Breaking into heavy schedules of waiting for David Tennant to make his fifteenth appearance on tv of the day (Corinne) and frantic, mildly dispairing present buying (obviously Charlie) to say Merry Christmas!
Love Corinne & Charlie. x
As with many ideas in the last year I was on a train somewhere in London when I dreamt up Reasons For Listing. It certainly didn’t come out fully formed – Charlie would give it the working title which has firmly stuck a week or so later – and I wasn’t sure exactly how all the pieces slotted together. But I knew then I wanted to write about an adult with Autism (and not the Savant-style Autism that apears in many fictional portrayals) and I wanted the piece to be in some way interactive. That the experience of Autism should be a catalyst for an interactive piece seemed oddly right in a way that I couldn’t quite articulate but which instinctively felt right.
The plot fell together quickly and I soon began to get a feel for who Joseph, Reasons For Listing‘s protagonist, was (and indeed is for, really, we are still getting to know each other). My starting point – intensely personal and spotted with the kind of fears that if I thought about them too hard would prevent me from sleeping – was there but no loner visible. Reasons For Listing is about a young man who has Asperger’s Syndrome but it’s also about growing up, striking out on your own and puzzling out the world around you. Which, at some point, every one of us has to do (for some it is, quite simply, a bit later or a bit harder than for others).
It’s a cliche to say that a picture paints a thousand words. I’m a playwright so I wouldn’t dismiss words so easily. But what might a photograph express? If we were to choose them what might it say about us? Living alone for the first time Joseph begins to create a photographic list of everything which makes him happy. And those pictures told a story too; there’s something about the photos that I realised he would choose that elevated him from casual labels. Because we’re all a lot more complex than a throw-away sentence describing some aspect of who we are.
As it stands I have a draft of Reasons For Listing which is labelled 0.75. In the next few weeks it’s going into the hands of both Charlie and a willing actor and it will undoubtedly see itself anew again at that point. But before we get there there’s the vital part of Reasons For Listing that requires your contribution:
If you were to take a photograph of something which makes you happy what would it be?
The idea is that Joseph’s story will never quite be the same in any two performances, changed as it is by the photos that people submit. For there is Joseph’s list of things that make him happy and then there are the lists those who he comes into contact with (or, equally pertinently, who come into contact with him). And that includes you.
We’ve written up all the details here and the only limit to what can be submitted it your imagination. Equally, if you want to submit more than one photograph please feel free.
So, what makes you happy?
This is undoubtedly unfashionably early but tomorrow is the half of Write By Numbers who cries whilst watching Arsenal’s birthday. Charlie very rarely knows exactly how old he is, though he is always quick to point out that whatever his actual age he is still young enough to claim a Young Person’s Railcard. Ouch.
Even given this it would be remiss of me not to wish him Happy Birthday. Given that the London Post Office has swallowed his birthday present (give me back my flippin’ post!) I would say I’d buy him a beer tomorrow night – but he still owes me a muffin so that might have to wait…
[With thanks to @cat_elliott for the photo of Charlie and I at Latitude 2009. Most importantly this is quite possibly the only photograph in existence of me holding a pint glass].
There was a moment, just a moment, yesterday when Charlie and I looked at each other with something approaching terror after four hours of a planning meeting. For that meeting has (albeit with some room for manoeuvre/ collapse/ either one of us getting distracted by pretty sparkly things) set the aims of Write By Numbers for the next 12 to 18 months. There’s a lot in there that’s fantastically exciting. And there’s also a lot that means (as we knew when we started upon this adventure) that leisure time is going to be at a premium in the Whitworth/ Furness households.
All of which meant that I had to have another coffee and Charlie had to curl up into the foetal position for a brief moment or two. Then we recovered our sanity (almost) and went on our ways (in my case to fly across South London in rush hour to rescue my locked-out flatmate; it’s a glamorous life).
Whatever the next year brings (for this blog is to be the story of our company as much as it is about our ideas, and our rants and our quite puzzling obsessions) I’m booking a day in this time next year to see you all in a bar somewhere and raise my glass to crazy, fantastic, scary, liberating schemes.
And maybe, just maybe, making some art along the way…
There was a blog and that blog belonged to Write By Numbers.
Write By Numbers is a new-writing theatre company based in South London and was started by myself, Corinne Furness, and Charlie Whitworth after we (like Blur) met whilst studying at Goldsmiths College. That is, I confess, probably the only way we’re like Blur. What can I say – you win some, you lose some.
This little blog of ours is the combination of far, far too many hours spent over the past six years either writing or reading blogs. So it seems entirely natural that Write By Numbers should have its own outpost on the interweb. In some ways this blog is a bit of an experiment. Basically, I read lots and lots of theatre blogs (I kind of have to, in another life I write a column about theatre blogs), both those by people reviewing or commenting and those by people who are making theatre. And I wanted to combine all of the things that I liked about those blogs, along with my own take on what I think is missing from UK theatre blogging.
So – Blogging By Numbers is not simply a marketing exercise disguised as a blog (I mention no names) but will tell the story of Write By Numbers. It’s about the things that inspire us, the opinions we want to share, the adventures we’re having. It’s about us engaging both with the people who see our work and those who may only ever know it via the internet. It’s about the theatre we’re making and the theatre we want to make.
I should probably also warn you that at some point it may be about David Tennant (my fault) or Arsenal (entirely Charlie’s) but we’ll let you know when that’s about to happen so you can go and put the kettle on while we get over it.
I’m looking forward to sharing this adventure with you.