Monday 11 March 2013

On Friday, I went up to see a friend - Samantha Andersen - in a production of Oedipus in London, at the Blue Elephant Theatre. Even now, after years, it still seems odd to see friends in 'real', professional productions. I met Sam when I directed her in Four Play a couple of years ago, and it was by pleasing (and not really all that surprising) when, a little while later, she decided to take the plunge and get into the uncertain, heady world of 'actual' acting. I know, I know, we can have a very long debate here on what exactly is meant by 'professional' and 'amateur' theatre, since we've all seen examples of the one that seem to better represent the other, but let's just bite the bullet and declare, however unpleasant / inaccurate we consider it to be, that if you're getting paid for your work, you can consider yourself professional.

It was a very good production. There's always a slight fear, when going to support a mate, that you're going to be reduced to platitudes like 'well, the set was great' (always awkward if there isn't actually a set to speak of), but we had nothing to worry about. The production was energetic and visceral, the chaps playing Oedipus and Creon were great, and - most importantly, as far as the supporting gang were concerned, Sam was fantastic, managing passion and glamour, steely confidence and level headiness, and tormented anguish - sometimes all within the same speech. It's a good show all around, and well worth your attention, running to the 23rd March, I think.

On Sunday, we had our first rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me, the one woman show running in the third week of the fringe. Sarah (Charsley) has done a couple of rewrites, not out of a writers inability to just let the damn thing go, but because we're having to adapt it for a different space and running time. Just these little changes mean that the play ends up 'meaning' something else, being about something else, which is a theme I've already gone on a bit about in pre-rehearsal meetings. Yesterday seemed to add weight to that theory, and it looks like we're gonna have to do a couple more rewrites before the final (final, final) script can be locked down.

I've utterly failed to write anything for newsjack in the last couple of weeks, which I'm not too concerned about, since I don't think I would have been able to come up with anything of quality in the last fortnight (I blame the poor news stories), but it means that I should really be spending time on trying to come up with better stuff for The Show What You Wrote, the deadline for which is at the end of the month. I've also got a deadline at the end of the month for BROOM HANDLE, a story which, despite being short, has caused me all sorts of narrative problems since about October. I think I might have solved it this week, though. However, that means having the rip the whole thing apart, write it in what's almost a completely new style, doing a bit of a hack job, before seeing if the new style works. And that's the point; I have to write all that, with no idea if my plan makes any sense at all.

Been reading a lot of Chuck Wendig this week, who is very motivating in his writing style. If you have any aspirations in being a writer, his How To books are well worth a look.