Despite only recently falling into writing for the stage by accident, Tauranga man Les Geraghty has gone on to win a local playwriting competition.
The 67-year-old says the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 finally gave him a chance to write. 'I've been rushing all my life,” says Les. 'I've always wanted to write scripts…not for the stage but more for the screen.”
'So I thought: ‘I'm going to give this a go while we're locked down' and so I set aside a couple of hours every day.”
Les had no idea what he was doing at first. 'I bought a few great screenplay books and did a lot of YouTube training.”
He also signed up to an Auckland zoom training course to get writing-wise and before he knew it he had written his first film script. 'It did take me about nine months to write,” says Les.
'I've since joined the Film Bay of Plenty Screenwriters group who are a fun, supportive team.”
Positive mistake
During this time, Les also made a mistake with one of his training bookings. 'I signed up for what I thought was a screenwriting training for eight weeks and it was actually playwriting training for eight weeks,” says Les with a laugh. 'I went ahead with it. It was all on zoom during our second lockdown…it's amazing what you can do during a lockdown.”
As a result, Les wrote a 20-minute play called ‘No body to be found' – a story filled with drama, despair, deceit and death. Les says the story 'builds to a climax where double deceit ends in murder, but of whom?
'I don't know how I ever came up with the whole storyline but as Gary Henderson [a script writing teacher] said: ‘If you've got great characters, the characters will write the story for you' – and that's what happened,” says Les.
‘Absolutely brilliant'
Entering his play script in 16th Avenue's competition ‘Playwriter 2022', Les has been awarded winner of the senior category of the competition. Les says at the competition's award ceremony, four actors did a read through of his play and acted it out. 'What I loved was that good actors just make a script come alive and it was absolutely brilliant.”
The accidental playwright will now be working on his script for Playmarket New Zealand's national playwright competition. 'I'll be up for the 2023 competition so I've got time to work more on deceit!” says Les. 'I've since written two film scripts and one other short film and have included a twist for each ending – it really gives me a buzz.”