Monthly Archives: February 2010


Tales From Ovid: Day Twelve 1

Yesterday I blogged about questions and today it seems only fair to provide some answers. In amongst the press interviews I did yesterday I had the rather fabulous experience of being interview by Vobes of Empty Shops Radio who not only called me a “lovely young lady” (ah, still young!) but who asked pertinent, thoughtful questions even though they were utterly spontaneous. Respect is due. For any of you who might want to hear my witterings you can now listen to the podcast here. [We’re ‘Theatre in an Empty Shop’ as you scroll down]

[Warning: My voice is both shrill and a little bit high. Plus I use the phrase ‘learning curve’. Above all I do not sound like I come from Yorkshire AT ALL. I hang my head in shame]


Tales From Ovid: Day Eleven

Today was most definitely a day of questions:

Why do you choose to make theatre in an empty shop?

How are your audiences different?

How did this project come about?

How old are you?

Where is the dictaphone?

What are you doing next?

Can I have another slice of cake?

Are you writing at the moment?

Do you wish you were here longer?

Where did the toilet roll go?

What do you write about?

[brace position]

What’s your role in Write By Numbers?

Do you want to do a workshop for us?

Is that painting for sale?

What did we do right?

What did we do wrong?

What are you doing?

Can I have some sugar?

How are you?

Where’s Etta’s Kitchen?

Is ‘sleeping bag’ one word or two?

What are you doing next?

Do you have the key for the SHUTTER or do I?

Where’s the milk?

Do you know ‘The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock’?

Can I move you because the lighting here makes you look like a ghost?

Are you paying for the electricity in here?

But, really, what next?

Does culture have a part to play in a market?

Did we switch all the lights off?


Tales From Ovid: Day Ten

One of the most asked questions I get when I tell someone I’m a playwright is ‘What do you write?’. When I hear that question I’m probably already in the brace position because that question is not ‘why’ (because I have to and would combust if I didn’t) or how (pen to notebook diagram, diagram to keys on the computer, rarely in mornings, usually best at about 8.00pm). As I crouch on the floor with my hands around my head I’ll mumble something like – ‘well, drama, y’know plays’. And they’ll come back with are the funny or serious and I’m all ‘not comedy-comedy but not humanity is doomed and we’re all going to die alone either’ and by then I’m probably rocking. Maybe only Harold Pinter could have answered that question (‘well, there are these men in a room…’) and, let’s be honest, it’s not a very interesting question, is it? A writer can write about anything, yes we’ll have our own ticks and quirks but the ‘what’ – that can be huge. Or HUGE, as it should probably be given my current prediliction for capitalisation. By giving all of our writers the ‘what’ in Ovid Reworked (stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses) we’ve removed that question. Yes, they may be comic or tragic or one of the endless shades in between but I like to think that getting the ‘what’ out of the way allows us to look at more interesting things. Like ‘how’. And since we’re specifically talking about plays – how does it go from story-to writer-to director-to stage?

If I were being flippant then my answer to that for this project would be ‘quickly’. I did an interview for IdeasTap a few days ago and when they asked me what I liked about working in Empty Shops I posited about how the need to create (and discard) quickly is extremely liberating. Having a theatre-space which we can programme to our whim and will allows us to take lots of risks. And one of the plays we debuted today I think demonstrates this beautifully.

A week before we moved into the space we went out into Brixton to do a photoshoot for promo material. Retreating from the cold we went into a local cafe/bar where one of our Directors, Estelle, started having something of a quick read-through of lines with two of our actors. Our waiter noticed the script that was being read (The Fall of Troy as it turns out) and asked what we were doing. And so it emerged that our waiter, Eddie Molloy, not only knew his Ovid but was something of a writer.

Ten minutes later, Eddie had agreed to write a short adaptation of the story of Narcissus and Estelle had agreed to direct it. In terms of risk and possible insanity in terms of curating a festival this stands out. Not just for us (in as much as we’d never met Eddie before and that there’s always the potential for the elephant in the room of ‘can this person write’) but for Eddie. Writers can be spikey and self obsessed (hello, have we met?) and whilst I’m sure Mr Molloy doesn’t have the worst of my writerly characteristics he was still investing the time and energy into producing a script for a theatre company he had bumped into in a cafe. But having an empty shop gives you license to do all those things you couldn’t do elsewhere – like engage a Brixton writer to write for you with less than a week to go to opening day. To be entirely serious (momentarily) it would be wrong for us to play ‘safe’, particularly when the Brixton Village Market project as a whole is about engaging Brixton and embracing risk and experimentation and imagination.

