Cirrus@Austlit

'In October 2013, special issue 19 of TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, ‘Scriptwriting as Creative Writing Research’, presented a landmark collection of scripted works – for stage and screen – under the rubric of verifiable research outputs. Concerned with content, form and context, these seven works from academics working in Australia demonstrated the potential of the script to embody – to perform – research. The works showcased the potential for stage plays and screenplays to be valued as research artefacts in their own right, without the need for them to be performed or produced in order to be ‘counted’ within the higher education sector.' (Authors introduction)

'This work is a creative exploration of notions of masculinity and male sexuality. Specifically, it explores the idea that male sexuality and gender exist on a continuum and defy simple categorization. The script was developed using an interdisciplinary approach including traditional research into theories of gender and sexuality and fiction writing techniques such as associative and stream-of-consciousness composition. In this way, a script was produced that indirectly refers to the notion of fluid sexuality whilst telling a dramatic story about two men who occupy very different places on the gender and sexuality spectrum.' (Publication abstract)

'Craig is a writer. And a script editor. And an academic. He is working as script editor on a series of short films that sit under the umbrella title of Dirty Talk – comedy dramas in the mockumentary form about couples’ sex lives. Whilst trying to write his own film, he’s grappling with style and tone in another writer’s screenplay – namely whether or not having the manslaughter of a lollipop lady as the reason for the protagonist being in prison is, in his words, too camp. He is also thinking about the creative processes that take place during the development of a film script, and how they might be made visible. Dirty Talk: Scriptwriting, script editing and the creative process is a multi-narrative work that weaves together the screenplay, the writing of the screenplay and the editing of another writer’s screenplay, and in doing so draws attention to the creative and pragmatic decisions that influence the creation of a screenplay. These include inspiration, writerly interactions with characters, peer review and the pressures of industry conventions.' (Publication abstract)

'This script is dedicated to the memory of all those friendships and loving relationships marred, and often destroyed, by the sectarianism so prevalent in country Queensland in the years before Statehood. John and Jennie draws on accounts from The Gayndah Communes about this period of Queensland history just before the outbreak of the first world war. The script highlights the continued negation and absence of the history of how sectarianism disrupted the lives of ordinary Queenslanders, particularly in terms of who they could marry. In this the year of commemoration of Australia’s involvement in the first world war, it is timely to recall and to reimagine the everyday lives of those who loved and lost in a time of deep prejudices. This script is part of an ongoing research project and creative practice in the area of historical reimagining.' (Publication summary)

'What lies at the heart of our creative and research journeys? Are we always seeking to understand something about ourselves no matter what the subject? What makes writing and the creative journey worthwhile? Is it acknowledgement in our own lifetime or a belief in leaving some form of literary legacy? This script ponders such questions as the researcher explores, in creative form, her journey to answer questions about the life of one of Queensland’s early playwrights, George Landen Dann who came to prominence in 1931 when he won the Brisbane Repertory Theatre playwriting competition with the play In Beauty it is Finished. Dann later became one of Australia’s leading playwrights. Critics, publishers and directors (Brisbane, 1977; McCallum, 2009, Rees, 1973; Rowbotham, 1962) have long argued that Dann’s work deserves greater recognition. This script examines events from the time of a 1930s scandal, making links to events from his final years and the significance of the work of an Honours student who wrote her thesis about him. The researcher’s own questioning frames the investigation, creating a Readers Theatre style of documentary script drawing on evidence from interviews, newspaper clippings, letters and other documents in the Fryer Library collection at the University of Queensland. ' (Publication abstract)

'Night bus is a creative exploration of relationship between the screenplay, affect and bodies. The short film script sees a re-imagining of contemporary, real life events to produce a dramatic narrative concerned with themes of public violence, individual intervention and responsibility. Following on from research into the affective dimensions of cinema, this has been written as a means to explore the conditions that encourage the production of bodily sensation at a conscious and unconscious level within the screenplay itself. I have sought an answer to the question of how the screenwriter’s description of material gives rise to a visceral response in the reader, which may also be reflected in a resulting film text. My screenwriting focuses on the creative use of narrative content and the description of aesthetic dimensions such as colour, light, sound, movement, rhythm and texture to affect the reader.' (Publication summary)

