Clash inspires tutors
An argument between screenwriters has turned into Circa’s latest production, Mike and Virginia, which opened this week.
Kapiti screenwriter Nick Ward wrote the play with Kathryn Burnett, inspired by an argument over who was the better screenwriting tutor.
‘‘We were researching a project set in the South Island and on the way we started having a very intellectual argument about whose students like who the best,’’ said Ward.
‘‘It became this really funny argument. We were there in the car for four hours, and by the time we finished the drive . . . we both went ‘ this would make a terrific play’.’’
Ward, known for films Stickmen and Second-Hand Wedding, is in Auckland working on the script for the third season of the television show Nothing Trivial.
Also a writer on television’s The Almighty Johnsons, he has two film scripts in the works and is commuting to Australia to work on an undisclosed project.
Burnett has spent 18 years in the television and film industry, writing for television shows including The Strip, The Cult, and as story editor on 2011 film Love Birds, for which Ward wrote the script.
Mike and Virginia is Ward’s first play, and debuted at the 2011 New Zealand International Comedy Festival in Auckland. It won best play at the 2012 Script Writers Awards New Zealand.
The play is ‘‘a romantic comedy about romantic comedies’’, Ward said.
‘‘It’s about two film lecturers, who know how romantic comedies work and how films work and how storytelling works. The audience is treated to almost like little lectures about how romantic comedy works, and then they’re seeing a romantic comedy play out in front of them, but, of course, we play a few tricks along the way.’’
Mike and Virginia,