Monthly Archives: November 2009

One Hundred Days

This entry was posted in Inspirations and tagged One Hundred Days To Make Me A Better Person on by

I saw One Hundred Days To Make Me A Better Person on Facebook from someone I went to University with (the first time round at the Uni where we argued about Beowulf and Dickens rather than the second time round at the Uni where we argued about Pinter and gratutious use of rope climbing in plays for children). And as soon as I saw the project I knew that I rather loved it.

Josie Long’s idea’s simple enough. Pick one thing. You then do that thing for one hundred days, hopefully documenting it along the way for us all to share in. Then after one hundred days glory will be yours and, hopefully, you may be a tiny bit better as a human being. Or, at the very least, you’ll have done something which made you/ a friend/ a stranger/ your dog smile.

And, drum roll, my pledge is:

‘Once a day for one hundred days I will write a postcard (and, where appropriate, send it to the person concerned)’.

I’m going to write properly about why I chose this over on Distant Aggravation though I shall undoubtedly pop over here to bask in triumph/ never mention it again when I fall flat on my face on day 37.

But – 100 days? That’s a lot of postcards. And let me not think of the stamps.

So – what are you going to pledge?

On Ambition

This entry was posted in In Response and tagged Ambition Architecting Barbican National Theatre of Scotland New Writing on by

By a stroke of chance (and the availability of two returned tickets when we strolled up to the Barbican) I happened to spend Friday night watching the TEAM’s Architecting. Which means that not only did I see the same production as Matt Trueman discusses on the Guardian Blog I also saw the same performance.

I’m with Matt in as much as I’ve never read or seen Gone With The Wind (though I did know it was a novel, but then I am a Book Geek as well as a Theatre Geek) and when I came out in the interval I couldn’t work out if I was enjoying the show or not. Because though I’d seen moments of brilliance Architecting lost me when it got deep into Gone With The Wind – and, yes, I did feel that my lack of knowledge of this particular American classic was proving a barrier to my engagement. I could sense that an important point was being made, that the text was being re-interpreted, re-visioned, questioned but I couldn’t for the life of me work out exactly how.

Perversely, by the time I came out of the second act I had become convinced that I had seen one of the defining productions of my year (I might even go as far to say it might one day make that list of productions that make me the writer I am). All the strands – and the TEAM hadn’t exactly scrimped with them given they’d taken on Gone With The Wind, the relationship between North and South USA, reconstruction, individual genius vs community, race, the effects of Hurricane Katrina, feminism, the American psyche…well, I could go on – were pulled together. Architecting is a play with huge – epic – ambitions, reaching out to questions that truly need space to breathe (and, indeed, filter through your brain). Yes it is flawed; it is too long, at times too self indulgent and, at least in my opinion, too reliant on direct engagement with Gone With The Wind in its first 90 minutes. I felt in times it was a play in need of a Dramturg. But I would gladly see a play with those flaws which had even half of the aspirations, intellectual clout and sheer exhilarating presence as Architecting.

Though a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland (having seen four of their productions now I would trample over people to get tickets for their shows) I honestly don’t know if new writing of this nature would be created in England, at the very least it isn’t created for the major theatres. Which is a challenge if ever there was one.

As for Matt’s question as to if theatre can be too clever for itself I have to say that the question is a fairly flawed one. What is “too clever”? Something I don’t understand, or you don’t understand, or that the person sitting next to you doesn’t understand? At no point when I wasn’t getting the references did I think that Architecting was too clever. I thought it wasn’t properly edited. More so this is a play concerned with America and me, a 26 year old from the North of England, well yes – I may lose things in translation.

Are Hamlet or King Lear too clever because of their intellectual gymnastics? Arcadia? Katie Mitchell’s production of Attempts on Her Life? And where do we stop – is The History Boys too clever because it has a scene largely performed in French?

The notion that there is a level of “accessib[ility]” that theatre should include is blatantly a non-starter. We Will Rock You is accessible, that doesn’t mean I’m beating a path to its door. Content can create accessibility, but so can theatricality. There was a moment in Architecting when the space around me transformed (I’m not saying how as it’s still running and I wouldn’t want to spoil the moment) that made me understand absolutely, to the very core of my being.  And should we, as theatre makers, have our main concern be having every audience member understand every moment every single night? Maybe because I found theatre after I found books (which are certainly not scared about understanding) I never assumed this was the case. Plus, I work on the basis that the audience is (at the very least) as clever as me. And I love it when a production or play treats me in the same way, even if it leaves me running after them (I still run after Hamlet to this very day, and I love it all the more because of that).

There is of course the question of audience numbers. Architecting would never support a West End run (well, maybe if you stuck David Tennant in the middle of it and even then it had better be a limited run). Did everyone in The Pit at the Barbican on Friday night love it as much as me? Matt Trueman’s article proves that isn’t the case. And that’s almost inevitable with Architecting‘s ambitions – and should we limit aspiration on that basis?

