About William
William Duke is a writer and performer across stage and screen, who’s currently completing his Writing for Performance MFA at NIDA. Worlds of power are often central to the stories he tells. Investment banks, Hollywood, medieval castles, and private boys’ schools are just some of the backdrops for his work. Hierarchy and rules bring out a dark strand of human nature he is fascinated by: the games we play with one another – obsessions, rivalries, seductions.
Most of his stories feature queer male characters. The challenge of ‘queering’ genres fascinates him, not so much for the romantic possibilities, but to craft the dark characters he loves, with masks to wear, or objects of desire that mirror themselves. He is of the belief that, for the past decade, the best characters, especially in television, have been mostly women. He wants to approach male characters in a fresh way – packing the political punch of transgressive female stories, while doing something completely new.
