Thursday 4th Feb 2016

It’s been a busy old while. Lots of plays submitted to Cast Iron 7, and it was a tough time whittling down the selection to the final six. Even then, casting was a bit of a challenge, since there are a terrific amount of projects going on in Brighton at the moment, not least as people begin to batten down the hatches for the Brighton Fringe. I think we’re almost settled on the line up for Cast Iron 7, but I’m going to hold fire on a proper announcement until after the weekend, just in case anything else changes. (IT’S NOT GOING TO CHANGE. IT CAN NEVER CHANGE.)

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of research and redrafting for Year Without Summer, which is a play that I’m writing and directing at the DukeBox Theatre for the Brighton Festival Fringe. As you may know, 200 years ago this May, the poets Byron and Shelley rocked up to Lake Geneva. With Shelley is Mary Godwin – later known as Mary Shelley – and pretty much the only reason that Byron is there is because he wants to meet Mary and Percy, who he admires and respects. The whole meeting has been somewhat engineered by Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, who has been somewhat besotted with Byron for a while, and is running the risk of losing his interest. History has, with the exception of a few dedicated biographers, pretty much forgotten Claire (Polidori, Byron’s physician, gets more footnotes), but if it hadn’t been for her bringing these poets together, Byron would not have been around to suggest to the group that they all tell each other ghost stories. And if he hadn’t done that, it’s at least possible that Mary Shelley would not have put pen to paper to write Frankenstein.

I’m ploughing through drafts at the moment (as well as tinkering with some Cast Iron 7 stuff), but hope to announce audition notices very soon. Whatever happens, the auditions will be at the end of February, with rehearsals kicking in early/mid March.

Also in mid March are two events – well, two events as well as Cast Iron 7. There’s Not Just The Companion, held as part of a special week celebrating International Womans Day, and Cast Iron Theatre, along with Iron Clad Improv, are holding a series of writing and storytelling workshops during the HoveGrown Festival. More details about all of that very soon.

Monday 2nd June 2014

Gearing up for the next lot of short form improv sessions, which start again this Sunday (the 8th), now that we've had our break during the Brighton Fringe. We're doing something ever so slightly different with this block of sessions. When you've been doing improv for a while (and it doesn't have to be a particularly long while, not really), it's somewhat easy to fall into certain 'traps' - maybe you're often going for the gag, or taking over scenes, so that everyone else on stage has to follow your lead, whether they like it or not. Or maybe it's the exact opposite - perhaps your mind goes completely blank, and you can't think of anyway to progress the scene, and so you prefer to let someone else do all the hard work. At some point, all of us have been guilty of that to some degree.

These next four workshops - over the majority of June - take this into account, with a series of drop-ins that we're calling 'Iron Clad Surgery'. The idea is that each separate session will take into account one of these challenges, and tailor the exercises accordingly, to help performers begin to sharpen the tools in their toolbox. Perhaps the best thing about this is that most of (if not all) the exercises and games we'll be using this month are still the ones that will be familiar to those who have been popping into improv over the last year or so anyway: so it's not like that the unsure or inexperienced are going to be thrown a curve ball. The drop in sessions are as open to beginners as always, it's just that the content of each workshop is going to be more heavily weighted toward whatever particular challenge we're tackling that week. Anyway, for further details, you can have a look at [embed]http://andthisisandrewallen.weebly.com/ironclad-improv.html[/embed] . 

There, you'll also see details of our upcoming long form course, which starts at the end of June.

Tonight, a few of us rocked up to the DukeBox Theatre in Hove to take a few photographs of a regular improv session (not that there's any such thing). It seems we might get an article in the local Argus at the end of the week, so it was thought a good idea to get some photos done, on the off-chance that they might end up accompanying the article. I'm not all that fond of having my photo taken, so it was a bit of an effort not to be openly grimacing in each one. This, by the way, might seem a little difficult to swallow, since - as the person who runs Iron Clad Improv - I made a concerted effort to make sure I was in each and every photograph, and more to attempt to look like I knew what I was talking about. We'll see how successful I was if any when any of the photos get published on Friday. 

In real terms, I didn't get all that much writing done today. In fact, it was close to zero. I managed to think of a single rhyme for a song that appears in Act 2 (however improbable, I am still considering sticking songs in this thing), and scrawl a few notes in the margin for Act 1, but other than that, I've produced nothing today. I'm OK with that - first day back at work after a writing holiday away, after all - but I can't afford to let this happen too many more times. It is always so easy - so seductive, even - to allow a day to go past without any writing whatsoever, and to tell yourself that that'sOK, because you'll always catch up tomorrow.

