The Year I Broke My Voice

Set in a post-industrial ‘Neverland’ of worn down row houses, looming factories, and desolate seashores, a rabble of deprived gender and age ambiguous youths explore their own vulnerabilities and put pressure on what it means to grow up. Misadventures that include impromptu races, nighttime spooning, cheating at card games, attempts at hypnotism, pocket knife haircuts, and sexual fantasies all function as means for the characters to attempt knowing one another. Through understated vignettes, solitary moments of introspection, and budding intimacies, The Year I Broke My Voice offers an alternative perspective on coming of age that emphasizes perpetual states of becoming over conventions of linear development into adulthood. Scripted by collaging reenactments of 1980s coming of age films (The Outsiders (1983), Stand By Me (1986) and The Year My Voice Broke (1987)), The Year I Broke My Voice re-approaches the master narrative of childhood’s transition into adulthood from a subversive, yet altogether fragile and uncertain vantage point.