‘Boy, Girl and All the Rest’ Maylynne Lowe’s second act

For those persons who remember the Jamaican television series Royal Palm Estate, Maylynne Lowe will be no stranger. For 11 years, she played one of the show’s lead characters, Tanya Blackburn. Lowe, who has had an impressive career as a theatre actor and has also done work in the visual arts, can easily be considered one of the renowned actresses in Jamaica. She has done numerous productions and won several awards, including the 2011 Actor Boy Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role in the play White Witch. With all these accolades under her belt, her most recent debut is as a screenwriter.

“I had always written short stories and novellas, mostly in my spare time and, during the pandemic and lockdowns, my creative writing accelerated a bit because I had not been acting,” recalls Lowe, who also noted her love for the macabre.

“Real life is often never as exciting as the imagination,” she muses, while also crediting her own real-life experiences with kindling her new passion in writing for the screen.

Recently, Lowe wrote the treatment outlining the survivor’s story for the short docu-drama Boy, Girl and All the Rest, directed and produced by Nadean Rawlins, which was one of four projects recently selected and ultimately produced by local film-makers for the Spotlight Shorts JA initiative, coordinated by the Jamaica Film and Television Association in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund. This initiative aimed to address gender-based violence and showcased submissions from four teams of Jamaican film-makers and writers, who highlighted the experiences of four survivors of gender-based violence.

Lowe describes the poetic docu-drama as “someone’s fight for survival in a society that wants them dead”. Boy, Girl and All the Rest tells the real-life story of a non-binary individual’s abuse as a child, their mother’s reaction to their rape, and how they came into themself and their sexuality.

“[It] is a heartbreaking tale of someone’s secret, hidden, taboo, trauma and I wanted to help to shine a light on it and hold up a torch to this topic that is shrouded regarding gender-based violence in Jamaica with women and children,” Lowe explained.

The care Lowe demonstrated in writing the underlying treatment for this survivor’s story — and their growth from vulnerability and fear to self-acceptance and empowerment — demonstrates her commitment to the writing process and the stories she wants to tell.

Also a dancer, painter and visual artist, Lowe is excited about writing being the latest addition to her creative arsenal, especially during her 40s and a new stage in her life.

“I love the balance between writing and acting.” she shared. “Writing is a whole new way of communicating and is introverted. I made a profession of being in the limelight and it is different from my life as an actor. I am determined to be passionate about it and look forward to learning along the way and applying for film labs. I have a 10-minute short film screenplay that is my baby, and tons of stories and drafts for further development.”

While acting remains her first love, having now been bitten by the screenwriting bug, Lowe is intent on exploring this “burning passion” and vows that writing will be the next act to follow.