You never will. 

Saturday 31 May 2014

There's about five weeks left before our production of Twelfth Night, which will be an open-air performance, and acted by young actors. I've been working on it, off and on, after the last couple of months, but it's only now - now that the Brighton Fringe is over - that I've been able to attack it with all guns blazing. The cast have had distractions of their own - exams, and the like - but they've been doing extraordinarily well, what with all their line learning, and discovering rich characterisations quite outside of any interfering directing that I might throw at them. 

Something at today's rehearsal wasn't quite working though, and I couldn't quite how to fix it. As I said, it will be an open air performance, within some walled gardens. The audience will sit in the middle of the space, and all the scenes will take place 360 degrees around them, meaning that the audience will have to do a bit of shifting around each time a new scene begins. It's certainly a bit different from a traditional 'end-on' performance. But something today wasn't making that work. The actors couldn't quite stop themselves facing each other when their characters were speaking to each other, meaning that the audience were getting a lot of back, which meant that the voices were getting lost - being outside, there's no wall for the sound to bounce off, and anyway, there's traffic from a nearby road vying for your attention to. 

When I realised what I had to do, it was just annoying that I hadn't thought of the solution in the first place. It - obviously - has to be a promenade performance. If I'm going to make the audience have to shift around anyway, I might as well make the most of it. With a promenade performance, I can get the audience to really enjoy the space we're in, and have a very unique experience - everyone genuinely seeing the show from a different angle. Once we started rehearsing it that way, with the actors able to constantly change where they were directing their performance toward, the entire thing lifted several degrees. 

Not only should I have spotted this somewhat obvious fix weeks ago, I REALLY should have spotted this fix weeks ago, since I've spent the last few months actually being in a promenade performance myself. I hadn't made the connection between the two, despite the fact that their Venn Diagrams were pretty much overlapping. It's a useful skill to keep developing - that whatever you're reading / watching / doing in your life, can be directly translated into something else you're reading / watching doing, even if the connective tissue isn't that obvious. That feels like something I could write an entire thesis on, but frankly, I'm not feeling quite intelligent enough to do that just at the moment. 

Sometimes the obvious fix is found by examining what the problem actually is. When directing Four Play, there was a problem when two characters had to drag a body off stage. The actor playing the corpse was a fairly tall lad, and wasn't the sort of boy you could simply sling over your shoulder. I'd written in some dialouge to cover, so it wasn't just two women dragging a body across stage in silence. But it still wasn't working, and we were opening the following night. We'd tried everything, a fireman's life, the actor trying to 'help' the girls - but it all looked awful. There seemed to be no way to get the body from one end of the stage to the exit door. It took me ages to work out that there was absolutely no reason why the character couldn't die at the door, thereby negating any need for fireman's lifts. Problem solved. 

I'm an idiot sometimes. But I think I'm an intelligent idiot. 

Tuesday 29th April 2014

Hurtling towards production week. At the moment, it feels like running down a very steep hill, so fast that my feet can't quite keep up with themselves. It's going to be a somewhat busy few weeks, the longest performance run I've yet been involved with, and - it's just occurred to me - the largest part I've played in a fair while. The plan is to keep myself sustained with fresh fruit and gallons of ginger tea with honey. Knowing my organisational skills, however, it's much more likely that my diet for the next month will consist mainly of lucozade and pot noodles. 

Because my bloodline is apparently under sufferance to an ancient curse which means I can't keep a bike for longer than two months without it either being stolen or falling apart, it comes as very little surprise that I have a flat tyre. This, traditionally, adds about a hour and a half to my commute per day, as I'm having to walk to and from train stations. On the walk to work this morning, I lost my cap, which I'd been meaning to use at tonight's rehearsal, as part of the costume. I'm guessing that it will be no great hardship if I can't find one that's both reasonably nice looking and big enough for my freakishly large head, but I can have some sympthay with actors who attach undue importance to an item of clothing that they've been using to inform their character. It's oddly unsettling; you almost feel that, robbed of the chance to rely on props and the like, that your acting will be exposed as the charlatans dance it really is. And even if you're not quite that self deprecating (who, me, self deprecating? No, there must be some mistake), there will always be a part of you that feels bad that the audience will never get to see the 'good', the 'original' version. 

