Proposed poster design... sometimes I revert back to my graphic design roots.
I recently made one of my all-too-rare forays to the theatre, to see a production of ‘Squizzy’, a musical play written by Barry Dickens about 1920s Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor. It starred Syd Brisbane, who played a role in my latest short film ‘Keeper’, and was performed by a very small company of actors, who swapped roles with breathtaking rapidity. The music was played by a small, four-piece live band, several of whom also took to the stage to play characters. It was very fluid, the scenes presented as short, impressionistic vignettes, and it was VERY energetic.
I found myself, several days later, reflecting on the fact that my first screenplay, Race With The Devil (my biopic about the troubled life of 50s rocker Gene Vincent), has yet to find a producer, and also musing idly that I would like to one day write a play (my screenwriting is so visual, rather than dialogue based, so it seemed like it would be an interesting challenge). These two thoughts collided in my head and I was suddenly struck by the possibility of adapting Race With The Devil into a stage play. There were a number of reasons I could see for doing this, right off the top of my head; it would be cheaper than getting the film produced; I would finally get to see the work performed by living breathing people, rather than remaining a vision in my head; if it worked (or maybe even travelled), it could potentially draw attention to the screenplay and aid in getting it produced; and, whereas local film funding bodies are focussed on stories that are Australian based, the theatre seems to me to be a much more ‘international’ culture, so it might be easier to get support for a story set in the US and UK.
It seemed perfect; it would be a musical, but at the same time not quite – the songs are an integral, ‘diegetic’ part of the story, which is very, very dark – I imagined the play as a hybrid of a rockabilly gig and Shakespearean tragedy.
The initial adaptation process involved me basically reformatting the script into a stageplay, and altering it from a three act structure into two acts. What struck me was the ease with which it transformed; I hadn’t realised how dialogue-heavy the script was, which of course was advantageous. There were obvious things that were too cinematic, or redundant, so I jettisoned them immediately, then set about reducing the characters and scenes, until I had 2 acts of 30 pages each, with about half a dozen songs in each act. At present, it still feels a bit like a film, as the scenes are often short – but that seemed to work in the case of ‘Squizzy’, so maybe it’ll play okay.
I’ve found a director who is keen to mount the play as a minimalist Fringe show this year, and I’m looking forward to workshopping the script with both him and a company of actors.
I’m feeling very excited about letting it go, and developing into something quite separate from the screenplay; there’s a strong element, as I mentioned before, of Shakespearean tragedy in Gene’s story, and some overt references to ‘Richard III’, which I think could be interesting to explore, maybe fusing the DNA of that play with Gene’s story and making the parallels even more pronounced.
