Writer and director Nicholas Verso shares the process of bringing the award-winning novel to the small screen.
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Adapting the upcoming Stan Original series Invisible Boys from the award-winning novel was what creator and director Nicholas Verso calls a convergence of events.
“Here’s a book set in regional Western Australia and it’s completely up my alley. The themes and the characters completely speak to me. I know exactly what to do with this. And so it was just a really natural fit. Creatively it spoke to me so strongly.”
For Verso, there are three things that made Invisible Boys a compelling adaptation: the story, the location, and the market.
Based on the award-winning work by Holden Sheppard, the story follows the experiences of a group of young adults as they grapple with their identity, sexuality, and familial expectation in the small coastal town of Geraldton, Western Australia, after one is outed on social media.
The 10-part series created by Verso (Swift Street, In Our Blood, Crazy Fun Park) was produced by Tania Chambers (How to Please a Woman, Itch) and features writers Enoch Mailangi (Crazy Fun Park, All My Friends Are Racist), Allan Clarke (The Dark Emu Story, The Bowraville Murders), Declan Griffin (Griffin Theatre Company), alongside author Sheppard.
“What I loved was that the characters were quite different. And what I loved about that was it was four different entry points for an audience,” he says. “I knew these characters and these emotions and I thought I could build and expand upon it.”
It was also a chance to return to Western Australia where he’d previously directed kids series Itch. “I’d heard about the regional fund in Western Australia [and] I knew [they were] looking for more TV, how much they were going to support that, and just how supportive they would be,” he adds. “The show would be easier to get up if we shot it on location.”
And importantly, he could see a clear path to market. “I knew Stan had a lot of queer programming, they had a really good library there, and I knew they had a really loyal queer audience. So I thought, well I was hoping that they might want to create some more Australian gay programming themselves. And luckily they did.”
Throughout the episode, Verso shares the process of adapting a novel for screen, including building the writers room, knowing when to move away from the source material, and creating a visual language, as well as shaping authentic queer narratives for young adults.
Watch Invisible Boys on Stan when it airs on 13 February.
To hear more, listen to the full episode on the Screen Australia Podcast, and to gain more insight into adapting works for the screen through these interviews with Australia creatives:
To hear more, listen to the full episode on the Screen Australia Podcast.
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