Using the art of turning the written word into the spoken, John Lewis will be ‘re-debuting’ his 2001 book, Some Shiny Days, and showcasing the novel in the form of a rehearsed reading next weekend.
Mr Lewis worked as a journalist at the News for nearly 30 years, while he continues to write his weekly opinion column ‘My Word’, which appears in the News every Friday.
It’s that column which is the subject of Mr Lewis’s return to the stage, with My Word transforming from reflections on fatherhood and raising kids, to looking through the lens of childhood from a grandparent’s perspective.
Mr Lewis’s family — the subject of his columns — will also play a part in the ensemble, while he will be performing the musical accompaniments.
With the encouragement from then-editor of the News Rob McLean, Mr Lewis went on to compile some of his columns into a book, Some Shiny Days: Moments of ordinary madness, in 2001.
It was then transformed into a play, first debuting at Mooroopna’s Westside Performing Arts Centre in 2005.
Now, close to 20 years on, Mr Lewis is back.
Some Shiny Days: The Rebirth, will feature an additional 10 columns from the years following the first release.
The piece will be directed by veteran arts performer and producer Liz Zito, who will return to direct the rehearsed reading alongside many other familiar faces.
“What’s interesting, is my kids that I wrote about in my columns are now adults, and they’re playing roles in it,” Mr Lewis said.
“My son is playing my role and I’ve got two grandkids in it as well who are playing their father’s part from when he was a kid because it’s really about children, so that makes a nice little circle.”
Where the last performance was a play with actors playing parts, Rebirth will only feature dramatic readings.
“It’s really about the voice,” Mr Lewis said.
“You characterise the emotions, the comedy or the philosophical bits with your voice so it’s like poetry and I’ll be playing a bit of music as well to start off with and then interspersed throughout the performance.”
His philosophy on his columns — and subsequent book — was to keep them human and relatable.
“It’s a philosophical reflection on parenthood,” Mr Lewis said about the revised book.
“The whole thing is interspersed with reflections, there are scenes of comedy, as there always is with kids, but there are also scenes of reflection about what it means to be a father I suppose.”
Mr Lewis begin writing the columns in 1993, and said originally they were about anything and everything.
“I noticed whenever I wrote about some big issue in the world that was happening, I got very little response but when I wrote about my kids, I got all these emails, or people would stop me in the street and say, ‘Oh, that happened to my little Johnny too’,” Mr Lewis said.
“That kind of made me feel as though either I was not really that clever at writing about politics, or I was quite clever at writing about ordinary stupid stuff — I think it was the latter.”
Some Shiny Days: The Rebirth will be performed at The G.R.A.I.N. Store, 24-26 Blake St, Nathalia on Sunday, June 4 at 2pm.
Tickets can be purchased at trybooking.com or at The G.R.A.I.N. Store for $20 or $10 for concession.
The new edition of the book can be purchased for $25 from Monday, June 5 at The G.R.A.I.N. Store, the News reception, Collins Booksellers Shepparton or by emailing lewisisms360@gmail.com