writing on windfield 2017

writing on windfield 2017. . .

it is indeed my passion project. set in a small rural town in the central okanagan, it's a work of economic-fiction that tracks a small community in the aftermath of an economic collapse.

of course, it's a political story. in fact, in my first drafts i spent a lot of time looking back through a particular issue of the New Internationalist which had a brilliant comic that depicted the human consequences of the Latin American debt spiral. Indeed that comic was really at the root of my early political radicalization, so I'm reaching back to that core awareness of injustice and trying to repackage it and make it accessible to an audience.

in essence, it's a story that tracks a community of working class folks as they try to maintain their dignity and some semblance of control over their destiny in the face of some classic corporate land expropriation. naturally, they radicalize and fight the good fight. i'm really excited to be working with a character set that feels authentic (including kids, moms, dads, etc.) that a North American audience can really relate to as they engage in a land-based struggle.

while of course, there's a didactic interest in creating content that is potentially radicalizing, what is really making the project compelling to me is the way the characters are coming to life with complex inter-relationships and psychologies.

this project is really extending so far beyond political rhetoric to become a story about people caught in a difficult situation, making different difficult choices that are moderated by their temperaments in the world. at the end of the day, it's a story about human struggle.

starting the workshopping process with M yesterday i was thrilled to see how much the project started to come off  the page and how readily the world could expand and fill-out becoming cohesive.

in a sense, this is the project that i've always wanted to write. political and human, richly nuanced by the love, passions and limitations of it's characters.

best case, it's years away from being in a theatre. but, for me, the reward of making it will be worth the long haul it will take to get it there.

writing on windfield 2017