About Claire Haywood

 

I was born and educated in Perth, Western Australia. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Western Australia,  I moved to Berkeley,  California where I studied a Master of Arts in Drama at San Francisco State University. After living in Bologna, Italy for a year and giving birth to my daughter Tess, I returned to Australia where I performed in and directed over 25 plays,  and appeared all too briefly,  in a handful of tv dramas  -  E Street, Rafferty's Rules and GP.   I settled in Sydney because it was like San Fransisco with better weather and beaches.  It wasn't the small pond of Perth or the big smoke of the States but it proved to be the perfect place to find my voice as an actor/ writer/director/single mother in search of love, laughs, meaning etc, etc...  I married and produced two more children.

In 1989, I completed  the one year National Institute of Dramatic Art, Playwrights Studio. My first play, Dangerous Curve - an ambitious musical drama about growing up in the inner city and living on the dole was performed at The Performance Space in Sydney in 1987. The play featured a live band who also took acting roles, playing themselves. I co-wrote the lyrics with John Negroponte and Howard Shawcross. 

In 1991, I wrote Christmas Day – a black comedy about family relationships that come to a head when the mentally ill 50-something Grace goes AWOL from her nursing home and reunites with her estranged family for a traditional Christmas. Christmas Day received great crits and strong houses at the Q Theatre in Penrith in 1992 and at the Hunter Valley Theatre Company in Newcastle.
 Later that same year, my play Table For One? – a comedy satire about four characters stumbling through the singles scene, opened at the Hunter Valley Theatre Company in Newcastle. The play transferred to Sydney where it enjoyed a sell-out season at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney during the 1993 Festival of Sydney.  The play went on to tour regional theatre centres in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Canberra where it played to capacity houses. In 1991, I was commissioned by Jigsaw Theatre Company to write a play about teen suicide. It Couldn't Happen To Me premiered at the Australian Theatre Festival in Canberra in October 1991.

In 1992, I began writing for film and television.  My tv drama  credits include McLeods Daughters and I spent ten years working as a development writer, storyliner and editor for Southern Star, ITV, MC Films and Fox.  I also wrote and directed a number of short films. In 2006, I wrote directed and co-produced the 4-part series Taxi School for SBS television. 

I currently work as a writer and executive producer for factual television. Recent credits include: the ASTRA award winning 8-part series Kalgoorlie Cops, two series of the 2014 LOGIE AWARD winning 10-part  program Kings Cross ER,  the 10-part series Territory Cops and Gold Coast Cops. In 2014, I was privileged to write and produce Crash Test Mummies & Daddies - a bitterweeet doco series for the ABC about the ups and downs of first time parenting.  My latest 6-part documentary series Storm Season has taken me all over New South Wales chasing extraordinary weather events and telling the stories of the ordinary heroes of the SES who tackle the aftermath with cameraderie and goodwill.

My current project is a documentary feature - a joint venture with SEE Pictures - about a seventy year old Madam and her last loyal lady of the night and their fraught relationship as they battle to keep the doors of the oldest brothel in Kalgoorlie open. The Pink House is a Signature program film financed by Screen Australia.

Drama is still my passion and these days I find it in everyday life and non-fiction, but I will return. 

Table for One? published by Currency Press Australia is available from Wonderland Productions: claire@wonderlandproductions.com.au

Christmas Day is available from australianplays.org

"Christmas Day" a black comedy by Claire Haywood

Christmas Day

by

 Claire Haywood

Christmas Day is a black comedy, laced with the pain of estranged family relationships. It brings to the stage outrageous, flawed but loveable characters who push each other to the limits.

Two sisters come together to celebrate Christmas with their father and stepmother. The family reunion is thrown into chaos by the unexpected arrival of their mentally ill mother. Kate, a successful public figure, is forced to confront the past and her deepest fears. It is a play about suppression, emotional inheritance and letting go of the past.

"...a considerable achievement, both in its text and in its production. It's an Australian play soundly located in its culture and is universal in its themes." - The Sydney Morning Herald

"... a well-crafted situation comedy with a dramatic climax which may come as a surprise, even a shock... definitely worth seeing." - The Australian Jewish News

View excerpt and buy this play at australianplays.org

CAST: 4 F 2 M
AGES (32- 65)

Table For One? by Claire Haywood

A comedy that follows two men and two women as they stumble through the singles scene.

CAST:  2m 2f ( ages 20-35)

"I feel like I'm living in a war zone.  Women are getting madder and men are rushing off in  droves to bonding sessions. The whole scene terrifies me!" says Jenny, the successful magazine editor who has been hurt in relationships once too often.  After a disastrous night at a party she finds herself in bed with Nick, a teacher from Canberra, who has a penchant for 'conferencing' and an intriguing aura of mystery.

At  the same party, her art student neighbour Fran pairs up with Robert , an aspiring stand up comedian.  "Being male and thirty in the nineties is a nightmare!  Macho is retro, wimps are self-destructing faster that the rebirth rate, and gay just isn't everybody's scene" says Robert in his audition for a comedy spot in a nightclub.  

Table for One? follows these two separate relationships over the course of a year, from their breakthroughs to their breakdowns.  The male shortage: media myth or reality?  What has the sexual revolution really achieved?  His Pants For Her: a subversive marketing ploy designed to confuse and emasculate?  Laugh, cry and angst with Jenny, Nick, Robert and Fran as they stumble through the singles scene in this hilarious comedy about sexual politics.
 

