For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence on the R&D for their new show, Wolfgang and the Princess. That was a Very Good Thing.

This week I’m working with Aliki Chappel again on M.A.I.R.O.U.L.A and am delighted to say we now have a couple of showing dates :
- the first is on Thurs 23 May at Northern Stage in Newcastle, a well-formed half (ish) of the show as a taster
- the second, the whole thing, Friday July 5th at the Storey CIC in Lancaster

Monday 20th May I’m doing Off The Shelf at Black’s with Jan Woolf. It’s a Writer’s Guild gig, a lovely day (and lunch!), and there are a couple of places left if you’re quick …

Sunday 26 May I’m doing Sunday Papers Live

Sarah Jane (Rawlings) and I are having lots of meetings with venues and companies about Fun Palaces, we have almost 70 venues/companies/independents wanting to play and hope to be able to confirm the date and venue of (this) September’s Open Space to begin bringing it all together, in plenty of time for October 2014.

Murder, Marple and Me still has some tour dates to go before Jan comes home with it to London. There’s South Shields Customs House this week (if you go to either of the shows on Wednesday, do sing Jan happy birthday, it’s a Very Important Birthday); The Maltings, Berwick on Saturday 18th; Harrogate Theatre on 18th May; The Ambassadors on 11, 12, 18, 19 June, and finally – for this tour – South Hill Park Arts Centre 20 and 21 June.

The paperback of The Purple Shroud comes out on June 6th. Woo hoo.

Thurs 13 June I’m at the Northwich Literary Festival

21-23 June I’ll be in Florida for the Historical Novel Society Conference, for Writing About Women in History: Animating Their Times and Voices with writers Maryka Biaggio, Patricia Bracewell, Dolen Perkins-Valdez and brilliant agent Stephanie Cabot.

Then there’s a couple of days creative writing teaching for teachers in Spain with Trish Lee of the splendid Make Believe Arts, by then it will be time to prepare for a week at Live Theatre (making a show in a week as part of their continuing 40th birthday celebrations), and then another step in our Chaosbaby development, rehearsals, pubic workshops and pilot shows. More as we have it …

And I have (finally) finished the first draft of my new book – it took just under a year, which was a huge relief, given how much else I’ve been doing at the same time. And it’s why I am now going to bed so I can get up early and do an hour’s editing before rehearsals. Maybe see you at one of the above.

(well, first draft)

I’ve just finished the first draft of a new book. It’s my 14th book. It was written out of contract (ie, with no advance) and with no idea if anyone will buy it. I’ve done that a couple of times before, it’s actually remarkably freeing. Yes, writing in contract is great too – there’s money for a start!, but there’s also the fear that ‘they’ won’t like it, that ‘they’ might not get it, that ‘they’ might expect more/better/different from me. This has been sold to no-one and promised to no-one, I hope they’ll all like it. I’m really excited by it and have been since the idea first started bubbling up about 8 years ago. But I didn’t start writing it until last year because there wasn’t time and it wasn’t the right book. The Theodora books were the right books for the last 6 years. This is the right book for now.
Here’s what I want to say about it. If I can do this, write a draft (messy, needs lots of work, wants lots of work, but the basis, the STORY is there in 50 weeks’ work), then you can too.
I started this book in the last week of May 2012. As I said, I’d had the idea, been looking into the idea, been dreaming the idea for some years before. I had the great good fortune of being a Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library last May and had hoped to spend the whole time I was there researching a little, and dreaming a whole lot more. Circumstances conspired otherwise and I spent the first 3 weeks working 18 hour days to re-write a film script that had suddenly lurched back from the death it had died 7 years ago. I also wrote some blogs and taught 2 workshops, and gave one talk while I was there. Which left me the last week to start. So I had one week writing ‘full time’ on this new book idea.
And the rest of this past 50 weeks I have – launched a new book (The Purple Shroud), directed one play (with a newly burned-out theatre, no funding, and a producer unable to be in the same city as the show), worked on one other long-term theatre project once every month, taught two residential one-week writing workshops, taught several one-day workshops, started the Fun Palaces 2014 project (which probably means about 300 emails and at least 30 meetings in the past two months), written a load of blogs, written another draft of that film script, directed one short play, been in a few one-off shows, written one short play, re-directed a show from last year with a longer script before it goes on tour, and am currently directing two other theatre projects. And I’ve done a bunch of the other stuff all humans like to do like eat and drink and see friends and play with great nieces and nephews and do the garden and make jam and have a holiday and turn 50*.
I don’t mean this as “yah yah I’m so good at working” (though yes, I admit, I do LIKE to work, I really like it), I mean I might as well have another full time job as well as writing books. All the other writing and directing work I do probably does add up to a full-time job (always useful when writing a book out of contract). So when I say, in a blog, or in a workshop, that you too can write a (rough) first draft in 50 weeks, by writing 500 words a day – I mean it. I know it. I do it. You can do it too.

And now, the real work begins. Bring on the edit …

* no I don’t have kids. You do? Lucky you, you win. Have two years to write your book instead. Beryl Bainbridge did it, loads of my writer mates do it all the time, MOST of my writer mates do it all the time. Apparently it isn’t impossible.

