Hello readers.
I just wanted to throw together a quick update about my 2023. While things have been quite busy with family and jobs, I did manage to write a play. I did this by working one day a week (when it was possible) and on occasion, during early mornings (that was difficult).
I've never written a full length play before. In 2019 I adapted a short film I made for YouTube into a 15 minute stage-play. Though, a lot of my dialogue during the film making process was improvised, so a stage-play based on it was kind of dishonest (in a playwright kind of way).
That story was not ideal for the stage, it only required 2 actors and was very short. It was considered at one point by a student theatre, but ultimately they changed their minds. Then, the pandemic hit and I think everyone got a bit distracted.
Just before the pandemic hit though, in December of 2019, I submitted an idea to the same theatre that I'd really just come up with on the spot. It was called 'My Art Room'. The theatre then asked for the script, which I didn't have. After a short struggle to write something and a pandemic, the idea fell to the curb.
In 2021 I began to have these story points and character moments popping up in my head. I was busy working on a children's comic strip at the time, but at the back of my head, something more grown up was brewing. It started as a desire to tell the story of a young man who had just moved into his own place, what sort of characters would he meet? Would he find love?
A newspaper even asked if I'd like to make a separate comic for them to print, and my go straight into this new project rose to the surface. In coming up with a main character's name, I thought about the whole essence of existing and being born into chaos (life!). A man dunked into the world came to mind. I came up with the name Duncan, a person trying to figure out life, just like all of us. That name stuck.
That comic idea was way too ambitious for a non paid newspaper strip, so it was also thrown to the curb.
The pandemic left me a different person. During the lock-downs, I experience creative highs that I'd not felt since university. This was all because I was given the time, with no work stresses. Later in 2021, Neighbourhood Press and the Perth Comic Arts Festival were putting together a West Coast Comics Anthology. WA Artists were asked to produce 2 pages for a cool Risograph print book.
While dealing with an arm injury, I produced a comic about a man and his partner during a lock-down scenario. In that time, the man paints, makes music and gets his hair cut. His mental health improves dramatically. Like all lockdowns (hopefully), they end, and the man has to return to work, miserable and away from his creative endeavours. This comic was controversial for some people I knew. How on earth could a lockdown and a pandemic be seen as good in ANY WAY? No one said a pandemic was good, and a lockdown get's old pretty fast. The point I was trying to make, was more about how society is treating artists, holding them back from their happiness. While this seems like a very privileged way of thinking (and it certainly is), it comes back to mental health. And in a world that is waking up to mental health, maybe this is an important subject to look into?
In 2023, I began writing a full length play based on the original idea I submitted in 2019 and the artistic struggle presented in the Neighbourhood Press Comic.
The play is called 'Duncan's Art Room', it includes two songs produced with my friend Daniel Symons. It's not a musical, it's a drama romance. I came across this other possible genre name, an urban fantasy!? Sounds cool.
Anyway, I have submitted it to one Theatre. Who knows what the future holds. Perhaps nothing will come off it and I'll move on. Or maybe it will be performed.
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In other news. I'm excited to do some more drawing and comic writing soon!
- Nathan
