Brooks isn\u2019t certain where his obsession began, but thinks his speech impediment has a part to play. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow I experience time warps greatly,\u201d he explains. \u201cWhat\u2019s probably two to three seconds for you feels like half a minute up here,\u201d he says, tapping his brain with his finger. \u201cSo I have a very skewed perception of time. If I\u2019m taking the time to say something, to work through the impediment, it\u2019s probably because I\u2019ve thought about it, and it\u2019s \u2018worth listening to\u2019,\u201d he says, making air quotations with his fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there are times when I\u2019ve encountered a block and just gone, \u2018Nah, it\u2019s fine. I don\u2019t care anymore. Just move on with the conversation\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Playwright and dramatist Sam Brooks.<\/p>\n
Alongside the ever-ticking clock, Brooks\u2019 other great motivator was his desire to see more queer stories on Aotearoa\u2019s stages. When he couldn\u2019t find them, he decided to write them himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that there weren\u2019t any, but I didn\u2019t see a lot of queer plays or queer playwrights. I felt that theatre, for whatever reason, was lagging way behind the other arts, so I was just like, \u2018Okay, I\u2019ll write some queer plays then\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first play to get widespread attention was 2014\u2019s Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys, a queer, coming-of-age story that received critical recognition, toured nationally, and has since found an ongoing life with high schools and university theatre groups around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an intensely autobiographical play that I wrote when I was very young,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople still mention it to me every other week. They must have a very different idea of who I am based on that play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Veint (left) and Calum Gittins in Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys.<\/p>\n
Not that he minds. He long ago accepted assumptions would be a byproduct of his autobiographical writing. But as he\u2019s grown older and moved further away from the young man who wrote it, he\u2019s begun to reflect on identity, his work and how others perceive him.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the two industries I work in, it\u2019s rare that I actually get to introduce myself as a blank slate. People have usually encountered my name in some context before they meet me. I wrote over a thousand pieces at The Spinoff alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says people still approach him to debate a 2019 feature he wrote that ranked all 151 original Pok\u00e9mon. The site dubbed it his \u201cmagnum opus\u201d, but he barely remembers writing the piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were to do that list again now, it\u2019d be so different,\u201d he laughs, before returning to his point. \u201cBut it\u2019s an example of how I\u2019ve become so detached from my name, from the name \u2018Sam Brooks\u2019. I\u2019ve really had to come to terms with, \u2018That\u2019s how I saw myself at that point in time, but it\u2019s also how people are going to see me now\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a young storyteller finding his feet, he filled his plays with self-insert characters. Still, he took precautions not to reveal all his life\u2019s secrets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a character is my avatar in a show, I\u2019ll put at least one concrete thing in there that is absolutely not me,\u201d he states, giving the example of having a character drink red wine instead of white.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like such an arbitrary thing,\u201d he says, \u201cBut so long as in my brain I have plausible deniability, then that\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
He muses for a second, then says, \u201cIf someone read all of my plays, I\u2019m sure they could do so much psychological analysis about who I really am. But no one will do that, so I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Riding in Cars was his early autobiographical success, his big hit was a sharp handbrake turn from that style. His 2018 play Burn Her was an award-winning, female-led political thriller about ambition, scandal and the price of power.<\/p>\n
Miriama McDowell played idealistic politician Aria in Sam Brooks’ high-stakes play Burn Her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt put me on the map,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I were to die in the morning, heaven forbid, Burn Her would be the first play after my name, even though I think I\u2019ve done plays that are better and more exciting. Not to discredit the play, I can acknowledge it\u2019s very good because people have said so, but I think it was the right play at the right time. It spoke to a lot of things that were happening in the world at the time, but were not in my brain when I wrote it. But it\u2019s become the standard that I now have to meet every time I put something on.\u201d<\/p>\n
He describes it as \u201ca very traditional play,\u201d in a way that could be read as dismissive, but I suspect is factual. In the same way he\u2019s not the 20-year-old who wrote Riding in Cars, he\u2019s no longer the 25-year-old who wrote Burn Her.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I wrote it, I realised I couldn\u2019t do another play in that form better than it, or that would be received better than it. It\u2019s not a pressure anyone has ever actually said to me, so it\u2019s probably just me reading into things, but I feel everyone wants that play again and it\u2019s not going to happen. I never want to do the same thing twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
“I never want to do the same thing twice,” Sam Brooks said when reflecting on his previous work.<\/p>\n
Where he once mined his life, he now sees the value in \u201cconstructed fiction\u201d, even if this has him philosophically grappling with the widely accepted notion that something born out of lived experience is automatically more authentic than something entirely conjured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this idea that you have to put all of your real self into your work to have worth or meaning. But autobiographical work doesn\u2019t necessarily offer that all the time. I don\u2019t live a very interesting life now, but it\u2019s really happy,\u201d he says, before wryly adding, \u201cAnd really happy people don\u2019t tend to make for very good plays in my experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, he\u2019s writing about people whose stories haven\u2019t been told. His upcoming play She\u2019s Sold follows two middle-aged women of colour, and he\u2019s working on a play about queer senior citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I write a new play, I want it to be something that I haven\u2019t done before. I want to build on my craft, explore the form and bring something different to an audience. I really challenge myself to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He gives an example he\u2019s clearly tickled by.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m putting 45 actors on the Basement stage for a single night in December in a meta response to Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys,\u201d he says with a grin. \u201cIt\u2019s called Riding in Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys with (Mostly Straight) Boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
From someone whose eyes seem set on new horizons, it\u2019s a rare look back at not just one of his most enduring works, but also at the person he once was. It also plays with the question that\u2019s followed him since his early days: how much of himself does he honestly put on stage?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you show people 5% of yourself, they\u2019ll be curious about the remaining 95,\u201d he replies. \u201cBut if you show them 60%, they won\u2019t ask about the remaining 40. I give people enough so that they don\u2019t ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a great answer, but I sense there\u2019s more there and pose one final question: What are you hiding, Sam Brooks?<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a person, I\u2019m actually a pretty open book,\u201d he says nonchalantly.<\/p>\n
Then he laughs loudly and says, \u201cBut there are a few key pages that are glued shut.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brooks isn\u2019t certain where his obsession began, but thinks his speech impediment has a part to play. \u201cHow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3222,27245,6757,20412,36426,156,71,4748,8241,57440,424,1362,5829,5969,13617,111,139,69,90,35478,67392,57390,57441,83715,5970,18460,5433,6182,26157,64460],"class_list":["post-653162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-autobiography","tag-beyond","tag-bringing","tag-brooks","tag-drawn","tag-entertainment","tag-from","tag-hiding","tag-himself","tag-karl","tag-life","tag-made","tag-many","tag-much","tag-name","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-plays","tag-playwright","tag-prolific","tag-puschmann","tag-queer","tag-really","tag-sam","tag-stage","tag-stories","tag-words","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}