Yes, I'm fully aware it's just a cap. 

Tonight is our first rehearsal in the space itself, which I'm fully expecting will throw us all a curve ball: we haven't ever really been able to be in an environment that in any way truly replicates the space we will actually be performing in. I'm expecting lots of wide eyes, cold sweat, and incoherent gibbering. 

I imagine that everyone else will be fine, though. 

Thursday 10 April 2014

Last week, we had the first performance of our short play night at the DukeBox Theatre, Hove. It went pretty damn well - we ended up having to turn away about twenty people who had turned up on the off chance that they could buy a ticket on the door. For those who got in, it was a great night - eight brand new, short plays by new and local writers. I'm already ploughing my way through submissions for the next night, which will be sometime in late June. Actually, not 'some time' - I know the date; it's just that there's a very good chance that we'll make it a two night run rather than just one. 

What's been most pleasing about this process - and I mean this sincerely - is that people are writing for the first time in ages, or, in a couple of cases, the first time, full stop. I think a lot of us have this hankering to write a little something, and many of us - most of us, in fact - never do. Obviously for 99% of people, it's for the reasons (excuses) that annoy all the writers who actually do manage to write - excuses like 'I haven't got the time', or 'I can't come up with good ideas.' I think one of the major reasons, however, why would-be writers don't, is very simple: Nobody Cares. I'll say that again so we're all on the same page. Nobody Cares. 

Seriously, all those half-finished stories and ideas for novels and fillms and radio sitcoms that litter your bottom drawer? Nobody knows about them beyond you wittering on about this great idea you've got, and thus nobody is waiting for them. More importantly, then, nobody needs them. (and by the way, if you've assumed that it's me that has a bottom drawer full of unfinished and unworked ideas, then, well, shush.) 

And if it's true that nobody cares about or wants your great story (and, sorry, it is true), then it follows that a thing like the short play night becomes really important: at it's most base, at it's simplest: it's an excuse to write. And finally, a showcase for your writing. I think, essentially, that's what I've considered most important about this. Not that anyone actually needs an excuse to write (but, actually: people need an excuse to write). 

Last year, I decided pretty early on that I wasn't going to direct anything this season. I've been directing every year for the last three, and it's always meant that I never really got a chance to see anything in the Brighton Fringe, which was something that I wanted to rectify, since I was missing out on a lot of pretty good stuff. So, firm decision: no directing this year. However, that plan didn't go to - uh, well, plan, since I have found myself in a production of The Crucible. 

It's a two week production, which will be the longest run I've been personally involved with (and after being at work all day too - PITY ME), and it's a pretty big part. I'm just about beginning to feel the weight of pressure on me: the production opens in about three and a half weeks, and in many ways I'm still finding my feet. One of the challenges is that I'm playing John Proctor, which, if I'm honest, is not neccesacrily a role I would have thought of myself first for. Historically, I've always thought of Proctor as being somewhat alpha male - all tall and broad shouldered, which, with the best will in the world, is not ever going to be even your third description of me. So, there has to be another way in to the character, which I'm still working my way through. In fact, I had intended to essay how I was approaching the character in this blog, but - as might be expected - time in rehearsals, and learning lines, has robbed that time from me. 

There are other, exciting things planned for later this year (and, somehow, even next year) ... But I'll chat more about that another time ..  

Tuesday 18th March 2014

Not long now til the deadline for our second round of submissions for Cast Iron, our semi regular night of new writing for the theatre that we've set up in Brighton - actually, at the DukeBox Theatre. I've had a couple of submissions come in during the last few days, and look forward to reading more. We're already coming to the end of rehearsals for the first batch of plays, which get performed on Saturday 5th April (there'll be a link around here at some point). Despite my best intentions, I'm in one of them, and - still - the lines aren't quite there yet, although I'll concede that they are more well learned that I think they are, if that makes any sense.

For the first night, we're premiering eight new plays, which is a pretty tall order. We've got people directing one play, appearing in another (or two others), while writing up another. In some cases, this is while holding down normal things like jobs and families, as well as rehearsing for their Brighton Fringe shows. This has clearly been a bit exhausting for everyone, not least because of trying to wrap their heads around the logistics of sorting a batch of rehearsals that people can all attend at the same time - while attending a completely different rehearsal elsewhere. 

