Zetland was born in Nowra pt.4

What goes up. Must come down.

By late 2009 the Zetland train was gaining momentum.

A good response from Off The Shelf meant people were genuinely interested to see where the play would go next. One option was to do more readings but I decided against it.

Don't get me wrong. Play Readings are great and all...but it sorta leaves an empty feeling in my stomach. Like every time I eat sushi.

And this time I wasn't hungry for sushi.

I was hungry for Steak.

(Steak is a metaphor for production.)

My director knew about a program for young Theatre makers wanting a venue. It was (is) called:

ATYP's UNDER THE WHARF

Essentially ATYP lets you put on a show for minimum expense. They give you a venue and you pay them back after Box office takings. But if you don't pay them back, Fraser Corfield (artistic head of ATYP) would waterboard you until you did.

So an application was put together and all was going good UNTIL my director text messaged me one afternoon.

It read:

"Hey man. Can't do Zetland. Got into VCA. Won't be in Sydney wen Under the Wharf is On. Thanxxxx"

(VCA= Victorian College of the Arts. One of the most exclusive Arts schools in Australia.)

Suddenly I was directorless.

Worse than that. I was alone :-(

He was the only person who had anything invested in the play apart from me. The only person who REALLY wanted to see it performed. The only person who CARED!

So began a pretty messed up couple of weeks.

I couldn't handle Zetland just being filed away in a drawer somewhere. It needed to be seen. But it also needed a director. So how do you get a Theatre director in Sydney?

Beg for their mercy.

Well...Not really. But you gotta be nice.

Lucky for me Augusta Supple had just recently been to a super secret Theatre party.

As the story goes, she mentioned my predicament to a group of people. One of whom being Andrew Johnston, an actor in Zetlands Off The Shelf reading. They got chatting and he expressed interest in taking over the reigns as Director of Zetland. She passed his number over to me and the rest was history.

Me and him end up scrambling together a new application for Under the Wharf. It was rushed but we were both pretty confident and even got a celebratory beer at the local pub!

Of course our submission was immediately rejected and we were back to square one but it didn't seem so bad...at least Zetland wasn't alone.

SO HOW'D YA GET INTO THE SYDNEY FRINGE?

Find out in the final origin tale.

(Speaking of tales, go see Sexy Tales of Paleontology by the bestest writer guy i know, Patrick Lenton.)

CONTINUED IN PT.5

ps.

That's my director flying in the chair. No lie.

Yours,

Jasper

pps.

me and the aforementioned Director are completely cool. He's the bomb.

Zetland was born in Nowra. pt 3

I still get HSC nightmares.

Had one last night.

And it's always the same...

I'm at some house party and everyone is having a great time except me. The problem is i'm HEAPS drunker than anyone else. Like paralytic drunk. Literally crawling on the ground, begging for people to help me drunk.

The dream gets crazier and crazier, eventually building into this beautiful crescendo of humilation, pointing, crying and vomit until I eventually black out.

Only to wake up in my old drama classroom at Newtown High.

My Final Individual Performance is due in a few hours. That's a whole monologue i learnt FIVE YEARS AGO. Obviously I can't remember a word of it. Freak out. And wake-up.

Point of that story?

I'm an anxious mutha-fucker.

When you share writing with people you instantly think they're are gonna hate it. Jokes won't work. Emotions will sound contrived.

Having people read out Zetland for the first time made me learn one thing. It's hard to write something good but it's easy not to write anything at all.

There was some praise and there was some criticism.

It could've gone either way.

One of the reasons I kept writing Zetland was the enthusiasm of a wonderful young director by the name of Mark Pritchard.

He liked what I had done and suggested that it would be great to see it workshopped at Off the Shelf, an opportunity for directors to hothouse a script in early stages of development.

http://www.queenstreetstudio.com/fraserstudios.html

After many trips to the pub we eventually put together an application and sent it through.

The person in charge of Off the Shelf (among other things) is the all-round Queen of everything Augusta Supple.

I'll talk about her more a little later but it was Gus who granted Zetland it's first ANYTHING.

Off the Shelf gave us rehearsal facilities, access to Fraser studios and a big-ass program showing at the end of it all!

( Check out Combat Fatigue by my good friend Alison Rooke at Sydney Fringe as well!)

But what happened next?

CONTINUED IN PT.4

Yours,

Jasper

ps. that 1st photo is of me in better times

Zetland was born in Nowra. pt 2

The time: Mid 2009

The place: ATYP Wharf 2

Me and several other Fresh Ink writers are packing a bunch of luggage into my Mothers subaru station wagon.

