An adaptation of his bestseller Fourteen for Brisbane festival recounts the traumatic bullying that shaped a year of Molloy’s life – and aims to find a little light there too
Queensland
. But at 14 – before he’s even properly worked out his sexuality – his classmates at an all-boys Catholic school have decided for him. The result is an unrelenting and criminal level of bullying; there are moments when the reader wonders if Molloy will actually be killed, either by his own hand or by his classmates.
Molloy did survive – and has thrived. At 37, he’s now a Sydney-based journalist, husband, new father and author. And his story of that brutal year is being performed byConor Leach plays Shannon Molloy in a stage adaptation of Molloy’s memoir Fourteen., where he worked. “I was bashed, ridiculed, taunted endlessly, you name it. I was almost run over. At a school camp, I was tied to a tree and beaten with an oar,” he wrote of the relentless bullying he suffered.
Anyone who grew up in a country town in Australia will recognise the violence, boredom and binge drinking, as well as the long afternoons after school hanging out at the shops. And anyone who grew up in the 1990s and was a bit “different” might also recognise the cruelty and violence that kids dish out to other kids.
Molloy wrote a first draft in a speedy five months. “It was cathartic to write it – there were parts that were hard. I would have to put it down for a couple of days and come back to it. I didn’t have to prod very hard for it to come spewing up.”
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