'Lola’s a woman on the edge. In fact, she’s gone over the edge, but she’s not quite sure where she’s landed. It could be the Hudson River, off the edge of Manhattan, or it might be considerably further. The only thing that’s clear is that nothing will ever be the same again. A foiled suicide attempt? Or the beginning of a slow bathtub to Australia? Leaving the familiar may not be as easy as it looks, but Lola’s going to give it a hell of a try. This work brings together writing for performance and feminist solo performance as political and personal works of transgression in both academic and artistic terms. It’s textual body as a script is a fully-realised work of creative writing, and its prior (and potentially future) life as a performance bluerprint reminds readers of the dual nature of writing for performance, and of research creation – itself a deeply personal and creative act.' (Publication abstract)

'Motel chronicles is an investigation into Hassall’s preoccupation with a land/culturescape (Chaudhuri 2002) experiences. Set within the sceneographic framework of a motel, the play makes a claim for the value of atmospheric landscape as central to behaviours investigated within the fiction. The chorus of characters convey the stories secreted within the motel walls. Experimenting with form and style, the work is a heightened theatrical expressive experience. Motel chronicles harbours the detritus of society into a momentary refuge, hiding those who wish to be hidden. Inspired by the early dramatic works of Sam Shepard and the poetry of artists such as Penny Arcade, Fritz Hamilton, David Learner and Lisa Martinovic, who are identified as outlaw, renegade poets in The outlaw bible of American poetry (1999), Motel chronicles is a rock and roll psalm of faith and forgiveness.' (Publication summary)

'Chris Stringer is an investigative journalist who has been duped into doing a story, which conceals the identity of a murderer. In attempting to find the truth, he is dragged into a web of business and political corruption. Stringer is a six-part television novel with each chapter being a one-hour episode. Episode 1 establishes the key characters and the core dramatic question; who killed Gary Morley? Stringer uses a novelistic approach to develop a multi-episode high-end television drama. This prose text utilizes literary, cinematic and theatrical elements inherent within the high-end format to present multiple storylines and complex characterisation. Through the creative writing process Stringer extends the traditional skeletal approach to series development by framing the drama as a television novel. The outcome for this approach is twofold; firstly as a way of developing a high-end narrative with complex characters, themes and counter themes and secondly as a new way of valuing the work of the screenwriter by removing it from the industrial hierarchy of current script development and retaining the screenwriter’s original authorial voice in book form.' (Publication abstract)

'This pilot webisode opens with an interview between two women, a filmmaker and an entertainment reporter. This is revealed to be a scene from a comedy film by rising Hollywood star Marty Madden – who exists in a world where our familiar gender roles are reversed. Marty in turn has reversed the roles of his world, thus presenting us with a version of the world we know as if it were an imagined satire. The context is the opening night of a Men’s Film Festival, the brainchild of organiser Andy Lederman, whose journey through the week of his festival provides the arc of the series. Mounting the Men’s film festival is set in a world where male filmmakers bristle at being called ‘male filmmakers’, where men are tired of being asked how they balance work and family and where women might take their privileged position for granted. As part of wider doctoral research into female perspectives in screen comedy, particularly the relationships between comedy, point-of-view and gender in dominant screenwriting models, this script speaks to the satirical device of using gender switch narratives, and puts into practice scholarly questions around the benefits and limitations of this approach.' (Publication abstract)

'This script combines stage and television story-telling styles to investigate how we tell and how we receive ‘the truth’ in different mediums. The script juxtaposes interior monologues, duologues and performance workshop scenarios to convey the plot, which centres on the role of performance as a data-gathering tool for a fictional research project. Unlike in research, character positionality is intended to provoke questions of credibility to illuminate the risks generated worlds of memory and its re-enactment are blurred. The first draft of the script was designed to stimulate discussion on the ethical challenges inherent in performed research within a cash-strapped research environment. The additional content included in this draft reflects both the interest in the issues the script raised and the interest in ‘Maxine’ particularly. To accentuate the thematic concern of dramatic truth, all the stories in this draft, as opposed to the script’s over-arching scenario, are from documentary sources in the public domain or from interviews with others working in different capacities with post-traumatic stress disorder. It is our intention to question the dynamic relationship between authenticity, engagement and story content. Therefore the script deliberately strays from naturalism to test the relationship between believability and mode of story delivery.' (Publication abstract)