Interview: Jeff Szusterman, author of 'Duffy and the Bullies'
Kia ora Jeff. What an amazing initiative Duffy Books in Homes is! Can you tell us a bit about how it works, where it began, and how this book fits in with the theatre programme? Is this the first publication that Duffy has adapted from a play?
Duffy Books in Homes is about ensuring everyone in Aotearoa has equal access to books. Duffy does this by providing books to over 100,000 kids throughout the country 3 times a year. These are books that the kids have selected. They own them, and they’ve chosen them to read.
Our theatre show, along with Duffy Role Models (celebrity ambassadors) reinforces the message that underpins all our decisions: It’s cool to read and it’s cool to achieve. The success of the book giving would be very difficult to govern without the wraparound support and promotion that both the theatre and the role models offer. If a kid needs convincing that a book is worth reading, it’s our job to provide that evidence.
The first Duffy School was Camberley Primary School in Hastings. After a visit from Alan Duff (author of ‘Once Were Warriors’), the programme was established to fill the need of booklessness in some homes.
‘Duffy and the Bullies’ is a graphic novel adaption of our 2018 play ‘Duffy and the Cloak Bay Bully’ by Lauren Jackson. That show was performed 500 times and, as is the nature with theatre, it came to a natural end when the tour wrapped up. This graphic novel gives that story a further life so that it can continue to benefit kiwi kids. This is the first time we have embarked on book publication and we plan on it being the first in a series! Thirty years is a long time for a programme like Duffy to be around. Is the aim another thirty years?
Every charity’s goal should be to make itself obsolete by completing its mission and thereby solving the problem that it was created to combat.
If this gap still exists 30 years from now, we hope that we will still be around, making an impact and bridging the gap in whichever way makes sense for the kiwi kids of 2054! Duffy and the Bullies tackles a very topical and important issue for schools and kids. Was it difficult to write? Did you need to steer clear of didactism to create a good story? It can be a bit tricky.
When I started with Duffy Theatre I installed a kaupapa whereby a group of us, including the show’s writer, Lauren Jackson, and Duffy Theatre producer, David Rumney, visit a Duffy school and take a group of students through a question matrix designed to look for themes, patterns, and topics of interest for our (eventual) audiences. We do this each year when planning for the next year’s show.
2018 yielded bullying as an issue. This was also in confluence with some of the same issues my daughter was going through at school, and I was drawn into. I was underwhelmed by her school’s response. These elements became grist to the mill for the writing and development.
Within our shows, reading is often a solution to our issue at hand. So, the book Duffy was reading at that moment (he’s forever in the zeitgeist!) could provide the seeds of consciousness for the characters who read it.
In the contemporary (A) story, all the bullying is immediate and recognisable therefore I could stay free of didactic contrivance and overt moralism. I reserved anything like that for (the B story) the book-within-the-book, ‘The Hallowe’en Hassler’. This story acts as a mirror for its various readers, and the resulting situational awareness provokes these characters to alter their behaviour and take responsibility for their actions. There is also a further layering of reading when one of the minor characters “reads” the face of a child, and it prompts him to address his behaviour with his own child. This is further proof as to why graphic novels are great books to read! There are layers of reading within the form.
Is Duffy your favourite character in the book/plays?
Duffy is our eponymous hero. He’s twelve years old, Māori, and a reading superhero. Within the theatre shows, Duffy is predicated by who we cast each year in the role. Thus he has a different energy and flavour each time.
However, in the graphic novel, we had a blank-er slate available to us. It was a team effort to describe him, but I was always sure he is “the best of us!” He can be smart, funny, kind, sporty, the captain of the First XV and the Debating Team, a helper, who likes nothing more than curling up in a beanbag in the school library with a book. He always seems to be on beam with the issue at hand and has the tenacity, wit, and resolve to solve the puzzle, and aid those in need! A True Hero.
Yeah. He’s my fave. Although I do very much enjoy Marama and her dad’s relationship in this book. How did the illustrator collaboration with Ant Sang develop as you worked on the book? How does it feel to see the play worked into a book?
Ant was always my first choice for the art. I am so happy that he came on board. We had worked together before and he was familiar with Duffy as I invited him in to illustrate our set for our ‘Duffy Meets a Coggen’ show in 2020. When I was pitching the idea of the graphic novel I asked Ant to mock up five pages of a 10-page indicative script I’d written. Boom!
From there we developed the character of Duffy first and foremost. Like I said, I had clear ideas about the character (having spent so many years developing him in the rehearsal rooms) and we took input from the leaders at Duffy Books in Homes. (They’re so thrilled with our Duffy, they’ve rebranded the organisation to reflect him!)
The work flowed smoothly. I am a nascent graphics writer (longtime reader though) and Ant is a true pro and deeply experienced. I cribbed a scripting layout from a graphic novelist I admired and it worked for us, ie. Ant could interpret clearly what I had written. I would defer to his experience whenever he offered something other than what I had written up.
I took him for a drive around a neighbourhood I felt was indicative of Duffy’s suburb, Awatea. We discussed palette and tone. It was a delight, honestly.
And to see something that I had staged with two casts of six actors, a 45-minute show with a heap of beautifully designed moving parts and bespoke sound; to see all that transform into an 88-page comic book… it is one of the best things I have ever done. Will there be more books in the Duffy series? What is your next project? Excited to hear more about the programme’s next steps.
It has always been the plan to bring more Duffy novels to bookshelves everywhere. I have developed and directed eleven shows with Duffy, so there is plenty of story to work with. I know which would be the next story.
I work in the live performance sector mostly. Currently I am working on ‘Spartacus: House of Ashur’ which is shooting in Auckland. It is a far, far cry from the world of Duffy!
We are also starting our development process for the 2025 Duffy show later this month. And I am putting together a proposal for the next Creative NZ funding round for a mature-readers graphic novel, based on a story I have had kicking around in my brain for far too long. Writing the Duffy novel was such a delight I really just want to write more…
