I am a God

If you think about it - which I have - it’s true, sort of.

It was looking at all the pictures of the set that did it, then seeing the actors starting to inhabit their characters. I realised that the world and people I had created were being brought to life.

That’s what gods do, isn’t it, make worlds?

Unlike novels, or film or most art, the world you create as a playwright is alive, moving, living, breathing and connecting with real people. It has its own energy, each performance is different, each night the audience react differently. It is alive.

So you create life, which is what gods do, isn’t it?

That is pretty amazing when you think about it, some germ of an idea, a specific place, people you made with all their flaws and hopes, gradually coming to life in front of your eyes. Without you this world would never have existed. Nobody would ever know about your characters, nobody would respond to this part of your imagination made three dimensional and real. Nobody would care about it but you.

I have been thinking about it a lot.

And sure, it wouldn’t happen without the director and the actors and all the other talented people involved. And sure, I’ve created worlds that have previously died on and off the page, and sure, it is only for a few nights. But it still started with what I created and what I made, so that makes me kind of God-like, sort of, almost…

Having worked myself up into an egotistical frenzy I decided to broach my new theory. I found my husband in front of the TV. I stood before him, resplendent and omnipotent in my pajamas and mismatched slippers, holding a glass of juice aloft.

I made a statement rather than asking.

“You do realise that I am a living God?”

He paused before answering.

“You do realise that you’ve spilt Ribena on your top.”

He better watch his back, that’s all I have to say.

first day of rehearsals

Monday was the first day of rehearsals and it started with a big meet and greet with all the team apart from the associate producers from Hexham and South Shields who sadly hadn’t been able to make it to the Newcastle meeting.

It was all very civilised, lots of pastries and coffee, introductions and background to the play etc and no leaping about. The team is from all over, London, Scotland, Leicester as well as the North East crowd. Again it brought home how lucky I am that a new play with a small tour has such high production values. It is costing in the region of £90 000 to get it on the road. It has taken around two years for New Writing North to raise that level of funding. The hope is that it will raise the profile of various individuals and organisations involved as well as encouraging regional theatres to take a chance on putting on new writers from the region.

So once everyone had met everyone else and introductions had been made the creative team got down to business. The actors spent the rest of the morning working on their responses to the set and environment of Pub Quiz. They drew plans of what might be beyond the part of the pub we see, where characters might sit and how they could respond to their immediate environment. Then there was a production meeting where the creative team responsible for creating, dressing and designing the set as well as lighting, costume, sound and maintaining the tour, hammered out details and a plan. After lunch we had a read through of the script. It was interesting to hear the whole team together and their responses to the newly tweaked draft. I of course focused on what sounded wrong (my writing, not their reading).

Psyche has blocked the script into sections to work on, units of action and change rather than scene by scene blocks and everyone was asked to leave with thoughts about the characters response to this world and also their physical selves as Tuesday morning is going to be spent with Shona Wright (stage manager) who will soon be shopping for their outfits as well as dressing the set.

The day ended as any day which involves actors should- in the pub. Good to see the actors bonding. I worry about the ones who are away from home and in digs and hope they will be happy and not homesick and not get scurvy.

I have missed the next two days as I’ve been attending a local screenwriters conference but am keen to see what progress has been made when I go back in on Thursday.

I haven’t quite got my head round the fact that this is actually happening.

From the New Writing North website:

So without further ado, we are delighted to present… Geoff: Joe Caffrey, Pete: Mickey Cochrane, John: Chris Price, Bethany: Helen Embleton, Kathleen: Vicky Elliot, Lewis: James Cunningham, Asram: Joseph Garton.

For more information about Pub Quiz, including tour dates and booking information, see our Publicity section.

look at this because it is bloody fantastic:

How cool is this…..

please click on the above.

Little mini-me Pub Quiz set and then real Pub Quiz set in the process of being made. Photos, set design and mini world creation all from the wonderful Mila Sanders.

I can’t believe it’s all happening!

good stuff and usual whining, plus thoughts of revenge and wives

Good news, it looks like Pub Quiz is going to be published in time for production so it can be on sale at venues. I have been proofreading the copy which has thankfully been edited by John Adair who doesn’t miss a trick or any glaring errors either. I think my blog makes his eyes bleed.

That will be so cool. A book. A real book with my name on. I might send signed copies to people who don’t like me, with suitably annoying inscriptions. A book, my book, my first book and I am looking at this wonderful opportunity as a means to smite.

I read somewhere that writing was a form of revenge. I tend to do horrible things to characters based on people who have pissed me off. Writing is cheaper than therapy, but not much.

