WRITING I'LL BE FINE
When I was sixteen I went to see Eli Kents’ play ‘The Intricate Art of Actually Caring’ at Downstage Theatre in Wellington. That same evening I read a copy of Vivienne Plumbs play script ‘The Cape’. Before this especially angsty and cultural evening I hadn’t really considered theatre as a place where young people’s stories were told with honesty. These two pieces introduced me to a side of the New Zealand theatre scene I had (ignorantly) assumed didn’t exist. Here was a place where a theatre community thrived off giving young people the chance to tell their stories. This really excited me.
After seeing/reading these plays I knew that was what I wanted to do. Connect with young people the way these pieces connected with me; in a theatrical, face-to-face, intimate and visceral way. Provide the comfort of ‘you are not alone’ to the disillusioned young people in this country that don’t have much else besides 80’s John Hughes movies to serve their angsty needs. And so, during numerous conversations with my friends as we prepared to leave high school, we found a common ground; the fear of our inevitable limbo, the liminal transitional period between youth and adulthood. And thus my idea for ‘I’ll Be Fine’ was sparked.
I liked the idea of the road trip as a metaphor for direction in young people’s lives; an exhausted concept (Intricate Art, The Cape), but a powerful one with endless room to make it your own. With a road trip story there are so many opportunities to create arcs, change, and self-discovery for your characters, as well as creating that episodic, constant movement that feels like stillness, that all young people feel at some point. A road trip is meant to be cathartic, as is theatre, so in the immortal words of the taco ad ‘why not both?!’.
At the age of seventeen, in my final year of high school, I started to write the show and create Jude and Brian. The writing process was strange and intimidating. I felt like I was trying to be a documentary filmmaker, observing and living the life of a young person dealing with the anxieties that are being tapped into in the play. But when high school came to an end it was time to face the world, so to speak, and I lost that sense of connection I once had with ‘I’ll Be Fine’.
During my first year of university I was diagnosed with depression. At first this kind of felt like isolation via a label, but it didn’t take long for me to realize just how much this existed in the lives of others around me, noticed especially amongst myself and friends. It was there and none of us were really talking about it. This is where I went back to that old word document saved as ‘my pretentious, angsty ramblings or: (I’ll be fine draft)’. I knew the story I wanted to tell now and sat down, the night before an assignment was due, and completed my new draft of the show.
I sent the script to James Russell, whom I did an audition with for a show in Wellington. We were both studying the same course and were both feeling a similar sense of disillusionment towards our current place and our wants for the future. He came into a lecture the day after reading the script, told me he loved it, and I asked him if he wanted to try making it happen. He was on board.
And so we re-found the great Ryan Knighton, who actually ran the audition James and I were in together in Wellington, and we asked him to read ‘I’ll Be Fine’. He came on board, polished the script with me and took on the duties as our director.
Like Jude and Brian, the three of us started on a journey creating this show. Learning by doing and loving every minute of it.
- Ben Wilson
After seeing/reading these plays I knew that was what I wanted to do. Connect with young people the way these pieces connected with me; in a theatrical, face-to-face, intimate and visceral way. Provide the comfort of ‘you are not alone’ to the disillusioned young people in this country that don’t have much else besides 80’s John Hughes movies to serve their angsty needs. And so, during numerous conversations with my friends as we prepared to leave high school, we found a common ground; the fear of our inevitable limbo, the liminal transitional period between youth and adulthood. And thus my idea for ‘I’ll Be Fine’ was sparked.
I liked the idea of the road trip as a metaphor for direction in young people’s lives; an exhausted concept (Intricate Art, The Cape), but a powerful one with endless room to make it your own. With a road trip story there are so many opportunities to create arcs, change, and self-discovery for your characters, as well as creating that episodic, constant movement that feels like stillness, that all young people feel at some point. A road trip is meant to be cathartic, as is theatre, so in the immortal words of the taco ad ‘why not both?!’.
At the age of seventeen, in my final year of high school, I started to write the show and create Jude and Brian. The writing process was strange and intimidating. I felt like I was trying to be a documentary filmmaker, observing and living the life of a young person dealing with the anxieties that are being tapped into in the play. But when high school came to an end it was time to face the world, so to speak, and I lost that sense of connection I once had with ‘I’ll Be Fine’.
During my first year of university I was diagnosed with depression. At first this kind of felt like isolation via a label, but it didn’t take long for me to realize just how much this existed in the lives of others around me, noticed especially amongst myself and friends. It was there and none of us were really talking about it. This is where I went back to that old word document saved as ‘my pretentious, angsty ramblings or: (I’ll be fine draft)’. I knew the story I wanted to tell now and sat down, the night before an assignment was due, and completed my new draft of the show.
I sent the script to James Russell, whom I did an audition with for a show in Wellington. We were both studying the same course and were both feeling a similar sense of disillusionment towards our current place and our wants for the future. He came into a lecture the day after reading the script, told me he loved it, and I asked him if he wanted to try making it happen. He was on board.
And so we re-found the great Ryan Knighton, who actually ran the audition James and I were in together in Wellington, and we asked him to read ‘I’ll Be Fine’. He came on board, polished the script with me and took on the duties as our director.
Like Jude and Brian, the three of us started on a journey creating this show. Learning by doing and loving every minute of it.
- Ben Wilson