I think not.

Reason No. 2

This entry was posted in Reasons For Listing and tagged Reasons For Listing Rehearsals Writing on by

It was one of those quirks of timing that on the day that my (and indeed Charlie’s) results for our Masters degrees were released we found ourselves putting Reasons For Listing through its paces for the first time.

I’ll be honest – I love and hate first readings in probably equal measures. Maybe it’s just me as a writer but the desire to crawl under the table at some point is fairly overwhelming. Because – however witty or poignant or clever you think your words to be when you sit in front of your computer screen chuckling to yourself there’s nothing like putting them in the mouth of an actor to make you reach for the delete key. Or the rubbish bin, depending on which is nearer (the latter also being handy for the overwhelming desire to vomit). Conversely, when you’re not jabbing things into your eyes, there are also those moments which just work. And when you hear those for the first time – and everyone in the room stops and has the same feeling too – there’s a tiny (okay, a huge) amount of joy in that.

Aside from the time a few years ago when I got together a group of friends in the backroom of a pub, made sure everyone had alcohol in their glasses and got them to read the first draft of a play I was writing, the first reading of Reasons has probably been my most pain-free of first readings. It’s a pleasure really to sit around a table and know pretty much instantly that everyone is on the same page (literally and metaphorically). Putting a script at what is a relatively early stage in its development (in my strange numbering system the script for today’s rehearsal was labelled 0.75) is a new experience for me. But I felt very much when Charlie and I decided to start Write By Numbers it was because we (and other writers we knew) wanted to work in a different way. It feels entirely natural and liberating to open the script up at this point, a collaboration between all of the people sitting round the table.

And, wonderfully, it pretty quickly became apparent that we’ve got a bloody brilliant actor at the centre of it playing Joseph.  Which always helps.

Now, after a day of imagining all the places Reasons could go, tomorrow it’s back to the computer and, word by word, getting down to finishing Draft 1.0.

Museum In A Day

This entry was posted in In Response and tagged Crazy Plans Museum In A Day Web Stuff on by

There are few things I like more in life than ideas which can be filed under ‘I’ve got this crazy plan…’ and thus when I heard about ‘Museum In A Day‘ I immediately loved the idea. As the name (almost) suggests this crazy plan was to build a museum website (from scratch) in 12 hours and document the entire process. So not only could you follow along, the tools will be there to help you go out and build a website for your [fill in blank as appropriate]. Crazy and helpful – it’s a winning combination.

The resultant 12 hour website for the fictional The Future Museum (incidentally, what a cool idea for a museum) is here and though its creators admit that there’s still things they’d like to have done it’s a testament to what you can achieve with very little money and even less time.

On Courage 1

This entry was posted in Thoughts and Flirtations and tagged Mother Courage and Her Children National Theatre Reviews on by

It was pointed out to me this week what an absurd thing it is for people to do to sit in a darkened room with a group of strangers and be transfixed by a person on a stage pretending to be someone else. And I’m sure if you thought about it too hard you’d have to nod and say – yes, it is an absurd thing. Make believe and all that.

But me, I always liked make believe.

And this week I had one of those reminders of how stomach-churning, hairs of the back of your neck raising theatre can be during the last twenty minutes of Mother Courage and Her Children at the National. To be entirely honest I’d gone out of curiousity rather than expectation (in one of those random gaps that occur in theatre-going I’d never seen a Brecht play on stage). The most used word about the production from those I’d asked about it was “long”. And long doesn’t bother me – once you’ve sat through a Wagner opera then “long” isn’t something that scares you – but when the first thing that springs to mind about a production is its length? Not so good.

And yes, Mother Courage is long. With a first half of two hours I don’t think I’m being controversial in saying that it is too long. And, yes, having a live band on stage (and slowing up the action even more) was a little self indulgent. Okay, rather a lot.

But – and this is one of those huge, clunking buts – I was never less than engaged. I loved the invention. I loved the humour. I loved the money I could see had been spent. I loved, loved Fiona Shaw as a Mother Courage that you were at once compelled and repulsed by.

And I would have gone home happy enough with that. Then in one of those moments that only come around every so often everything just came together in the last twenty minutes of the show in such a way that it split my world a little. Brecht’s story, the acting, the directing, the sound, the lighting and then, oh, the music – and I wanted to scream. Wanted to jump up and bang with Katrin. And then in the play’s dying moments as eternity stretched out in front of me I wanted to melt into the sound of the voice, and the drum beat, as Mother Courage continues as she must continue. Wanted this not to finish as I cried and my heart broke a little and I saw something that I can’t articulate but which I understood completely.

Could that moment have been written? No, of course it couldn’t. It compelled me so completely because it was a product of more than words. The effect of light into darkness, of a rhythm in a song, of a quiver in a voice.

Which is probably why I find myself here, writing for performance and not writing a novel because all of the stuff you can’t control, all the places your words can go – that’s what excites me.