Rehearsals start on Monday, time to dust off the velvet smoking jacket and cigarillo case. Just to give a clue about the amount of work (and cost) involved in putting on a play even for a regional tour the invite list for Monday’s meet and greet:

The producers and associate producers, seven actors, director, assistant director, designer, lighting designer, stage manager, sound designer, assistant tour manager, production manager, deputy production manager, marketing and me and some press. No hideous warm up exercises, praise be, but coffee and cakes - hurrah!

I love my producers.

I am looking forward to it but feel a bit weird and nervous. Every time I read the play I see something else that needs a tweak. It’s exciting too. I will report back after Monday. I am going to pop in and out of rehearsals as and when needed and when I feel inclined and nosy. Psyche keeps the door open but I have no overwhelming desire to watch their every move and I cannot imagine anything more annoying that having a writer breathing down your neck.

My new play is moving at snail’s pace. I am sixty pages into a rough as a badger’s arse rough draft. Sometimes I am convinced that I am so utterly great that my ideas will write themselves before skipping off into fantasy commissioning land.

‘Huge lottery sized cheque, Miss Rodney? It would be our pleasure. No, no, the first draft is perfect, don’t even think of a rewrite.’

When I am gripped by this delusional state I write with crazed and obsessive energy. I don’t need sleep. I write until the early hours and wake up buzzing with new ideas and raring to go. Then there’s the slump, there’s always the slump. When you can get nothing done, lethargic and slovenly, full of doubt and free from ideas. Every word is a drag and a waste.

‘Minuscule income support cheque, Miss Rodney? Piss off.’

Misery loves company and I love reading about other writers suffering. I once read a book all about how a writer’s creativity mirrors the stages of manic depression, the highs and the lows. How the manic stage allowed an outpouring of ideas and how the slumps allowed new ideas to develop and shift before the cycle began again. Somehow I can’t imagine Richard Curtis having too many slumps.

The whole book could have been summed up with the footnote, ‘writers are self indulgent, self obsessed whingeing gits who often go off on one.’

I think a support group should be started for the partners of writers, especially the wives. Every writer needs a wife. I love my husband but know a wife would be more sympathetic and would probably cook more and have children and clean the house, maybe, if she was a better wife than me.

My wife would look up to me and be convinced I was a genius and take care of all the niggling aspects of every day life. I have met writers wives who have been like this but no writers husbands , they seem to have more sense and plasma TVs. One ‘writer’s wife I know referred to her husband as, ‘the master poet’. I thought she was taking the piss but sadly not.

I believe that behind every great writer is a wife, stuffed to the gills with Valium. Behind every not so great writer is a wife sharpening a bread knife and dreaming of life insurance payouts and Gambian beach boys. Behind every female writer is a pile of washing up and a house that is starting to resemble a landfill site - Ok, that’s just me, but before you judge me, remember, I am suffering from a mental illness.

don’t do it

It’s been one of those days or will be one of those days if this week is anything to go by. I have spent the last five days working on a new play and it is painfully slow work. One of those days when you wonder why you are doing this to yourself. Avoiding the play which refuses to be written, the lack of energy and ideas, I was wasting time on a writers forum and noticed this poem posted on a thread called ‘rejection and dejection’. Can you imagine any other hobby or job that people would willingly take up which has rejection and dejection discussion groups? so you want to be a writer?
Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.
From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. THIS IS MY VERSION:so you want to be a writer don’t do it if you want a hobby lock yourself in a room and burn banknotes instead rather than write about life while yours disappears up your ever expanding arse as you take root to the chair that bears the indent of your squashed dreams don’t do it

Wallsend’s Chesil Beach

On Thursday I had dinner with Psyche, we chatted about the latest draft, made some minor changes on script and caught up before rehearsals next week. Psyche’s up from London this week working on Northern Stages, Our Friends In The North. http://www.northernstage.co.uk

I caught the metro from North Shields into town for the meeting. As usual I sat on one of the side seats which are in pairs and face outwards. As no seats are opposite them it makes it impossible for any foul oaf to put their filthy shoes on the seat. I have an aversion to sitting in what somebody else has stepped in. Feet on seats drive me mad.

On the journey I got stuck back into my book, I’m reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I make a point of reading McEwan’s novels, they are exquisitely written, poetic, intelligent, precise and yet they always leave me a little cold. I feel like an outsider looking in at a middle class world and characters that I cannot quite grasp and have difficulty empathizing with. But I know he is a literary giant, a writer that should be read and so I read his books and remain in awe of his talent, yet read them only once.