We are heading to the writer/artist retreat called Bundanon near the town of Nowra.

http://www.bundanon.com.au/content/digiscapes-teacher-retreat

Now. I think i'm a good driver. And although Lachlan thinks I drive like an 80 year old woman, I still freak the fuck out every time I'm trusted with innocent peoples lives. For instance, this is pretty much what I thought would happen 45 mins into the journey

Tragically.

This did happen.

On the Illawarra Expressway, a stray banksia-man became wedged under my brake pedal. I was unable to stop and crashed into one of many bakeries in the town of Berry.

If I even smell a Scroll I start having violent flashbacks.

So R.I.P Fresh Ink Writer #4 (couldn't remember your name)

Anyway.

So we arrive at Bundanon and this place is AWESOME.

I'm talking grass. I'm talking trees. I'm talking a clothesline. It had everything.

(Just so you know, Bundanon is a house originally owned by the Artist Arthur Boyd. He generously donated it to the public for a space to get some creative work done...but all i know is that he must've had some fetish for marsupials cos I've never seen more wombats in my damn LIFE! They would literally walk into the camp-site, face covered in mange* and just hang out. Naturally I just ignored them and watched more Entourage.)

But in all seriousness. Bundanon was the best writing experience I've ever had.

Our task for the week was pretty much just produce work. We were given good-food, no internet and heaps of coffee. If you ask me that's heaven.

My friend had been talking about joining the army for a while and this always fascinated me. Is the army that bad? What makes someone want to join? Would I do it?

So began the first 14 pages of what is now Zetland...

*Wombat mange is a serious issue guys. Let's get serious.

http://www.wombatprotection.org.au/wombat_protection_society__StopMange.htm

CONTINUED IN PT 3

Yours,

Jasper

Zetland was born in Nowra. pt 1

Yes, really.

Things all began in 2009 when I entered a random competition in one of the many Street Press magazines. It was kinda cryptic and just said something like "Send in your play to be marked/assessed by Industry professionals".

At the time, apart from decent sales in a call centre and healthy calf muscles, I really had nothing else going on.

So why not, I thought...I'll enter this damn thing!

But there was a problem. I didn't have any plays. I didn't even like Theatre.

Y'see. I went through high-school thinking Theatre was always about these over-the-top, unrealistic and frankly irrelevant stories involving Masks and words like 'Commedia Del Arte'.

Infact my favourite playwright was Barton Fink, a character from a Coen Brothers film.

But I wanted to be a writer and if this meant people would perform/read my work. Who gives a shit what medium.

So in something like 8 hours, I churned out some horrible mental-illness driven play...which I'm positive would have offended people with mental illnesses if they weren't so crazy.

But luckily someone saw potential.

As it turned out, this competition was run by the amazing Australian Theatre for Young People. The man in charge of the comp was (and still is) Lachlan Phillpott. The most important person in my short play-writing career.

(I hope those are snakes)

They invited me to join Fresh Ink. A writing ensemble for young writers which I recommend to all.

http://www.atyp.com.au/index.php/current-fresh-ink-18-26-writers

Essentially Fresh Ink is a year-long program where they pair you up with an established mentor. It's great because you can share writing, talk about techniques and sometimes...they give you a make-over!

CONTINUED IN PT.2

yours,

Jasper

Welcome!

Q. WHAT THE HELL IS ZETLAND?


A. Zetland is a fantastic play premiering at the Sydney Fringe Festival 2010. It is also a charming, flightpath drenched suburb in South Sydney.


Q. WHY SHOULD I CARE?


A. Because how many plays start with the letter Z?


Q. WHAT ABOUT ZOOLANDER?


A. That was a movie.


Q. WASN'T IT ORIGINALLY A PLAY?


A. No.


Q. ARE YOU SURE?


A. Ben Stiller wrote it.


Q. SO?


A. So i'm pretty sure he had nothing to do with Theatre.


Q. THAT'S WIERD.


A. It's wierd you're always shouting.

awkward silence.

Q. WHY SET-UP A BLOG?


A. I thought it would be interesting to document everything that goes with putting a play on (at this level) in Sydney. I've never done it before and really have no clue what I'm doing. Maybe some young playwrights will get something from it.


Q. THAT'S NICE OF YOU.


A. Then I'll make them pay me 50 bucks each.


Q. OH.


A. Yeah. I find playwrights are easier to extort than say Musicians or Screenwriters.


Q. WHY?


A. Because they were deprived of love growing up, stupid!


Q. OF COURSE.


A. So stick around if you want to see how Zetland came to be, how it's going and where it will go!







(Just for fun, here is an early photo of Zetland's Off the Shelf reading at Queen St Studios)

http://www.queenstreetstudio.com/offtheshelf.html

Yours


Jasper




(writer of Zetland)




ps. Can anyone think of a play that starts with Z?