks to the terrors of Sunday school – my metier?
All I managed in reply was a drowning fish impression.
The past few months has seen me more focussed than usual on a number of projects*. Whenever I’d stall encounter a problem challenge – like a question of plotting, or a certain character inconsistency, or finding the right typeface for the title – the question of a “D F Mamea legacy” would flick about my head like an annoying insect.
I can understand the motivational aspect of thinking about a legacy. I already know what I want to achieve in five/ten/twenty years’ time. For me, the thing about the question of legacy is that 1). it assumes a level of control from beyond the grave, and 2). it infers the kind of ambition that I don’t think I have.
I want to tell stories. I want to keep close around me the people I enjoy working with. I want to hold onto my loved ones because they’re a dream come true.
So. The plan is to a). continue writing whatever turns me on – and/or pays handsomely – over the next five/ten/twenty years, b). enjoy the process not just by myself but with my fellow creatives and collaborators, and c). persuade The Goddess that the installation of an half-ton AS/NZS3809-compliant safe is a heckuva deal for as many Kaimanawa ponies as she wants.
Legacy, schmegacy: write it – and if people like it, good.
* Winning a couple of awards is a wonderful intermittent reinforcer.
Meet and Greet
The past few days’ burning question has been: Would I still write this post if I hadn’t been an award recipient? Close behind it has been this Schrodinger follow-up: Would I still be an award recipient if I hadn’t decided the day before to attend the event? (Employees and families of employees of the organisers are not allowed to answer the second question.)
So, yeah, wow. Last Thursday I went along to the SWANZ awards, cheering for the competition because that was the only way I could deal with the pressure… and Goodbye My Feleni won. And the night itself, viewed in the preceding fortnight with dread and anxiety, turned out to be a very pleasant evening indeed.
I got to meet and talk with:
- playwrights Dean Parker and Briar Grace-Smith*;
- Unproduced Feature Film Script finalists Blair Soper and Simon McCarthy;
- big- and small-screen screenwriters Nick Ward, Kathryn Burnett, and James Griffin;
- producers Leanne Saunders, Tui Ruwhiu, Kath Akuhata-Brown, and Jeremy Macey;
- Commish exec Chris Payne, Motel director Todd Rippon, and Scriptease‘s Jane Sherning Warren;
- and fellow recipients Michael Bennett (Best Factual Script – The Confessions of Prisoner T), Daniel Joseph Borgman (New Writer Award), and Hone Kouka (NZWG Mentorship Award).
Ahh, networking. Not always as painful and dreadful as I imagine.
* I know they’re more than playwrights.
GOODBYE MY FELENI: Play Reading
Last month, Auckland Theatre Company‘s Literary Manager, Philippa Campbell, invited the Goodbye My Feleni crew to join ATC’s 2013 Making Scenes programme. We accepted, of course. What this means is we get a two-day workshop with a public reading on Thursday 25 July 2013, 6:30pm at ATC, Mount Eden War Memorial Hall, Lower Ground Floor, 487 Dominion Road, Mount Eden.
Shadon & Amelia will be directing, Jenni is producing, and yours truly will be on hand to eat the actors’ morning and afternoon teas. Speaking of which (cue shameless name-dropping), assisting us with this stage of Goodbye My Feleni‘s development are:
- actors Shimpal Lelisi, Suli Moa, Max Palamo, and Matariki Whatarau;
- and our workshop dramaturg will be Hone Kouka (whose own 28th (Maori) Battalion play, Tu, opens this Friday at Q Theatre).