• 
• 
• 

Holding down a nine-to-five job at Dunedin District Court and pursuing his theatre career is a mission for Adam Goodall, but says it makes him use his time wisely.

In the latest interview in a series on creatives in New Zealand with multiple jobs, 24-year-old Adam tells us about his dreams to write and direct full-time.

"That doesn't mean I'd want it to be full-time forever, though; there's still so much to change in the criminal justice sector, to create a more equitable and rehabilitation-focused system, and that need to effect change continues to draw me to it."

Tell us about your day job (how long you’ve been doing it and why)?

I'm a Research Counsel at the Dunedin District Court, which basically involves me doing research for the local judiciary and court service. I've been there for a year after being drawn to the law by my interest in criminal justice and social reform. I am emphatically not a lawyer.

Tell us about your creative work when you're NOT doing your day job?

I write and direct theatre in Wellington and Dunedin. I'm a founding member of the Wellington theatre company Making Friends Collective, along with Johnny Crawford, Andrew Clarke, Tony Black and Flinn Gendall, and I produce plays under my own name as well.

How do you manage juggling both?

A lot of difficulty! I spent five years at university with the consequent oodles of free time, so it's been a mission adjusting to the rigorous timetabling forced on you by a nine-to-five work schedule. However, it does help improve your discipline as a writer - you become far more aware of the precious little time you have available outside of creative stuff and (try to) use it more effectively.

Tell us about your creative background.

I've always been involved in theatre - musicals at high school, the Centrepoint Theatre Basement Company in 2007, Young and Hungry Festivals over the years - but I only started taking it seriously as a Thing I Could Do in 2012, after being commissioned to write Deadlines for the 2012 Young & Hungry Festival of New Works. Up until then it had always been on the periphery due to my (slightly deluded) desire to pursue the heady world of film making.

What has inspired you? Who or what keeps you going?

It's a hoary cliche, but the people around me. There's incredible artists working in Wellington, Auckland, and Dunedin theatre, and their productions and success drive me to diversify, to challenge myself, to make things people just aren't making. I wouldn't have gone so far down the rabbit hole if it wasn't for those artists keeping me on my toes, constantly forcing me to rethink what makes something fresh and entertaining.

Would you like your creative work to be full-time (why/why not)?

It would be a dream to take Making Friends Collective full-time. I'd love to be able to tour, to make entertaining, high-quality theatre that can be consumed by people across the country; I'd love even more for that to be sustainable. That doesn't mean I'd want it to be full-time forever, though; there's still so much to change in the criminal justice sector, to create a more equitable and rehabilitation-focused system, and that need to effect change continues to draw me to it.

What would help you achieve this?

It's easy to say 'more money'; it's difficult to say how that would happen, and I'm not in a position to speak authoritatively, being new to the field. I do know that there's no silver bullet - not crowdfunding, not government funding, not private grants.

If you had the chance to start your creative career or path again, what would you do differently?

Take theatre seriously earlier - take more papers, make more connections, go to more shows, read more plays. I often feel five years behind everyone else working in theatre because I just don't have the background knowledge, the full set of tools necessary to do everything I want.

What advice would you give to someone pursuing a similar creative career or pathway?

Go to shows, talk to the people who make what you want to make, research what's going on in London, New York, Chicago, Berlin. Most of what I've learned has come from watching local shows and sussing out what works with friends; the rest of it has come from RSS feeds.

Tell us about your recent or upcoming creative projects.

Right now I'm directing Rageface, a sharp-tongued black comedy about the internet and the thin barrier between it and real life. It is playing at the Playhouse Theatre as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival, March 13-16 at 7:45pm. In April, my radio play We Can Destroy It For You Wholesale will be performed at BATS Theatre as part of the second season of my accomplice's Witching Hours podcast. I'll also be presenting a work in May as part of Fortune Theatre's 4 x 4 Young Playwrights' Initiative, and I'll be directing Gavin McGibbon's Stand-Up Love in June as part of Counterpoint Theatre's 2014 Dunedin season.

What’s your big idea for 2014?

To write, to direct, to not stop making stuff. I would tell you more, but there's some surprises in there I don't want to spoil for everyone.

* * *

Adam Goodall is a 24 year old court worker and part-time writer, director and critic from the Manawatu. He has written three plays - Deadlines, which was produced as part of Wellington's Young & Hungry Festival of New Works 2012; Rageface, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Playmarket Playwrights b4 25 competition; and Hole, which was produced as part of the anthology Stages of Fear at BATS Theatre in 2013. Adam is a founding member of Wellington's Making Friends Collective, a theatre company nominated for Best Newcomers at the New Zealand Fringe Awards 2013. Adam also writes for The Wireless, The Pantograph Punch and Gameplanet.

Adam has an LLB / BA(Hons - Film) from Victoria University of Wellington, and has been working as a Research Counsel at the Dunedin District Court since January 2013. He is not (yet) admitted to the High Court, but recently completed obligatory legal professionals education.