Creating "HalfJar" using a practitioner-based enquiry

ABSTRACT This doctorate consists of an Exegesis, three scripts of HalfJar (an original six-part television screenplay) a Reflective Journal entitled UnCastable and examination of external feedback occurring from a Table Read and a Professional Script Analysis. Within this research I examined the way a Mixed Cultural Identity (Filipino Australian) might affect a playwrighting process and further how that playwrighting process might be pivoted to write a screenplay for television. Using an insider perspective as a conditioned practitioner, I noted the way creativity had occurred though the connection of myself with theatre companies and organisations and with other theatre-based individuals, writers and ‘gatekeepers’ and the resulting way that my practice was both enabled and constrained within this system. In addition to examining my writing processes using the reflective journal UnCastable, lived experiences were reflectively examined to enable a television screenplay. Original contribution to knowledge occurs in several ways. In examining my scriptwriting process as a person of MCI or Mixed Cultural Identity (a term I created, previously described as ‘Asian-Australian’ or ‘Eurasian’), I discovered that there appeared to be no other Australian MCI playwrights of my age and background highlighted within the Australian playwrighting domain. Similarly, the experience of an MCI playwright did not appear in the Australian playwrighting history I examined. In effect this was a gap in Australian playwriting. To help address this gap, furthering my original contribution to knowledge, I explored my practice and the process of using my playwrighting knowledge(both tacit and explicit) to write an original television screenplay. HalfJar is the story of a Mixed Cultural Identity girl attempting to begin her writing career inside a ‘hidden camera’ comedy television show. In writing this screenplay, I used Reflective Practice to extract and examine narrative from my own MCI lived experience. This led to further script writing findings. Discovering Reflective Practice could be used both in the writing of the creative artefact as well as in conjunction with the writing of a Reflective Journal, it emerges as a powerful tool of scriptwriting. Another finding of this research indicated the effectiveness of the newly created Reflective Scriptwriting Spiral. Through this method, I (and therefore other) playwright(s)/ scriptwriter(s) could reiteratively discern lived experience, transform this within a script, and through further reflection on that transformation, discover a narrative path forward through a written project such as HalfJar.