" ... able to walk that fine line between funny and serious and it speaks to the me generation. I give this one ten out of ten. It really got the audience laughing, in fact the applause was thunderous. Really punchy. I would recommend this play to anybody. "      
Review by Tony Talbot, ABC RADIO.

Monologues from the play are published in Masterclass: Monologues for Men and Masterclass: Monologues for Women by Dean Carey (1995) Available from Currency Press, Australia.


Table For One? is available from Wonderland Productions.
Email: claire@wonderlandproductions.com.au

Cost:  AU$25- (standard postage included)

The Last Shift

My short noir thriller "The Last Shift" is screening at the Angry Film Festival in Melbourne. Starring Darren Sabadina, Anni Finsterer and Steve Rodgers, the film takes you on a tense ride through the streets of Sydney and explores the dark side of being a taxi driver. An antidote to my upbeat doco series, "Taxi School", I wanted to make a provocative thriller with a sinister twist.

Kulka - The Life and Times of Indigenous Activist Gordon Briscoe

"Kulka" is a 50 minute bio doc that celebrates the life and times of Dr Gordon Briscoe, a campaigner for basic human rights for Indigenous Australians, an activist, motivator, thinker, researcher, author, teacher and mentor. It is the inspirational story of an institutionalized Aborigine, interned in an ‘alien’ camp during the second World War with very little education, who struggled against the odds to achieve dignity and respect for himself and his people. His work as co-founder of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern in the 1970’s led him to initiate the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program conducted by the late Professor Fred Hollows - a program which opened the eyes of the world to the poverty and disease underlying the health problems of Indigenous Australians. As a Land Rights activist and the first Indigenous Australian to stand for federal parliament, Gordon travelled throughout the Northern Territory talking to communities about their rights as traditional owners. The intensely personal story of Gordon Briscoe’s journey as a boy once labeled a ‘ward of the state’ to a man who reclaimed his traditional family and cultural identity, is a powerful one that resonates with the ongoing struggle for self-determination facing Indigenous Australians today.

Broadcast on NITV on Foxtel
Written and Directed by Claire Haywood
Produced by Kingston Anderson
Co-Produced by Gordon and Norma Briscoe

DVD available from Ronin Films
www.roninfilms.com.au

Production stills from SBS documentary series Taxi School

Taxi School - a window into a multicultural world

Like so many television ideas, the idea for an observational documentary about a taxi school started as a conversation between friends. An artist friend had fallen on hard times. He wanted to continue to produce his own work and he needed a way to finance it so he enrolled in taxi school.
- I've lived in Sydney all my life, he said, I know this city inside out, it'll be a snap.
Six weeks later he found himself walking head down out of the Ministry of Transport office in Parramatta, having failed his first attempt at The Sydney Knowledge Test. It was back to taxi school for him.
He regaled me with stories of the classes. He was the only anglo in a room that bore a strong resemblance to a United Nations gathering. But instead of a map of the world, the room full of men pored over that bible of taxi training, The Street Directory.
- Wellington Street, Bondi to the Sydney Theatre Company, Millers Point. You have two minutes to find it. Go!, barks the trainer.
Thirty heads dive into thirty directories. Fingers of every shape, size and colour riffle through maps, turning pages in fast motion, tracing out the journey on pages and in their heads. An elated cry goes up.
-I've got it! The voice is heavily-accented. Its the round-faced Bangladeshi whose smile is permanent. His pride is palpable.
My Sydney-born friend feels slightly miffed that he has been pipped at the post by a guy who has lived in the country's biggest city for less than three months.
This is taxi school.
Motivation is high.
Street knowledge is the currency.
There are ticking clocks at every turn.
The quest for every trainee driver is to make money as quickly as possible. The fastest way into the work force in any major city is behind the wheel of a taxi.
The Sydney Knowledge Test is based on the infamously challenging London Knowledge Test, except that the Sydney metropolitan area is three times as large and the network of waterways makes falling off bridges and driving into harbourside cul de sacs a major hazard of map reading class.
The school is a family business and the patriarch at the helm is the man they call 'Mr Andrew', a Welsh immigrant with a wicked sense of humour who prides himself on turning out the best taxi drivers in Sydney. In Andrew's world 'Navman' is a dirty word. Andrew doesn't care where his students come from or how long they have been in the country, the taxi drivers he turns out are ambassadors for Australia and their street knowledge resides in their heads, not on the dashboard in a box. For Andrew, every airport pick-up is a unique opportunity for a cross-cultural exchange for his is the finishing school of taxi schools. He teaches cultural etiquette, sexual politics and how to avoid being mugged.
By the end of the conversation with my friend I am hooked. I want to know more about this urban subculture that we take for granted every time we get into a cab. I want to know the stories behind the eyes in the mirror that we see but know so little about, as we travel around this great cultural melting pot of a city. I set out with a microphone and a notebook to find out. That was two years ago.

The result is a four part series co-produced in 2009 by Screen Australia, Screen New South Wales, SBS Television and Wonderland Productions.

TAXI SCHOOL is distributed by SBS International.

Go to
http://www.wonderlandproductions.com.au