Billy Marshall Stoneking
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Billy Marshall Stoneking (born 31 August 1947) is an Australian-American poet, playwright, filmmaker, and teacher. His son C.W. Stoneking is a musician.
Childhood and education
Billy Marshall Stoneking was born in Orlando, Florida, the second child of Charles and Florence Marshall. Born William Randolph Marshall on 31 August 1947 (his sister, Barbara, named him 'Randolph' after her favorite movie actor, Randolph Scott, and his mother selected 'William', after an old family friend, later aide de camp to President John F. Kennedy). The name "Stoneking" derives from his paternal great-grandfather, Reuben Stoneking (of Hundred, WV, Wetzel County). Stoneking's early years were spent growing up on military bases around the United States, including Randolph Field (Texas) and Fort Slocum (New York). When his father retired in 1961, the family moved to northern California where he attended high school in Folsom and Rancho Cordova, California. He graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 1970, majoring in English, with minors in philosophy and education;[1] and in 1972, he migrated to Australia. "The bumper stickers said, 'America, love it or leave it', so I left."[2] In 1983, after more than a decade living in Australia, four years of which were spent living with tribal Aboriginal people 275 km west northwest of Alice Springs, Stoneking graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney, specialising in screenwriting.
Notes
- ^ http://stonekingbio.webs.com/education.htm
- ^ Marshall Stoneking, Billy Taking America Out of the Boy. Hodder Spectrum Books, 1994
Career
Teaching
After completing a year's post-graduate credential in teaching, Stoneking migrated to Australia and spent five years teaching high school English and humanities subjects in Lake Bolac and Cobden, Victoria, before travelling to Papunya Aboriginal Settlement, Central Australia in 1979 where he was employed to set up a "literature production" programme for tribal Aboriginal people to enable them to teach their children to read and write in their native language, Pintupi/Luritja.
Writing
By this time, Stoneking had already been publishing his poems in little magazines around Australia for a number of years. He was also active in the burgeoning performance poetry movement, which included fellow poets, Pi O, Amanda Stewart, Jas H. Duke, and others. His poems have been featured in the Oxford Book of Australian Poetry (edited by Les Murray), and The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (edited by John Tranter and Philip Mead). He is also the author of seven books, including Lasseter, In Quest of Gold (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), Singing the Snake (Angus & Robertson) and Taking America Out of the Boy (Hodder Spectrum).
Screenplays
After four years at the Papunya Aboriginal Settlement in the Northern Territory, Stoneking returned to Sydney, and, in 1982, he entered the full-time screenwriting program of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
Stoneking's first films were made in the mid-1980s, including a chronicle of his work at Papunya Aboriginal Settlement, Desert Stories. He also edited some television scripts, including the AFI award-winning drama series, Stringer,(ABC TV).
These early jobs were followed by a script for Paramount Television's Mission: Impossible, and the full-length stage play, Sixteen Words for Water.
Mentor, script editor, producer, & story consultant
Stoneking has now set himself up as a teacher of dramatic writing, which he calls the Drama of Screenwriting. He claims this workshop has been held in every capital city in Australia and New Zealand. This is unverified.
He was ONE of the script editors on the AFI-nominated Australian feature, Chopper (2000).
He claims to have produced a number of small films, including Nosepeg's Movieand Jelly's Placenta. He has been involved in two unreleased features, Waking the Martyrs and Seeing the Elephant.
External links
- Billy Marshall Stoneking Blog Billy Marshall Stoneking's authorised BLOG
- Billy Marshall-Stoneking at IMDb
- Where's The Drama? The Ultimate Screen Drama Website
- Stoneking's Published and Produced Work Excerpts and links to Stoneking's poetry, plays and films