New Zealand Writers

SARKIES, Duncan

Sarkies likes to show the ways in which all of us are, if not quite mad, then at least partly unhinged.

SARKIES, Duncan (1970 - ) is a playwright, screen writer, fiction writer and stand-up comic. The rhythm and energy of performance is an important aspect of his written work. He is best known as the co-writer, with his brother Robert Sarkies, of the hugely successful 1999 film Scarfies.

Scarfies was shown at numerous international film festivals including Cannes and Sundance, and on its release in New Zealand quickly became one of the country's best-grossing local films.

Sarkies' plays are 'The Ceramic Camel' (1993), 'Lovepuke' (1993), 'Saving Grace' (1994), 'Snooze' (1997), 'Twelve' (1997), 'Blue Vein' (1997), 'Special' (1997), and 'Bystander' (1998). 'Lovepuke' was published in Eleven Young Playwrights (1994). In 1994 he was awarded the Sunday Star Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, and in 1995 Saving Grace won the Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for Best New Zealand Play. Sarkies adapted Saving Grace into a film, released in 1997.

Sarkies was awarded the 1998 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary. His first book is stray thoughts and nose bleeds (1999), a collection of prose pieces, only some of which fit the description of "short stories". Others more closely resemble scripts for a stand up comedy routine. All are characterised by an eccentric black humour, bizarre and poignant by turns, which can leave the reader (or audience) wondering whether the author is laughing with them or at them.

As Chris Knox writes in New Zealand Books, Sarkies' gift is for "[s]howing the inner workings of the average fucked-up human brain at its hideous and torturous work... Sarkies likes to show the ways in which all of us are, if not quite mad, then at least partly unhinged... Like Janet Frame or Doris Lessing, he can plunge you into a world of insanity that is too frighteningly familiar."

(KC.)

Updated Information

stray thoughts and nose bleeds won the Hubert Church NZSA Best First Book of Fiction Award at the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

Wild Man Eyes fuses 400 images by Matt Grace with Sarkies’ words and performance, based on the stories from his award-winning debut book, Stray Thoughts and Nose Bleeds. It toured the country in 2002.

Wild Man Eyes was also a sell out at the 2002 Fringe Festival. For more details about the show visit www.wildmaneyes.co.nz