Sunday 3 February 2013

I've just come to the rather startling realisation that I'm going to be directing four different things this Spring, all at the same time. Three of them will be in the Brighton Festival Fringe, and the fourth will be about a month after that. This might be what people are going on about when they accuse me of taking too much on.

The first thing is a revival - my friend Sarah Charsley wrote and performed her own script Three Kinds Of Me last year, and graciously allowed me to hinder her in the productions realisation. She's making the same mistake again for the fringe, and we're adapting the production to fit into a hour's space as per the usual demands of the festival. Three Kinds Of Me will be performed at The Warren (we just got the venue confirmed this week) and it looks to be very exciting. I'll be fascinated to see how we adapt a script that was created with one venue in mind (the NVT), and alter it significantly (but on the other hand, seemingly not at all) for a whole new venue complete with it's own dimensions and technical specs. I know that this is what professional productions have to do all the time, but I've never claimed to be in any way professional.

Speaking of the NVT, my second fringe production will be staged there, just a week after Three Kinds Of Me (which will make the production weeks of both interesting, to say the least). It's going to be an entirely improvised play, with a completely new story/play each night. It's at this point that many people react with suspicion, assuming that there must be some kind of 'cheat', or key scenes that stay the same each night. This isn't the case. The cast will rock up on stage each night with absolutely no idea of what they're going to be doing over the following hour. Now, you might argue that's largely true of some scripted plays, and I'm not going to argue with you on that score, but the fact remains that this is already one of the most terrifying productions I've been involved with, and it hasn't even started yet. And I speak as someone who's already directed Greek tragedy. There's a couple of audition dates, the first of which is this Friday (the 8th). If I get enough people along to the audition, I'm hoping to audition people together in hour long slots (you know, 7 til 8, 8 til 9, 9 til 10), so please get in touch if you're thinking about trying out for the production, and I'll let you know what's going on.

The other two productions are both with the youth theatre I work with - the PQA - and the first is a 10 minute play competition. I'll come up with more details as soon as they're confirmed, but generally, if you know any budding playwrights between the ages of 10 and 17, there's a chance for them to script a 10 minute play that will be performed by professional actors at the Old Courtroom in Brighton towards the end of the Fringe Festival. We'll also throw in a master lass with a BAFTA winning playwright to really get you kick started.

The other thing I'm working on with the youth theatre is a musical. For someone who isn't a particular musical fan (and indeed cannot sing) I find myself directing a fair amount of musicals. Well, I say musical. The last one was We Will Rock You. Which was actually great fun, although I did find myself rewriting significant amounts. Not because I'm that power hungry, but because they send you out the same version of the script no matter who you are, and they make no changes in the youth version, leaving you to edit out all the blow job gags (of which there are a fair amount). I felt that some edits were needed before I let the kids loose on it. Luckily, I don't think that there's quite as many of those sort of jokes in The Wiz. Not as far as I can remember, anyway.

Finally, I've spent this morning re-reading my latest draft of a short story called Broom Handle, a thing that I originally started last year. And, by God, it's terrible. Well, it's not terrible, but it's very clunky. The idea itself isn't too bad, and I like the characters, but it's very exposition heavy, and it takes too long to get to the point - which it currently needs to, because there's a lot to explain, otherwise the point that it's currently taking too long to get too will be - well, pointless. It's an odd read, because I can still see the potential for the finished product, but because it's currently frankly not very good, it's a bit of a dispiriting read. It would be extraordinary easy just to give up on it now as far too much effort. Luckily, however, the themes and ideas in it fit terrifyingly well into an upcoming competition with cash prize and inclusion in anthology, so that serves very well as some kind of incentive. It's probably about three drafts away from whatever version I finally send off as an entry. We'll see how it all goes ..