Partially, that's the reason why the number of accepted plays this time round will be slightly less - possibly seven, probably six. That's slightly less pressure on me as the reader, but also slightly more pressure on each playwright, with literally two less spaces to fight for. In any case, the deadline is this Friday, although if people were to give me the heads up that they're still working on their final-no-honestly-it's-nearly-finished draft, then I'm sure we could find a but of elbow room over the weekend. 

The acting classes at the NVT have been going really well, ever better than I hoped. I was trying for something a little bit different with this series of classes, and was initially not quite sure if I could pull it off, since what I was trying to achieve was a little more nuanced than the classes I have previously delivered for the New Venture Theatre. But everyone seems to be getting a real kick out of it, and it's been gratifying to see performers dig deep and find new reserves within themselves. Apart from anything else, it's been humbling to see so many people come back week after week. There's a fair chance that I might redraft this series of classes as a course of workshops elsewhere for people who weren't able to make it this time round. 

I suppose the main excuse I could throw up for not having quite learned my lines for the short play night is because all my line learning facilities have been powering up for The Crucible, which is the Brighton Fringe production I'm involved with. Thankfully, the lines for that have been a bit of an easier ride (although I'm no way near to being totally signed off of the script just yet). It's a really interesting production, told in a promenade style, and will be performed in a church. I'm told that tickets are already beginning to sell, despite the fringe still being over a month away. It's a great cast, and that's important: a real company feel that makes rehearsals feel like really productive, fun, and pleasingly hard work. It's actually a pretty difficult atmosphere to pull off: I've been involved in a couple of shows where the grumpiness within the cast has broken out into open hositilties. Which, let's be honest, isn't the greatest way forward in a rehearsal. 

The part I'm playing is something of a challenge, if only because of my somewhat preconceived ideas, and how almost literally everyone else has played him: like many Arthur Miller male characters, he's something of a bear of man, at least figuratively, if not physically. Although the physical aspect is something I'm very aware of: I'm a reasonably slight man (although almost a foot taller if I simply stop slouching) and there's a good few cast members who are easily taller than I am. It makes me acutely aware of how I appear on stage, within the context of the play. Having said all that, both as writer and director, I've always been interested in playing against the expectation. I'm just somewhat startled to be playing it myself .... 

Wednesday 22 May 2013

My back started to give in today. A viscious twinge, that actually stopped me in my tracks on my way to work. For a moment, I almost had to double over. That hasn't happened for a while - in fact, the last time was when I was in the later stages of rehearsals for Medea last year, when, for about twenty minutes, I had to give my director notes from a sitting position, almost unmoving. But here's the thing. There's an app called TimeHop, which sends you a message occasionally to remind you of what you were doing (or at least, what you put as your status update) on this day a year, or two or three years ago. I just got today's text, and it turns out the last time my back locked up was exactly this day last year. Of course, it could have something to do with the last minute stresses of directing, but Medea wasn't until the end of June - almost a month away. The fact that my back twinged on the same day, a year apart - before I'd make enough of a connection for it to be psychosamatic - is a bit odd, really. I'd happily declare it as an entirely meaningless coincidence, but I've seen enough films to know that it must be a glitch in the system. Any minute now, I'm going to wake up. That feels appropiate, actually, since right now, I just feel half asleep.

Rehearsals continue to go well for A Beginning, A Muddle And An End, and we continue to learn stuff about improvisation even in this last week of rehearsals. (Oh, yes - it's the last week of rehearsal: you should really be getting your tickets right about now - https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/search/searchEventDetails.asp?sid=&returnPage=promoter&event_id=35283 ). Much of it is reaffirming what we already know, like the fact that we've got a pretty unique - and very challenging - set up in terms of the long form improv that we're attempting. Most troupes (read: sane troupes) will have a cast of four, maybe five. Sometimes just two. Occasionally even one. A show with nine - count 'em, nine - performers, all jostling for stage and story time, is a great testament to each improvisers skill and generosity. When I consider that a couple of them had rarely (or never) improvised before, it's genuinely breathtaking.

I've already known this for a while, but I won't be directing next year, or at least I don't expect to. It's a process that takes up a shocking amount of time, and I've not been able to see anything in the last three Brighton Fringes by sheer dint of being busy with my own productions. I'll always be greatful to the New Venture Theatre for allowing me to indulge some simply manic and entirely risky ideas. When people - management commitees, fellow directors and writers, and indeed the actors that you are responsible for - give you their trust, it's an empowering thing. Not just for you as the director, but also for the person giving the trust. I'm not saying as a director that you're always right - or even often right - but when someone has faith that you want the best, then - even if you both make a couple of mistakes along the way - you get to the best a helluva lot quicker.

