Biography
Works:
Novels
Short
Stories
Plays
Poems
Film
Scripts
Essays
Educational
Obras
traducidas al castellano
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Paul
David Adkin is a British born writer (Long Eaton, 1958) with a degree in Drama
and English (Rusden State College). He writes novels, plays, poetry, short
stories, essays and screenplays. He has also written educational materials for
books in Spain (Santillana) and Australia (Addison-Wesley Longman).
He grew up in Australia and, after graduating
in 1979, worked as a playwright, director and actor. In the following three
years four of his plays were produced: “Afterbirth”, “The Jack and Jill
Story”, “The Rabid Cow Murders” and “Schadenfreude”. Of these “The
Jack and Jill Story” was the most successful. It has been published (Australian
Nouveau Theatre, 1981) and performed in three countries. In 1982 he was a writer-in-residence
at the Anthill Theatre in Melbourne, but in 1983
he turned down a post of writer-in-residence at La Boite in Brisbane in order to
accept an opportunity to live and work in Japan as a teacher. After spending a
year in Japan he travelled Europe then spent two years in London working as a
hotel manager.
Since 1986 he has been living in Madrid, where
he has been writing constantly. One of his short stories, “The Benevolent
Farmer”, won a competition in the European newspaper (July,1995). Several
other stories have been translated and published in Spain and he has developed a
bi-lingual literature site running on the Internet called Galimatias (now no longer functioning).
During the
90s Paul concentrated on the novel form. At the moment he has
three novels of which “Purgatory”
and "Rastwa's Revenge" are ready to be published.
He
also has two books of aphorisms:
"After/birth (an ethic of failure)"
and
"Filling Void"
His
literary manager is L.H.
Strachan [email protected].
Apart from this he has a comic screenplay, written in
conjunction with Simon McSweeney, called “The Caterers”.
In 2004 Paul created his own theatre group, ÑU, which consists of two working sections:
a) ÑU ACCENTS, which
does interactive theatre in English in schools,
and
b) ÑU Teatro, an art house theatre group which has premiered several of Paul's plays in Madrid, directed by Paul himself - "Kaspar Hauser" which opened at the TIS theatre in Madrid, September 2006;
"Yo, Consul" which premiered at the Sala Youkali in Madrid in March 2007;
"La reina que no pudo reinar" which Paul wrote in Spanish and premiered at the
Sala Youkali in October 2007;
"Hamlet Rex" which had its world premier at the Lagrada theatre in Madrid
in January, 2008
Trailers of ÑU Teatro productions can be seen on You Tube:
www.youtube.com/user/nuaccents
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Novels
PURGATORY:
A psychological thriller in which an amnesia victim must uncover a
distant and gruesome past in order to reveal his own abysmal destiny.
In the manner of Umberto Eco, PURGATORY digs up an obscure historical
moment, the Spanish crossing of the Pacific in search of Solomon’s Mines and
an alchemist’s personal endeavour to win eternal life.
Mysterious and haunting, the plot shifts from Franco’s Spain to its 16th
century world empire, crossing oceans unto the first encounter with the savage
paradise of the Pacific Islands.
Nurtured by both historical fact and science fiction, PURGATORY is an
epic “X-File” in which the alchemist quest becomes an eternal nightmare.
If you would like to see excerpts from “PURGATORY” please click
HERE
Rastwa's
Revenge
a) The theme is a universal one,
matter vs spirit. Art as a spiritually uplifting force vs art as an item
of merchandise and entertainment. But the work is a comedy (rather dry - like
a vodka) with a serious theme.
b) The setting is invented (a
country called Antipodia, in which I've borrowed place name's from Swift's
"Gulliver's Travels"), In a sense, though, it's set in the no-longer
existent place of the Melbourne-Australia I left 23 years ago.
c) The narrative voice is
cynical, from an alcoholic writer, who is pressured to reveal what he knows
about the heroine of the plot. He is eloquent and ornate at times in his
choice of words. His pessimistic outlook is meant as a buffer to
maintain a down-to-earth narrative despite the lofty themes being debated
and the melodramatic plot that unfolds.
d) The plot: in a world in which
art has been reduced to market forces and the whims of egotistical "artists",
a young graffiti artist takes it on herself to champion the cause of
real art by painting toilet and train station murals in a classical,
renaissance style. A quest that becomes ugly as she declares war on the
egos of the "Art terrorists" and has tragic consequences
when she revenges herself on a commercially successful abstract
artist who steals her ideas.
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Short
Stories
Paul
Adkin has two collections of short stories which are published on-line at Gnu.
They
are:
Excerpts
from the Journals of Solitary Men
(at
Gnu)
An
Oblation of Dreams
(at
Gnu)
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PLAYS
Faustus
(1977)
Afterbirth
(1980)
Jack
and Jill Story (1981)
Rabid
Cow Mystery (1982)
Schadenfreude
(1982)
The
Clown (or the Dressing Room) (1991)
Hamlet
Rex (1999)
Hell
Skell (The Manson Testimony) (2000)
Dr
Kronos (2001)
El Ksar (2004)
I, Consul (2005)
El
Trabucazo (2005)
Kaspar Hauser (2006)
La Reina que no pudo reinar
(Isabel II en el exilio) (2007)
Theatre-in-Education
Shin
(1978)
Prime
Time (1980)
Help
Me Doctor (1991)
Ghosts (2002)
ÑU
ACCENTS PRODUCTIONS
Red
Riding Hood (2002)
Once
Upon a Time, a long, long name... (2002)
The
3 Little Pigs (2005)
The
Day Rudolf Lost His Nose (a pantomime) (2005)
Santa's Fat Xmas (a pantomime) 2006
Magic Zoo (2006)
Funky Friends (2006)
Cowboy Crazy (2006)
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Film
Scripts
Alice
Through the Looking Glass (unfinished) (2001-02)
The
Caterers (with Simon McSweeney) (2000)
Obras
traducidas al castellano
TEATRO
El
Payaso
Hamlet
Rex
Doctor Kronos
El Ksar
Yo, Consul
Kaspar Hauser
RELATOS
El
Granjero Benévolo
Obras
escritas en castellano
El
Trabucazo
La Reina que no pudo reinar (Isabel II en el exilio)
CONTACT
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