Sometimes, when I tell people I grew up in New Zealand, they say “oh, I’d love to go there”. Sometimes they say they’ve been, and will then either say “oh, I’d love to go back” or they say “I found it really old fashioned”. To which I always reply, you can’t have been going to the right places in New Zealand. Sometimes they know it was the country that gave women the vote, first in the world, when they also created (equally importantly) universal suffrage. Sometimes people will know that New Zealand created the welfare state, or that New Zealand pioneered restorative justice. Sometimes they just know it’s a long way away. Which it is, from London. Not so far from Antarctica.
And sometimes, when people hear I grew up in New Zealand (and sometimes when NZers hear I grew up in Tokoroa), they insult me when they ask wasn’t it hard, as someone who was going to grow up to be gay and to be an artist. Wasn’t it hard not to be living where there were museums and art galleries and theatres and cinemas. And yes, those things are great (really, I don’t have a living without them!) but I’ve said on this blog before now that the greatest gift of growing up in Tokoroa was being in a multicultural community before it was trendy. Of knowing I was in a multicultural world before much of the rest of the world worked it out. (Admittedly, before some parts of NZ worked it out too!)

Today, NZ has made me prouder still. Aotearoa has made me prouder still. Aotearoa now has equal marriage. My home/nothome has legalised same sex marriage before the home/nothome I live in. How impressive.

And I know that there was a much bigger fuss in the UK media today, and I know that US media have plenty to talk about too, but I also know I have blog readers all over the world, and that even in the UK and the US, there are people interested in other news. So I wanted you to read this.
(Thanks to Sarah Jane Parton for sharing it with me.) It’s not too long, and it’s definitely worth reading all through.

Te Ururoa Flavell’s speech to NZ Parliament.
Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill

This is not the first time that Māori have encountered controversy around the concept of marriage
In 1888, the Supreme Court made a decision that has been described as “doubtful legally and deplorable socially’. That ‘doubtful’ and ‘deplorable’ decision was to reject the customary marriages that had existed mai rā anō – and to assume the marriage law of England took precedence. In fact the colonial law from another land was considered of such importance that the children of Maori customary marriages were now described as illegitimate.
Yet so significant was the status of customary marriages amongst our people, that they continued to be recognised for the purpose of succession to Maori land until 1951.
So when opponents of this Bill criticised a change to the definition of marriage as contravening our sacred traditions, I’d have to say, who’s traditions are we talking about?
And I want to bring a specific contribution to this house as proud uri of Ngāti Rangiwewehi. In 1849, Wi Maihi te Rangikäheke of Ngāti Rangiwewehi shared his knowledge of our atua in a publication, Ngā Tama a Rangi – and it is one of those stories I bring with me today.
You may have heard about Hinemoa and Tūtānekai – a story of love glorified by Victorian settlers with all the markings of romance. According to our tribal lore, Hinemoa, swam to Mokoia to be with her one true love.
I’m going to add to that story – and tell you instead about Tutanekai and Tiki. Before he married Hinemoa, Tūtānekai had a close male companion, Tiki. In a manuscript by 19th-century scholar Te Rangikāheke, Tūtānekai says to his father:
Ka aroha atu a Tutanekai ki a Tiki, ka mea atu ki a Whakaue.
Ka mate ahau i te aroha ki toku hoa, ki a Tiki.
Tūtānekai loved Tiki, and said to Whakaue
I am stricken with love for my friend, for Tiki.
Later Tūtānekai refers to Tiki as ‘taku hoa takatāpui’.
And so, from the wisdom of Ngāti Rangiwewehi, a new word was coined – takatāpui – defined in the Dictionary of the Maori Language compiled by missionary William Williams (1844) as ‘an intimate companion of the same sex’.
Takatapui is now used universally to describe people who might otherwise describe themselves as gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual or intersexual.
This history is set out by Māori academic, Dr Clive Aspin, in his analysis of Hōkakatanga – Māori sexualities.
The research tracked fast-forward to the early 2000s with the Māori Sexuality Project undertaken at Auckland University.
Many of the respondents in that research were able to recall examples of their kaumātua and kuia talking about people they knew who had a same-sex attraction. These people held positions of importance and status within their whānau and hapū. According to Dr Aspin, they were not rejected or marginalised, and were considered to be valuable members of their communities.
Talking about our history – our shared history in Aotearoa – is really important. We all know another painful history of discrimination, of prejudice, of homophobia.
Young people in such agony about the way they live their lives that suicide becomes their only option. People living in fear; in shame; scared of the harassment they have all too often experienced. And some of the lobbying every MP has endured over this last nine months has shown us the ugliness of stigma that has been hurled at our sister Louisa, and the meaning of this bill.
And so I urge us all to think deeply about the universal values of aroha, of commitment, of whakawhanaungatanga, trust, faith, hope. The values that we know best in the kaupapa tuku iho.
Two years ago Professor Piri Sciascia, who is Pro Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University told the crowd at the official opening of the 2nd Asia Pacific Out Games, that love and caring for each other, whether male to male or female to female and all shades inbetween has always been a part of Maori life, right from the union of Ranginui and Papatuanuku.
This kaumātua affirmed the reality of takataapui but also lay forth a challenge that our Maori history and cosmology make no judgment on who you should or shouldn’t love.
Whether it’s Tūtānekai and Tiki or Tutanekai and Hinemoa, what is fundamental is surely where we find love – love that can be all consuming; that lifts you to a higher plane; that makes every moment of infinite value.
Thank you Louisa for your courage; and to all of our colleagues who have shared their views, have spoken their truths and taken the time to think deeply about this issue.
As tonight’s third reading comes to an end I think about:
the tamariki and mokopuna who now know they don’t have to hide the fact there are two mums in their household; the parents who want to know that their son can marry the man of his dreams and they can all be out and proud on their special day; and all our whānau takatapui who celebrate tonight as the day in which history is made, in which their exceptional love – the love that endures all – is finally able to dare to say its name out loud.

********

Brilliant speech. I have swum many times facing Mokoia, we have a print of the lake and the island on our lounge wall. Now I have a new part of the story that goes with it.

And just in case that didn’t move you enough, have a look here …

waiata in parliament