Monday 13th May 2013

I've only seen one thing in the Brighton Fringe this year, and it might well be the only thing. The trade off is pretty good, since that one thing is excellent - Bitch Boxer (coming back to the fringe at the end of the month), but I'm acutely aware that it's about the third fringe in a year that I haven't been able to see anything. Time just vanishes. Of course, at this time of the year, I'm normally working on my own production, which, even if I feel like I'm not attending to it as well as I should, chews up all spare time and energy with the full force of a particularly nasty patch of quicksand. I've already decided that I won't be directing anything next year, at least not in the fringe. It seems to consume a vast amount of energy and emotion for something that I do outside the day job, in the evenings, where it's bundled up roughly and inefficiently, bursting at the seams. See, I have no idea what that's meant to mean. You can see I'm tired. 

However, we're on the home stretch now. This is the final couple of weeks of rehearsal (if rehearsal is an accurate description, which it isn't) for A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End. Up until now, my crew has consisted pretty much entirely of me. This is nobody's fault but mine - it's down to me to get hold of a production manager, lighting designer and the like, but I haven't been able to find the time to get anybody - because a good deal of my time outside rehearsals has been taken up with the sorts of things a production manager might take care of .. you can see how it can become a effortlessly self-repeating circle. Luckily, I've managed to bless myself with a new production manager just this weekend (nothing like leaving it to the last minute), and hopefully that will stave off the otherwise certain event horizon in which I wonder why things haven't been done in the production, before realising that I've somehow expected everyone else to read my mind. And, yes, I'm aware that professional directors with a full production team are guilty of this trait as well, without ever thinking that it is actually a guilty trait. 

By the way, my cast are doing nearly impossible things. Not actually impossible things, because that would be, well, you know. But nearly impossible things. It's a cast of nine performers, all sharing the space with each other, each having to boldly tear off a strip and sail down a narrative that is - quite simply - made up as they go along - while, at the same time, bending to the need of the other performer - to eight other performers, who will doubtless each have at least six different ideas as to where they think the story might be going. I'm learning as much as I ever did about the craft of improvisation. It occurred to me this week that the very first thing I did for the New Venture Theatre was a long improvisation performance, although I'm not precisely sure that I ever referred to it as such in the time that we did it. Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not even entirely sure that I even knew that it was long form. Certainly, in that performance, which only had about five days of prep, and then - thrown in at the deep end - things seemed a helluva lot easier. This time, it seems like a much bigger mountain, and that time, I was one of the performers (I'm staying off stage this time, for various reasons, which I might chat about on a later blog entry). 

I suspect that at least part of the reason why I find the long form so overwhelming this time round - even if I'm not in it - is because last time round, I was going in blind. I really didn't have any idea what the hell was going on. And naivete is a significantly underrated state of grace: if you don't know that a thing is impossible, or at least smucking difficult, then you're much more likely to wade in with much less concern about the cuts and bruises you might earn before the experience is over. That time, I was simply reacting, responding - not overly concerned about creating a coherent narrative, just reacting honestly to what the hell was going on. As anyone who's done more than one session of improv - long or short form - will attest, that's a great place to be in, improv. You can be too intelligent in improv, and your imagination, your smarts, aren't always your friend. 

Quite often, improvisers, experienced or first timers, will get concerned that their story doesn't really make sense, that it's meandering with no sense of direction, floating off into the wind. And, yes, of course that can happen, but lots of times - I'd say almost eight, even nine times out of ten, concentrating on making the plot clearer, giving it the ol' three act story arc treatment - is not going to do anyone any favours. It will always look false. It will always sound false and forced, dry rusty brakes screaming in protest. We panic that what we say has to be vital, and important - particularly if it's the first scene (the first line) in the play. But it doesn't. I'm pretty sure that most of Pinter's first lines are, on the paper, pretty banal. It's the attitude behind them that give them the import (and allow them to be re-evaluated after the fact). We don't talk in exposition, and whilst it's true that stories (plays, improv, films, whatever) are not exactly real life, there's no reason to speak in exposition there, either. Just because it's wise to only say what's needed on stage, and not to babble, it doesn't follow that every single thing spoken has to have the motive of story behind it. This is a complicated idea, much more complicated than I have the intelligence to voice here, because it might suggest that you're allowed to say things that have no purpose, which isn't the case at all. But neither should you be declaring that it's your plan to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. Even if - especially if - it's clear that your character's main aim is to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. It's like the acting advice that's most famously attributed to Michael Caine in Educating Rita: just because your character is drunk, doesn't mean that they want everyone to know it. As a performer, you say everything with a purpose. But your character does not have to mean everything they say. 

