Duet

A shy woman living under apartheid falls in love with a man she shouldn't, sparking a forbidden bond which ignites the world with colour and music, threatening society and forcing the couple to choose between following their hearts or returning to the black and white world they were born into.

  • Project Type:
    Short Script
  • Number of Pages:
    15
  • Country of Origin:
    South Africa
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Falmouth University
  • SICAFILM Los Angeles International Film Awards
    Los Angeles, CA 90033
    April 29, 2022
    Best Short Script
Writer Biography

Tammany is an actor, an international award-winning scriptwriter and produced playwright. She trained at Stageworld Theatre School as a performing artist and joined the Young People’s Theatre Company in London in 2005. She holds a Licentiate in performing arts and speech and drama from Trinity College London. She is presently a Masters’s scholar at Falmouth University in the UK, completing her MA in script and screenwriting.

As a playwright, Tammany has written and produced “Cupcakes and Commiserations.” which opened at the Theatre on the Square, Sandton, South Africa, in 2019. Following the play’s success, Tammany published a 10-minute drama during the Twist Theatre Productions Writer’s Development Project in 2020, showcasing her play “Changing Rooms” at the National Arts Festival. In 2020, Tammany wrote, produced and hosted The School of Positivity on IBM TV and snatched the Best Content Creator award. The following year lectured acting for two semesters at the renowned drama school, Stageworx. In 2022, Tammany took tenure from How Now Brown Cow Productions to develop a musical script called Faraviasta. Shortly afterwards, her short Animation script, Duet, was a winner at the Los Angeles SicaFilm festival and a finalist in the Los Angeles Script festival and the Rome Prisma Film Awards.

As an actor, she has a recurring role as Dr Allerton on Scandal, Tanya in Generations: The Legacy and Andrea Owen in Binnerlanders. She featured on Mnet’s Lioness in 2020.

Tammany’s need to change the world through storytelling has developed her humanitarian side too. Her calling to change the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children through storytelling and educational Theatre prompted her to start a Non-Profit Organisation called “Doodle Your Future” in 2016.

In 2022, she developed The Best Seat In The House, a table reading platform to empower and develop writers worldwide.

Tammany Barton is an eternal optimist who packs a punch of enthusiasm, a lick of sunshine, and a continuous flow of creativity and energy in every aspect of her life. Her genuine zeal and love for life and storytelling are contagious, which made her a formidable teacher in this field. Her views on “the power of storytelling to change lives” is her passion and can be witnessed in the lives she changes.

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Writer Statement

Duet is an animation about having the courage to love in a world riddled with intolerance. Shining a light on love, revealing its true nature of wholeness through elements of colour and music. Set against the loaded backdrop of Apartheid, South Africa, a time of racialized laws preventing mixed-race couples from falling in love, amongst many other atrocities.

Pixar cleverly uses characters, and their emotional journey's to depict moral lessons, often set on an imaginary backdrop where magic and possibility reign. Their themes are current and universal. Purl (2019) tackles the subject of sexism in the workplace using a yarn of wool. Pixar's Up (2020) is about how messy life can be and how equally magical love is, depicted by the colourful balloons representing life’s journey.

Duet is a love story where the meeting of two "unlikely" melodies fall in love and, with limited time together, heal the black and white world with bursts of radiant colour and music.

The association of colour against contrast (the initial black and white world) visually attaches an essence of positivity. When our characters, Jane and Shepard, choose love over fear, the audience and our characters are rewarded visually and audibly. Music is the mood creator, enhancing the promise of love and peace in a broken world.

Duet tackles the topics of discrimination and oppression. Although it steals from history to highlight how aggressively the law drove a wedge between society, Duet also speaks to current issues. The profound theme presented in Duet is the societal monsters that continue to quietly divide us today. Duet's subtle but powerful visual storytelling depicts divisive tools, showcasing that we still live in a society subconsciously riddled with bias.

But, there is hope, and it lies within Duet's characters' actions to choose not to turn a blind eye to these offences, nor to become the bully or the aggressor. They dare to look. Dare to choose. Dare to listen. Dare to love.

South Africa has its place on the map in history for crimes against humanity. Still, these divisive tools exist today, and they are universal. Our current climate offers platforms to bring these cruel systems to justice. The call to stop gender-based violence, equal rights for the

LGBTQ community and the shining of a light on black lives matter are in themselves love stories for humanity. But, there is always danger that the pendulum may swing too far to the other side without love at the core, resulting in further divide.
Duet promises that love will win in the end; it focuses on a world where love is our centre, and thus hate and fear dissipate. Although set against a tumultuous backdrop, it does not outline the destructive nature of segregation; instead, it gives us a glimpse into the powerful potential of love.

Finally, Duet is a short love story for humanity. It will show the audience a world where love breaks all that tries to divide us and asks why we continue to build these walls.