progress

I heard back from the Newstages Committee. They were sympathetic to my workload and rather than producing a full script at the beginning of December they'll be happy for me to present a project plan. I'm really pleased that they haven't rejected 'The Elephant in the Room Trilogy' by default just because i don't have a script yet. Standards and expectations seem very high and i suspect the Committee are being quite ruthless in their selection and rejection of work.

I am also contributing to the Newstages festival as part of a project called 'Herstory' and this week i have done a lot of work on the text for this piece. The text has been put together from a statement of a real life experience and my task was to shape and order the text into a ten minute monologue. Having two thousand words of statement to work with is a much more comfortable starting point than a blank page/screen and an imagination full of incoherent ideas. It has been really satisfying to get the monologue to a stage where i can consider it a job well done and a task crossed off my extensive 'to do' list (and four days before deadline too!). More work will be needed on the text once the performers have been cast and rehearsals have begun and i will be involved in this process, but for now I can move onto the other things i have to do.

So, my next task is to develop a five thousand word portfolio which will be assessed for my MA. I already have the beginnings of three short stories and i'm going to continue working on these and select the best for the portfolio. Over the next three days however, I'm going to start really shaping up 'The Elephant in the Room Trilogy' so that i'm prepared when the Committee get back in touch regarding my project plan. What would be really wonderful is if I could get one or two of the trilogy drafted up to submit as part of my portfolio. It is possible that my trilogy won't be 'right' to satisfy the assessment critera as the module is all about story and the trilogy's emphasis might be elsewhere. We'll see how the writing goes...

I have put out a call for interest for the trilogy. I haven't gone into detail in my call, just said i was looking for performers and creative /team on a small scale Theatre project in Leeds. I've had a good response which is very encouraging. I've only heard from one male performer! I don't know why but I often write male characters so this is not ideal. More searching required on the men front I think.

I have noticed a significant increase in the number of people coming reading my blog. Thank you for popping in. Do feel free to leave a comment or to send me an email.

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project proposal

I have put a proposal in to the Newstages 2010 Committee.

 

Newstages 2010 is a festival that takes place at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. This is where i am a part time MA Student studying 'Writing for Performance and Publication' in my second (and final) year. Last year one of my pieces of work 'Antithesis' was in the Newstages 2009 festival, details of which can be found here. 

'Antithesis' had been put together and had already been performed as part of the Midget Gems tour in September/October 2009 so it was all ready to go when it came to Newstages. All we needed to do was have a few rehearsals and adjust to the new space and the performance was back up to speed. The Committee enthusiastically accepted my proposal last year and it was great to have an opportunity to show this work.

This year it's different. I had hoped that over the summer period in between year one and this year that i'd have time to get started on another project, but when summer came i really needed a break I had experienced considerable ill health and needed to recover so i decided to conserve my energy. I am feeling well again and i can see that this was the right thing to do but now i'm in the position where i'm making a proposal to the Committee but the work is yet to be written let alone rehearsed.

It has taken me a couple of months to get back into my stride and my creative energy has been taken up writing prose necessary for one of my MA modules. I have had an anxious six weeks where i have been completely drawing a blank with my script work. Although my short story writing has been going well i have been spending a lot of time staring at a blank page/computer screen when i have tried to write theatre. 

Thankfully a visit from Emma Adams who is currently working with Red Ladder Theatre Company has helped to reinvigorate me. When Emma spoke about her own work in one of our classes I realised what was frustrating me about mine. In a future post i will go into more detail about this but in a nutshell she advised me to identify the essence of the story i was telling and to pin down what excited me the most about the stories i wanted to tell. 

Another serendipitous occurrence is that a play i put forward for the students' script reading group, 'Interview' by Jean Claude Van Itallie has been selected to study. So i have been re-emersed in the theatrical landscape/vocabulary of Jean Claude Van Itallie, one of the playwrights who most inspired me as an undergraduate.

The culmination of all this is that i have reconnected with what i want to achieve theatrically and with a renewed enthusiasm and confidence the framework for a project has come together in my imagination. I have decided i want to write a trilogy of short plays that tackle various issues in british culture/society and our denial of these issues, 'The Elephant in the Room Trilogy'. 

 

And so, i have made my proposal to the Committee. And their response to my proposal was to request a full script due in the first week of December. There's no way i can provide a script for then. I have to compile a 5000 word portfolio for my MA course and have to prioritise this until December 10th. The earliest i can have a script ready (and a draft script at that) will be early January. I have communicated this to the Committee and await their reply...

 

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surprise!

I've often heard writers discussing new work and saying 'i saw that coming' or 'i didn't see that coming' in reference to narrative. They attribute considerable significance to this element of surprise in the story, in fact it seems to make or break their enjoyment of the work.

Until now this always baffled me a bit.

I have an 'all round' experience of performing, acting, directing, devising, management and technical support as well as writing (in theatre and some film). I can relate to and enjoy so many different elements of a production that the predictability or unpredictability of the story is not so imperative to my enjoyment. If the storyline is not very dynamic I tend to find there's a different emphasis, it will be visual or physical or technical or experimental, and i will enjoy these features.

However, now I have specialised i must assume a writer's perspective, and it has been brought to my attention  that a greater element of surprise is required in my own writing.

So, i'm keeping a beady eye out for and having a real think about surprising work.

Last night I saw 'Dead of Night' by Imprint Theatre Company ; a ventriloquist dummy (actually an actress performing the dummy) who appeared from a chest that had been located on the stage for the duration of the performance was a delicious surprise. The actress had been inside the chest for over an hour before she emerged. The fact that the dummy was eerily convincing was very engaging, and the fact that part way through the story the dummy actually began to speak for itself was yet another fresh, surprising offering.

Another great example can be found in Laurence Timm's 'Chinnery' the first five chapters of which can be found here . Have a read and you'll see what happens in chapter five. What i particularly like about this element of surprise is that suddenly we're presented with an entirely new mode of exposition. We're also introduced to lots of new things in this chapter in a wonderfully economic way, a new 'underground' environment, an organisation behind the scenes, a new character (the other voice in the transcript) and we see the story from another perspective. All very stimulating and exciting and unexpected.

I'm going to have to dig deeper to search out more subtle story surprises, the ones that the writer's say they didn't see coming. A story that springs to mind is Jim Cartwright's 'Two' where the loss of the Publican and his Wife's Son in a car accident is revealed, the juxtaposition of the horror of this incident set against the colourful backdrop of pub life. Could i see that coming though? It's certainly clear that something is coming, there are allusions leading up to the climax.

Something for me to continue thinking about and exploring.