Which (sort of) brings us back to simply reacting, responding. If the only thing your characters are discussing is making tea, then there's an attitude behind that. Maybe one person is always making the damn tea, and resents that fact. Maybe the other character never makes the tea because they're convinced they are terrible at it. Why? Maybe they think they suck at everything. Is the other character, and more importantly, the other performer, aware of that? Do they (the performer) ask why - at least in their head? How do they react to this new found piece of information? It's this that drives the plot along. As improvisers, we don't really have to worry about plotting out a perfect plot that. In real terms, that's not improvisation, because we're laying down a safe path through the woods to follow. If we simply react, and respond, and throw out - gift out - our responses with verve and energy - then the story will look after us. Story is an awesomely strong beast that simply requires feeding and a loose leash. It doesn't need to be told where to go; it will smash us on the head, go through our pockets, steal our change, and gallop away down the road, laughing loudly. All we need to do is hold onto the leash, tight. 

And listen. 

Monday 6th May 2013

In the final few weeks of rehearsals for my Brighton Fringe show, 'A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End'. Well, I say my show, but it really belongs to the cast. Whatever happens now, it's a really remarkable achievement from everybody involved. Embarking on an entirely improvised, narrative play is a pretty big ask at the best of times, but when you consider that a couple of my actors hadn't really done any improvisation of any description before embarking on this production, the work that they're doing is genuinely brilliant. 

Not that it's any easier for improvisers who have had a lot of experience. In fact, it can be even more difficult, because it's so easy to get stuck into one particular 'method' of improvisation, simply because you know that that works, or indeed because that's the 'right' way to do a scene. Which is ironic, really, because that's almost the opposite of improvisation, since, in theory, you're not leaving yourself open to new untried methods of telling a story. So I'm grateful to my cast for continually throwing themselves into the dark, and seeing where the story leads them. It shows a humbling amount of faith, if not in myself as the person who claims to know what the hell he is doing as director, then certainly in each other as fellow performers. In each rehearsal, watching, and working with these improvisers who, in some cases, are learning certain improvisational techniques for the first time, I find that I too am learning more and more about improv. 

The DukeBox Theatre has a full programme during the Brighton Fringe, so I debated for a while about whether or not I should give Iron Clad Improv a break for the month of May. It's still a relatively young group, though, so I decided that I wanted to keep the momentum going, although there was always a risk that the numbers would drop slightly in a new location. I'm glad I did keep it going, however, because although it is true that the numbers dipped slightly on our first Sunday over in Hanover, it was a great session, and bodes well for the rest of the month. 

I keep meaning to upload a couple of essays and reviews on classic and nu-Who (Doctor Who, in other words) before this season ends, as there's a couple of theories that I'd like to put forward before they become proved / disproved onscreen. I have an odd little theory that links The Great Intelligence (the current Big Bad) to stories dating as far back as the very first season. I may be reading too much into things that have been (or indeed haven't been) seen onscreen, but then again Steven Moffat is a fiendish little showrunner. Hope to get those reviews / theories uploaded before the end of the week. 

Another thing I need to try and get done as soon as possible is a couple more short stories. There's a competition coming up for entries for ghost stories, and I happen to have a couple of ideas that would suit well. I've now got this long list, in date order, of upcoming competitions, which is very useful for focusing the mind. Nothing like a deadline or two for galvanising the procrastinating writer. There's a couple of other reasons too. Firstly (and probably most important), it means I actually have a reason to finish that story before getting distracted by that other shiny story. The excellent Chuck Wendig puts it very well, suggesting that you shouldn't cheat on your first idea by messing around with the new, sexy idea. Be faithful to the first one. Put the effort in. For someone like me, whose hard drive is littered with a hundred and six unfinished ideas, this advice is invaluable. 

