SCREENSHOT with the wonderfully chaotic Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo ☀️
More on our nosey series about writer's lives!
This week we’re diving BACK into our SCREENSHOT series and this time it’s with someone who has been a key part of our community for a while now, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo!
How did you come to be a Messy Woman?
I found the Messy Woman in my classic trash panda nonbinary racoon chaotic way. I met a wonderful queer creative sex worker at a social for a queer, kink, play party called Quench at the Vauxhall Tavern. Okay let me go back a bit.
As one of my anchor partners would say it all started when I won the “People’s Choice Award” (not really, but she won’t let me live the night down) during a fabulously camp Drag Queen led blind dating game at said social.
I had been in a rough Menty B patch. The strike was rough. Debt was rough. Acting jobs had dried up and my creativity was low even though I was lucky enough to be teaching at the time. So getting up on stage with a bunch of polyamorous socialists and working a pretty frisky crowd with my dashing good looks and witty repartee was the healthy ego boost I needed during those really really shitty days.
Back to the point. This wonderful woman told me about the Messy Drinks coming up the next week. I had a free evening. So I came along. I found community here and I’m truly grateful for that!
What was the first project that you were proud of?
An adaptation of Hamlet that I had written in collaboration with a theatre collective called JAM in South Africa. Johannesburg Awakening Minds. This group was formed by 11 to 16 Homeless folks living on the streets of Hillbrow led by my then mentor and power house Dorothy Ann Gould. I had been working with her to teach these folks how to perform Shakespeare as a way to empower them. Silly I know but somehow having a sonnet to perform made these guys less invisible.
Through a process of revising and rewriting into Zulu we built a production these folks could perform throughout the city. We opened at The Space Theatre at the Civic Theatre in down to Joburg. This led to several of these folks getting acting jobs, agents and starting to write themselves over the years. Several of them have been able to lift themselves out of poverty and out of homelessness. Frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever work on a project that would fulfil me me more than that rag tag adaptation. Clearly I had balls (this is a trans joke), who rewrites Hamlet??!!
What is your writing routine?
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Routine? Lol! Okay let me try say something sensible. I have ADHD so I have massive bursts of productivity and then I’ll just rot for days. So what I’ve learned about myself is external deadlines do the trick for me. So I use competition and writing scheme deadlines as a way to structure my writing.
When I’m in a writing hyper focus I will open my eyes and reach for my laptop that’s probably still in my bed and then just start. Water and meds will be set up the night before and maybe a bit of fruit to I can break the fast in some way. Then it’s me and my laptop until I’m hungry really. Healthy? Absolutely not but it gets a good 4 hours out of me first thing in the morning.
I work with a dear friend and dramaturg Yael Shavit so I will just generate the material. I’ll have the thinnest idea of an outline like literally just keywords and frenetic scribbles on various pieces of paper. Stuff I’ve jotted on trains or while my students were busy with an exercise. Then I just kind write till I run out of steam.
Once I have my beautiful honking pile of shit, the work begins. I can start shaping it, digging into questions, challenging my blindspots or assumptions about characters, working out events that sort of thing.
Then the talking begins. I did a BA Acting Honours - Collaborative and Devised Theatre Making degree at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (say that 3 times fast) so creating in isolation is not for me so I turn to folks I trust. One of my partners is a NFTS Sound Design Graduate and the other is a fabulous writer with a politics background so I enter into long form debate with them. I turn to my fellow Messy’s Emily Rhodes and Amber Hafren. Friends, my dramaturg and my cat. They challenge me and I like that.
Then finally, an outline comes. With the help of an external deadline of course.
This is all to say I’m learning on my feet. I’m a trained actor so I’m used to lifting words off of the page not getting them onto one. I’ve been enjoying creating my process and surrendering to its evolution. Hopefully one day, I’ll finally start writing at my desk and not in my bed!
What projects are you working on right now and how do you juggle them all?
So I’m working on a project called 22 Soho Square, a limited tv series about collective British Colonial Horror. It’s been optioned but then our development producer moved so I lost that and then I recently got on the shortlist of a film development scheme I cannot name as it has not been announced yet with an adapted version. I didn’t make the final cut but I got great feedback and we’re back in TV land with it. I have an idea for a star crossed lovers but make it trans story that I’d like to get to called KINGS. And finally an anime based on the Mfecane - The Crushing, a bloody period during Zulu history when Shaka’s army were the G.O.A.T but make it high fantasy and anti-colonial. Like, what would have happened if the ancestors intervened when the coloniser infected South Africa vibes?
Do I juggle them? Kings is at one pager stage and Mfecane is based on a Dungeons and Dragons setting of mine so when I want to explore more of that story and how it functions I run games with my games group. I can test out NPC’s, plot threads and world building and my players offer inspiration (this a kind of a D&D joke). TTRPG’s are great like that!
What are your hopes and dreams for the future?
Outside of a queer utopia in the countryside with raccoons, ferrets, badgers, cats, dogs, some goats and few sheep I’d like to create my own incendiary nerdy as hell work. My practice is deeply rooted in decoloniality and intersectionality and I want to work with my communities to share our stories. Right now I’m interested in our collective rage and how maligned it is. I want more angry queers on screen. So I’m dreaming about that at the minute.
Hopes? To keep doing what I love. I’m very privileged to have the acting career I have so I want to keep doing that. And get more cats.
The Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo Messy Bootcamp Scholarship!
We are running another BOOTCAMP BABY this October. This time you can choose between the SPRINT for scriptwriters (shorts, features, TV, theatre etc.) or the highly anticipated MARATHON for our novelists!
Unati is sponsoring up to 6 free spots to trans and non-binary people of colour, with a focus on non-binary people, to attend our next Bootcamp:
Community, community, community. Radical transformation begins in your circle, in your environments. With family, neighbours, friends. My approach to knowledge is pretty radical. Even as a teacher I don’t charge high rates, I simply share my skills and what I’ve learned from phenomenal practitioners with those who want to learn. I don’t think education or access should be behind high paywalls. RahRahRah EAT THE RICH and whatnot! Like I said I’m a socialist and fucking love teaching.
This community has given me the foundation and support to grow my craft as a writer and creative and to more importantly trust in the necessity of my voice. My expression in this life matters. Often that first initial step the, “where on earth do I begin” when chasing ones dreams can be the most insurmountable barrier. I want to do my part in helping folx break through that limitation. The resources and points of access created by the Messy Women is invaluable! I want to be a part of sharing that with marginalised groups and communities. Let’s all tell freaking stories!!! And make em trans!
If you’re a trans or a non-binary person of colour and you’d like to apply for this scholarship, please email messymessywomen@gmail.com with a little bit about your experience writing so far and what kind of project you’d like to take to Bootcamp! Doesn’t need to be long, just a sentence or two is fine.
Use the subject line: Messy Bootcamp Scholarship
The deadline is the 2nd October!
Thank you so so much, Unati!
With love,
The Messy Women xx