Eddie duly delivered his script in the middle of last week and when I read it and saw how enthusiastic Estelle was about directing it I was glad we’d taken this risk. We always wanted to make writers do unsual things and I think this spectacularly counts as an unusual thing. When I read Narcissus we didn’t have an actor for the role (and we have, to put it politely, already had one WHERE ARE ALL THE MALE ACTORS? stress) but, rather fittingly, Edward Cartwright was recommended to us on the strength of a monologue he’d previously performed. Less than forty eight hours after Edward got the script he was performing in Shop 82. With a gas mask.

Narcissus - First Performance

Because sometimes, just sometimes, life and making theatre is like that.


Tales From Ovid: Day Nine

One of the things we’ve got in our shop that I haven’t yet blogged about is our ‘Wall of Change’. Which looks something like this:

The Wall of Change

The idea behind it is that you take a tag and answer either: i)how has Brixton changed? or ii)if you could change Brixton, London or the world, what would you do?

We’ve had funny, thoughtful and occassionally poignant additions to the wall and I love coming back to the wall to discover a new tag has been added.

If I could change Brixton...

I’m aware that a few people are following Ovid Reworked – The Brixton Project online and so I want you to be able to contribute to the wall too. Leave a comment here or tweet your response to @WBNtheatre by Friday evening and I’ll add your thoughts to our wall. How would you change the world?

Luggage Tag


Tales From Ovid: Day Eight

Let’s get something clear: I love a deadline. I think all writers secretly love a deadline (however much we moan about them and the late nights and fifty-three cups of coffee they involve). If I don’t have a deadline (self imposed or otherwise) I tend to fall into a hole of procrastination that revolves around twitter and reading blogs and watching another episode of Project Runaway when I should be writing. Deadlines are my friend.

The entire process of staging Ovid Reworked – The Brixton Project has been probably one of the biggest DEADLINES of my life (that and the fact that it has caused me to start writing certain words and phrases – like SHUTTER and SEATING CHANGE and DEADLINE in capital letters – just to emphasise the power – and fear – they hold over me at the moment). We have pretty much turned the whole project round in 8 weeks. And when you take into account that pretty much 1 and 1/2 weeks of the 8 were taken up with Christmas/New Year the fact that this is a deadline which we have not so much strolled towards as had smack us directly in the head is probably obvious.

So what do you do when you’ve had a deadline to the forehead? Well, you inflict it on other people is what you do. Which might have not exactly been the reasoning behind Cold Writing but it probably played its part. Cold Writing in a nutshell is us putting five writers into our shop in Brixton Village, having them take part in a three hour workshop, sending them away to write a short play in 48 hours, spending a day rehearsing said plays and then performing them for the public of Brixton on Friday afternoon. And that is what I call a DEADLINE.

I have to say that the cohort of writers who took part in the workshop were brilliantly enthusiastic and up-for the process, dealing admirably with both the fact that after two hours in the shop they probably couldn’t feel their feet and the fact that I had to swoop into the workshop twenty minutes after it had started to rescue Charlie who was very ill today.

Charlie’s penchant for extreme planning proved to be for the best (winging my way through a workshop after being awake for just over an hour with no plan would have been interesting to say the least). As it was I was able to work my way through Charlie’s workshop plan (albeit taking it upon myself to Corinne-ify it in parts – ie. the bit where I took everyone off to Etta’s Kitchen to have coffee because I couldn’t feel my toes any more) and I was incredibly pleased with the variety (and indeed quality) of ideas which the workshop generated. Indeed I almost wanted to have a stab at writing an adaptation in 48 hours myself (I say almost, sleep deficit is still too prevalent to allow me anything more).

Needless to say I’m really excited about reading what the five writers come up with on Wednesday night.