She writes and directs ‘Burger Force’, an Aurealis Award-winning independent comic featuring real people and locations. But at night time she grows shoulder pads and six inch nails and becomes Valkyrie Cul-de-sac, the highly intelligent, natural born leader of the Fanciful Fiction Auxiliary, the fictitious amateur writers group hell bent on destroying Mills & Boon.
“‘Burger Force’ is about a fast food restaurant with undercover spies; I take photos of real people and places and then try and make it resemble comic book art,” Jackie says.
But during this year’s Brisbane Fringe Festival Jackie – or should I say Valkyrie – will bring her bespoke-artisan-boutique-couture writing talents to the stage along with a number of her delusional friends including Tuesday Thatch. “There’s nothing wrong with being crazy,” admits Tuesday Thatch, former academic librarian with a penchant for pince-nez.
“This is a safe space, a space for the part of yourself you wanted to keep camped down in a box for no one to see, this is your chance to unleash it; the characters are gentle oddballs… we’re just a little bit deluded.”
Although it would make for a very cool weekly social club, there is more to the Fanciful Fiction Auxiliary than dressing up and indulging your crazy side. “It’s about making stories so bad that they are good again. It’s more a soft parody of romance; playing with the tropes of the genre.”
“I love stuff like ‘Romancing The Stone’,” adds Jackie, “and we got to thinking, ‘what if this stuff wasn’t a parody? What if it was real? What kind of person would genuinely write something like that?’
“These characters, in keeping with their delusions, don’t know they are at the Brisbane Fringe Festival,” Jackie continues. “They think they are at the Brisbane Writers Festival and they think the crowd is assembled to hear them do a very serious reading.”
Expect a simply stupendous salon night of bosom-heaving, lip-quivering ecstasy induced by smouldering hot romance stories.
‘Mills And Boom: An Evening With Valkyrie Cul-de-sac And The Fanciful Fiction Auxiliary’ takes place at the New Globe Theatre August 16.