Perversely, however, the other reason to actually finish these stories (or ideas, or whatever) is in order to come up with new ones. As writers, we're often concerned that we're going to run out of ideas, that the well is going to run dry. But I'm increasingly not convinced that's quite the case. Actually, we need to use up those ideas, chew them up, spit them out, make way for the new stuff. Which will come. Otherwise, we're just screwing around with the same old stuff, pushing our peas around the plate, becoming ever more bored with the lack of flavour, and losing the energy to come up with something new. 

Well, that's what I think today, anyway. Tomorrow, it'll probably be something about a gluten free diet, and women who wear too much kohl on their eyes. (I have no idea). 

Saturday 6th April 2013

I'm probably two, maybe three drafts away from the final draft of a story I'm working on called 'Broom Handle'. If I'm lucky, it's only one draft. When I had the idea for the story, it seemed really simple. And, actually, it is: the idea itself is quite a basic one, and shouldn't require too much in the way of complicated add-ons. But because the concepts aren't that simple for the characters themselves, I need to be a bit clever about how I'm telling the story, a cleverness that's currently hiding from me. Over the last few drafts, I've begun to hate this story. Not actively, not with real passion, not even so much that I consider the writing (and re-writing) of it to be a genuine chore .. but certainly enough for me to question if the story is actually good enough. And, by extension, if I'm good enough as a writer. 

Again, this is why it's useful to have deadlines. If I'd been writing this story a year or so ago, pretty much at any point in my history, there's a damn good chance that I'd have given up on it by now. After all: what's the point? Who's actually waiting for this story? No-one. (actually, that's a bit of a lie: two friends have asked to read it when it's finished, because they quite liked the sound of the idea behind it). It's so easy to let a pretty good idea wither and die even before it's finished. That's any idea: whether it be for a short story, a film - or even a little blog like this: if you don't get the damn thing down as quickly as possible, even if it's not particularly good, then there's a very good chance that nothing will get written at all. Of course, that's a major factor in itself: so many things don't get written because they are not perfect in their first incarnation. Then the inner critic gets disheartened, dials back, and thinks that they'll do better if the first running jump is much better. What happens, of course, is that there are lots of running jumps, quite a few bad stumbles, and then: nothing. Nothing actually gets finished. Writing (as well as anything I do, like acting, directing, improvising, whatever) seems to be a journey of constantly re-learning the same things, over and over. You can have twenty years in the same discipline, and still, in that twentieth year, re-realise with evangelical fervour the thing that you learnt in the first day. For me, in this past year, it's been this: it really is irrelevant if I write every single day. Even if I'm producing, say three thousand words every single day: that doesn't matter. Sure, it's relevant, but those three thousand words a day don't really add to the pile if you don't do one simple thing: ACTUALLY FINISH. 

I think it was doing Nanowrimo last year that really cemented that ethos for me. Now, I haven't yet looked back at the novel that I finished in November (with about thirty minutes to spare), and I'm reasonably confident that it's a pretty shoddy bit of story telling. But I know that it's a pretty shoddy bit of storytelling  and that in itself has been a instructive experience. Just the pressure of finding narrative closure (or a deliberate lack of closure) for my characters demanded of me a certain amount of discipline  that I hadn't always really buckled down to before, mainly because of that old idea that nobody's actually waiting for the story, so it didn't matter - not really - if I didn't actually buckle down and finish the damn thing. 

This year, I seem to have got a lot better at actually finishing stories. Some of them, I even think are reasonably good. So far, fate doesn't quite agree - none of them have been shortlisted for any short story competitions that I've sent them off for. On occasion, I suspect that the story wasn't quite right - either for whatever comp I was sending them off for, or maybe even that the story itself wasn't perfect. I haven't sent off a story that I didn't think was as good as it could be, however. 

So, these deadlines are a real life line. As I've indicated, there's a reasonable chance that if I didn't have a deadline for this story (April 15th), I might have bailed on it quite some time ago, as just so much damn hard work. It's easy to forget, however, that writing - good writing - is supposed to be damn hard work: it's not as if you can just throw one word onto the page after the other without so much as a re-write or checking over to see if it makes any sense whatsoever (like this blog, for instance). It really is - without getting pretentious about it all - an actual craft, and that demands a certain amount of respect and hard work. It can take a very long time to understand exactly what that means. I suspect I'm not even close to truly appreciating what I'm taking on. 

