Nine works waiting to be written

See also comic-material-short-skits

Middle...a play about the quiet desperation of middle age, of a spreading middle, of striving to say unseen in the midle and simultaneously wanting to be seen, about the deflation of illusion and desire and hope
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A science fiction story where genetic engineering goes horribly wrong, with grave ecological consequences, a paranoid scientist,
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Theme: the notion of agency


Mr X was walking home from the video shop, lonely and confused and bored, when he saw a group of drunken youths laying ito a homeless man. He was wondering what to do when someone smashed into him and almost knocked hom over, and a large man burst into the fray and tried to protect the homeless man. The youths set about the stranger, one of them hitting him witha beer bottle, and soon the stranger lay nexyt to the homeless man, bleeding and concussed. Mr X waited til the youths seemed to have gone, and then called an ambulance. When he heard the ambulance siren he scuttled off, not wanting to have to go to the police station and answer questions or have to fill in endless paper work, because he had to get home and feed his cat and do some work, or perhaps have a break from work and do his course

At the moment Mr X worked as a subeditor, but the work was boring. Before being a sub-editor Mr X had worked as a tele-marketer selling "cheap holidays" where the hotels recouped their cut price room rates at meal time, and before that selling diet mik shakes..
He had got the job as a sub editor - quite by chance. Before that he had worked at a nursery but had ben fired for negligence. Mr X was not sure what he wanted to do in the long term. he had also been seeing a women, a 33 year old divorcee, but was not sure how he felt about her. Mr X wanted to feel certain about something - that was one of his biggest wants. His mother wanted him to get a profession and so he had taken her advice and registered for a course in network enginering His divorcee friend said she thought he was good at fixing thoings, so

Mr X joined in the crowd, terrified they might turn oo him. Death to Apartheid Israel he chanted, along with the crowd, death to the Jews. Hit ler was right shouted the man next to him. Hitler was right, repeated Mr X mechanically, and hoped he was saying it with enough venom.

THE PROBLEM OF THE ACTIVE PROTAGONIST. Make up your mind snapped the man, I haven't got time too stand here all day. A bad decision is much better than no decision he said, and stepped off the pier. I'l l have the vanilla he said. It turned out to have human excrement in it.

Mr X wasn't sure if he should take the bus or the train into work. Mr X wasn't sure if he should leave his girlfriend or stay with her. he liked the sex but he disliked her long rambling conversatoions about her friends and troubles at work. Mr X wasn't sure if he should discus this with her or not. Sometimes he tried to but the tears that gathered in her eyes made him retreat. Why don't you see a psychologist, said his GP, when he went to get some creme for his hemharoids, so he did. The psycholist listened politely, and then proceeded to describe a near death experience he'd once had. Mr X wasn't sure to say he didn't want to hear that or not. he wasn't sure if he should go back or not. One week he went back, one week he didn't. He missed the bus but accepted it philosophically. the chief sub berated him when he got to work.

Suddenly Mr X noiced he had a itchy chest. he couldn't locate the exact moment, it migt have been while he was looking for a clean shirt to wear to work and stopped to scratch his chest and notcied an angry weal there. Over the next few days the itch got worse and worse.

He could not stop thinking about the car. he stopped whenever he walked past oine parked in the street. he decided he had to have one. he had never been interested in cars before, but suddenly he became very interested.

WHY DOES A CHARACTER bECOME INTERESTED IN WHAT THEY ARE INTERESTED IN. WHY DO THY WANT WHAT WTHEY WANT. SURE WE TRACE THEIR FIGHT TO GET IT, THE RYTHM OF RTHEIR OBSTACLES AND SUCCESS, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VERY WANTS themselves? How did they arise? ids the mechanism mysterious or unremarkable??


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A group of young people with rods and nets and bottles of beer, off to lynch a few fish. After hanging the fish, they took turns photograph its once beautiful silvery but now dead body in their arms, then took turns mutilating the body, gutting it and...
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A visit to the inefficiency institute, where most South African waiters are trained. This important institute, establishd in 1962, has survived and even thrived in the post- Apartheid dispensation
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A stranger comes to Sydney and must negotiate the roads and the parking. he gets to an intersection and indicates left, but his passenger points out there is a sign saying no left turn. He cancels the indicator but notices a big no entry sign on the other side of the intersection. Desperately (cars are piling up behind him) he indicates right tun, but there is a big sign saying no right turn either. Where the f%^$k am i supposed to turn? he yelps, as the cars behind honk and curse. he crosses into the street, nearly gets hit by a V6 with P plates, and then takes a small diagonal street which ends, predicatble, in a dead end, facing the sea....he turns off the engine gets out, looks at the waves

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A one act play called Bemikreh, about a teacher, a troublesome student (to whom he is secretly attracted), a quarellsome neighbour, and a psychologist (the latter three all being related) - a dark comedy about the web that is woven to lay us bare
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A poetry collection called Pitzaei Bagrut (literally "wounds of adolescence", denotes pimples, metaphorically the wounds of growth, almost birth pains, the pain in the resistance to coming-of-age)

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'Typical' Ozzie bloke - working class, blue collar, delivery man, is sitting in the bar, sipping on his beer and telling his mates about this Jew school to which he had to deliver something to...his descriptions are intercut with visuals of what he is describing, his voice continues as VO
"they were all wearing big hats"
visuals of small children running around & screaming on the playground, some are playing cricket, all of them wear soft wide brimmed sun hats, ominous music plays on the soundtrack to underscore the sinister nature of these playground activities. Then he glimpses through a classroom some children saying prayers / making chanukiyot???? and his interpretation is again at striking variance with what we see on screen.
His mates ask him questions, which eggs him on to further invention and embroidery of the tale...


When I seek to change others or myself, I inhibit the change that is already happening effortlessly, by itself