When poet, novelist and screenwriter Emily Ballou returned to the Northern Illawarra last year for the production of One Night, the six-part TV drama she has written for Paramount Plus and Easy Tiger, she found it both familiar and unfamiliar. Twenty years ago, Emily lived in Thirroul, when her former partner set up Steel City Cycle Works. It was a welcome reprieve from the squat she shared in Newtown.
Then, as now, she was struck by the power and drama of the landscape, particularly the looming presence of the escarpment. “It’s the way you can see its shadow crossing the road and landing on the beach after three in the afternoon,” she says, speaking via Zoom at her home in Glasgow, where she lives with Scottish novelist Ewan Morrison.
“That shadow is physical and symbolic. As a beach walker with a dog, living in Austinmer, I was very aware of it and of having to navigate the tides. You cannot ignore how dominant the landscape is.”
One Night is the story of a close friendship between three women – played in the series by Nicole Da Silva as a first-time published novelist telling a story that impacted on her friends Tess, played by UK actor Jodie Whittaker and Hat, played by local actor Yael Stone. Recalling shared trauma tests the bonds between the three.
It’s a subject close to Emily’s heart that she has been thinking about for more than three decades while building up a list of credits on shows like the TV adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap.
Like The Slap, One Night challenges the versions of an event remembered differently.
“Maybe because I had two sisters, triangles have always fascinated me,” Emily says.
The narrative of One Night interrogates who has the right to tell a story of buried trauma, and explores that question from the perspective of both victim and witnesses.
“There is a bit of an injunction in our culture to not speak unless you have permission. We are more tentative and cautious today,” says Emily.
There is a very personal angle to her exploration of memory. “My mother’s father committed suicide when she was seven. It was never spoken of again, but that silence corrodes like a cancer. It is as much her story as it is his, and needs to be told, even though there will be variations and nuances in how it is remembered.
“We understand a lot more about memory now, and of how we build layers of memory on memory each time we tell the story of something that happened, which makes it rich material for a writer.”
Unlike many writers with US citizenship (Emily is also an Australian), she is not a member of the Writers Guild of American and therefore not on strike, “though I am in solidarity with their demands”. She has a full slate of projects at various stages of development, but none that have brought her back to a place she once called home.
Screen Illawarra helped One Night filmmakers find locations and local talent. With Paramount, the industry group hosted a premiere screening at Anita’s Theatre on August 31.