Lots of rehearsal this week for both the Brighton Fringe shows. With Three Kinds Of Me, we're having to do a fair bit of re-write in order to get the balance of the show right for the new space (and the new running time). We always knew that, just because of these seemingly innocuous and irrelevant details, that the show would be very different, that, indeed, it would be about something different, but it's still a helluva challenge to rip up what you've already achieved, and, for all practical intents and purposes, begin again. Well, I say we: all of the work is being done by writer/performer Sarah Charsley, who is doing extraordinarily well. I can imagine how challenging it is to totally re-do something that you are creatively so close to. 

As  well as 3KoM, we've got A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End, the totally improvised show. I'm still debating with format, etc - I don't want it to be too much of a ringleader/circus type improv show, where the 'director' directly addresses the audience and asks them to call out suggestions, because I feel (this week, anyway) that this is not quite in the neighbourhood of what I want the finished product to be. This isn't a judgement call on one kind of improvisation as opposed to another, but I certainly want the audience(s) to have the very real experience of a play - rather than an extended sketch - being formed before their very eyes. This week, we were rehearsing in the DukeBox Theatre, which gave the cast a good chance to experience how it will feel to perform on an actual stage, with light and music / sound. Things are beginning to fall into place .. 

Tuesday 26th March 2013

Another rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me last night, the first of two plays I'm directing at the Brighton Festival Fringe. Although an earlier version was performed at the New Venture Theatre in October, this is a slightly different beast, adapted for the fringe, which means that we're still at the stage of tweaks and re-writes, discovering what it's all about, Alfie (it's not about Alfie. That was a needlessly confusing diversion). This, I imagine, is to be expected when you have a writer directing a writer in her own script. Certainly, I have to be very mindful that any suggestions or revisions I offer are done so from the mindset of a director, not a frustrated writer (even if it's actually a frustrated writer that's come up with the idea for the revision). I find it endlessly curious how the meaning of a story can change over time, even if you don't actually change the words. A single story can mean something completely different to people depending on when they see it - ie, what year or decade - and what they themselves bring to the story: if they've recently become a parent, or come out of a relationship. The final writer is the audience. I think that's already been said elsewhere before. Probably by somebody able to write the idea significantly more elegantly.

It reminds me of a story that John Cleese used to tell, about the first time the Parrot Sketch from Monty Python aired. The morning after, Cleese was stopped in the street by an admiring fan who told him how funny the sketch was before turning serious and conspiractal: 'So,' the man said. 'It was about the Vietnam War, wasn't it?'

I'm finding meanings in stories a particular challenge at the moment. This week, I have four deadlines for short story competitions all jostling for position. They're all pretty much on the last draft stage because I have been working on them before I had any inclination that I would be entering them for competitions. There is one in particular which I am rather afraid that I'm going to have to rip apart and start all over again, simply because I have no idea what it's actually about. I mean, it makes sense, and has a plot, and events happen one after the other in an attractive fashion, and it's a perfectly pleasant read, but I'm not entirely sure what the point is. I'm cheerfully confident that there are plenty of stories, books and films that have no real rhyme or reason and are nonetheless entirely successful. But I can't help thinking that this story needs a bit of bones under the meat, that it needs to be about something other than simply just the plot. Or maybe I should just bite the bullet, and post the bloody thing off before deadline. If I think it's good enough.

All of a sudden, I have two Ghostwalks this week, which depart from the same place and same time as usual - 7.30, outside the Druids Head in Brighton. This week, it's on Tuesday (tonight, if you read this quick), and Thursday. It's been a bit of a slow season so far, largely to the bitterly cold weather that continues to hang around like the lonely and slightly too sober chap at a party who's still there when all the music has been switched off. Hopefully an improvement in the weather is not too far away now, and anyway, in just a few weeks is the the Fringe.

The other thing I'm doing for the fringe is the entirely improvised show, which is going very well in rehearsals, although we only have one rehearsal this week, which is a bit of a strain. Although it's true that due to the very nature of the show being improvised, there are no lines or moves to learn, it's obviously good to keep the group together as much as possible. Each rehearsal is either adding to the tool kit, or keeping those tools well oiled and sharpened. It's dangerous to let the momentum slip for too long, otherwise everybody runs the risk of getting a bit rusty: a good improv show - short or long form - is all about trust and confidence in everybody else on stage. However, this is the only week that I expect us not to be able to meet regularly. Up until now, it's been like the first fifty seconds of a ride on a roller coaster - that very sharp incline to the highest point when you can hear all the gears working hard to get you to a certain level. After Easter, however: that's when it's full speed ahead.