Trials and triumph at age fourteen

It’s not often that someone writes a successful book about an existential moment in their teens ,and even rarer that the text gets reimagined as a major theatrical production, but that is what has happened to Shannon Molloy.

The book, Fourteen is a coming of age story about a fourteen year-old boy growing up gay in central Queensland, and how the bullying and hatred aimed at him almost caused him to take his own life.

Published in 2020 and billed as this generations Holding the Man, the book found instant success and soon attracted the attention of a major Brisbane production company who wanted to know if the rights were available.

“There’s a production company, Shake and Stir, in Brisbane run by three fantastic creatives, and it was Ross (Balbuziente) who read the book first and I got hit up on Instagram asking if the rights were still available,” Shannon Molloy, Fourteen author, said.

“I hadn’t considered that this could be anything other than a book, so we started talking.”

The book is set in 1999 in a central Queensland Catholic school. Molloy’s decision to put pen to paper came years later when he read a news story concerning his local MP.

“In around 2016 there was a debate about the Safe Schools program, which was an anti-bullying program aimed at LBBTQ+ kids, and it became very politicised by conservative forces, and really nasty,” Molloy said.

“I was on the train coming home from work and read the story describing Safe Schools as a way for gay men to groom boys. I was angry and intensely sad.”

Molloy’s thoughts immediately turned to his own teenage experience and he reflected on where he is now.

“I thought that as a 30-something man that has chosen to live the way I want in a suburb I want and have a loving relationship, I also saw how scared and confused a teenager from the bush would feel about a politician standing in a sacred space (parliament) and compare them to pedophilia, so I did what I always do when I am angry and sat down to write it out of my head.”

The reaction turned into an opinion piece that was published first online and then the next day in most of the News Corp papers.

“I was telling the story of me at 14 after a horrible day at school where I came home and tried to take my own life, and why programs like Safe Schools are so necessary,” Molloy said.

“I got thousands of emails and Instagram DMs and Messenger from a range of people, including about half a dozen messages from mothers of kids like me, and they encouraged me to keep talking. That led to the book.”

On that dark day, Molloy was saved, literally, by family and friends.

“I am painfully aware that a lot of kids don’t have a loving network around them and I was lucky to have a couple of amazing girlfriends who provided light, and a fiercely protective mum, and my siblings acted as my bodyguards and cheerleaders,” Molloy said.

“Just being able to write the book was my wildest dream.  So, Shake and Stir and I started talking and it was obvious early on that they saw the heart in it and it was hard for me to remember that there was so much light, fun and humour as well.”

From workshopping the script, Shake and Stir then cast the production and went into rehearsals, but it was a time that Molloy approached with a little trepidation. 

“Everyone has a favourite book that has been destroyed by a film or a stage play, so I was nervous,” Molloy said.

“I was lucky enough to be in the rehearsal room at the beginning with the cast, but I saw it for the first time with the staging and costumes when I was sitting alongside 300 other people at the Brisbane Festival,” Molloy said.

“It was emotional and overwhelming but beautiful as well to see this challenging year of my life play out.”

Each decade has its own cringeworthy fashions and music and Shake and Stirred has laid this on thick for this production.

Think bad haircuts, goon bags, and the music of Shania Twain, The Spice Girls and especially S Club 7.

“S Club 7 were my favourite band and remain so to this day, and it was upbeat and inspiring and there is one song in particular, ‘Bring It All Back,’”Molloy said.

“There is nothing I would change, it feels so right.”

May 3 & 4

Riverside Theatres, Cnr Church and Market Streets, Parramatta

riversideparramatta.com.au