Falstaff Dowling-Mitchell
Falstaff Dowling-Mitchell is an international theatre performer turned award-winning children’s novelist. He has played Shrek in Shrek the Musical on stage across five countries, starred as the Fish in Cat in the Hat Live on Stage for seven years, and brought Melman to life in the Madagascar New Zealand Tour.
When he’s not on stage, Falstaff is a dedicated teacher, screenwriter, and filmmaker, with award-winning works showcased at international film festivals. His latest book, The Tour, is a heartfelt and hilarious Kiwi fictional novel that takes readers behind the scenes of show business.
His previous book, White Lies, Māori Legends and Fairytales is an award winning novel being used in classrooms in over 300 schools across New Zealand and recently hit schools in Australia and the UK to help students engage with the history of Aotearoa. It is a powerful, engaging story about a boy called Pētera, and his best mate Hone, growing up in small town Aotearoa.
Falstaff wrote the screenplay for short film Small Waves, which went on to win multiple awards here and internationally. It currently screens on Māori Television and Sky’s Rialto channel.
Do you try more to be original, or to deliver to readers what they want?
I try to do a mixture of both! I know a lot of readers enjoy wondering what will happen next. They like to predict what might happen next but they also like to be surprised. They like characters they can relate to or look up to… I bring a lot of tools to the table I’ve learnt from reading great books, and in this way I think I try to deliver what readers want. But I definitely have my own voice. My own way of describing things. My own stories. I try to pull from my own experiences and imagination. A lot of my experiences have been largely unique and weird and wonderful. So in those ways I think I’m very original when I write! I mean how many people have played the lead role in Shrek the Musical in five different countries!!??
What is it about your chosen genre that you love?
I love Aotearoa and I love reads where the characters to tell the story in the way that they behave and relate to one another. To be able to write an easy going comical Kiwi Fiction is definitely me! Especially when I can bring to it to life with amateur theatre actors. I’ve hung around amateur theatre actors for years doing shows. Theatre is where I made a lot of my best friends and the different walks of life and personalities in theatre is so diverse that this style of character definitely spices up a story. (Or your life!)
How do you select the names of your characters?
Oh I just think about what would suit them and throw them a name, basically. Authors are probably not going to name the sweet lovely young female teacher Miss Hammer. And they are probably not going to name the evil old boot Miss Daisy. I think about if they are run of the mill type characters, or smooth characters or evil characters and then think of a name that suits. Not even sure I get this right every time, but I do put a decent amount of thought into it and I reckon the names I choose are fairly suited to each character. The only other thing I think about is whether they are old or young. Would they be a Margaret or a Mia?
If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
Man! I would pick up the pace of my stories. I loved writing as a child and as a teenager but when I look at my older stuff now that I’m forty years old, it is so slow to read in terms of the story developing. I think I tried really hard with descriptions of settings or characters but never found the balance of doing a great job of this as well as moving the story forward!