The doors of the metro slammed open and a group of chavs stumbled in. The three boys were feral looking, their sportswear needed a good wash and they needed a good meal. Hard, pinched faces, short, slight, bodies, bad skin so pale as to have an almost bluish tint. Scary teens at once both intimidating and pitiful. With the boys were two girls who carried their confidence with less self conscious effort than the boys. They were probably the same age as the boys, maybe younger but looked older. Bleached dead, mercilessly straightened hair and plenty of gold and lipgloss.

I inwardly sighed as one of the lads sat next to me while thee others congregated by the door. The boy next to me called over to them, loud, swearing. One of the girls came over, he pulled her onto his knee where she sat listening to music on her phone and chewing gum. He leaned round the side of her and swore at his mate, they laughed. The girl on his knee didn’t crack a smile. I kept one wary eye on him, but thankfully it was as if I was invisible.

And then I saw him, protected from his friends sight by the girl’s body he leaned in and kissed her pink, nylon jacket softly, his long eyelashes fluttering. It was the gentlest of kisses and he stayed there a moment, his mouth barely touching the material of her jacket. She didn’t feel him or sense his face softened with emotional longing. He looked angelic and so young, so vulnerable. I was entranced.

And then he whispered, twice, into the wall of her back, ‘I love you, I love you.’ His face made open with his need to connect, to be heard and yet to go unnoticed. He closed his eyes and offered up his own unseen, unanswered prayer once more.

The metro stopped, the girl got up and left, she looked over her shoulder, her eyes glassy with indifference and said, ’see ya,’. He tried to smile bravely as she disappeared out of view. His smile settled into a protective scowl.

I realized that I had just seen the Wallsend version of On Chesil Beach and I am afraid it moved me more than the Mr McEwan’s masterly prose which now lay limp in my hand.

At dinner I told Psyche about it and how it had made me think about writing. How what ‘we’ writers’ try and show and which I hope I’ve managed to in Pub Quiz. Those brief, meaningful, intensely personal moments of connection which make the personal universal, and the mundane significant.

we are family

 

I am lucky to live in the North East, not only are you never more than 20 yards from a Greggs outlet but there is also a strong community of writers here, fostered in no small part by companies like New Writing North. Newcastle is a good place to be a writer, there are lots of us, of all persuasions, some one would say a family of writers. Now, I don’t mean family in that sappy, church going American sense, but more of a big extended mess of a family, seething with insecurity, back biting, resentments, even incest, but we understand and care for our dysfunctional group more than an outsider could or should.

Like any family we suffer from in-fighting, envy, a sense of being over looked and on occasion less loved than our more attractive siblings. We chase the same opportunities, prizes and funding, we gloat, gossip and socialize together. We come crawling out of the woodwork to support one another in our rare successes and commiserate when it all turns out to be another dead end. This family extends out of any writer’s home town through the internet, contacts and forums. I am not alone in having had huge amounts of help and guidance from people I’ve never met, because they, like me, are a writer and know how frigging hard that can be. It doesn’t stop at my peers, I never cease to be amazed and grateful for the help and guidance offered up freely by established writers to people like me, struggling on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

This sense of belonging to a community of like minded people, this band of brothers, this brave few…Ok, overkill, but you get the point, and this means that like any family you get pissed off when one of your own is treated unfairly, a point I would like to illustrate further with the following example:

To summarize, one talented, sassy, writer whose energy and success, writing and social skills make me green with envy took her hit Newcastle play to make it a bigger hit in Edinburgh. Equipped with awards and brilliant reviews she has moved on to a month long run at a top London theatre. For arguments sake, lets call the writer, Fifi, and the play, ‘Whitby’. Fifi’s writing truly reflects the writer, a strong political conscience, warm, witty, original and smart. ‘Whitby’ sells out for the whole run, ‘Whitby’ is loved by audiences and the great majority of the press, ‘Whitby’ surely deserves its plaudits. I am both envious of her success and happy for her. If Fifi was a business I would buy shares in her, incredibly hard working, multi skilled and confident, she is one writer who is destined to go far.

So far, so good, then I read a derogatory, snobby, ‘review’ by, for argument’s sake, lets call him Mr BoJangles, which was so far removed from every other professional response to the play as to be laughable. He actually boasts of turning up his nose at ‘Whitby’. What sort of pompous twat thinks it is clever or seemly to talk about ‘turning up their nose’ at a play? Did he hitch up his plus fours before or after his turning? He derides the fact that Fifi has the talent to write for television as well as stage. It is a bitter, vindictive, unpleasant little review and it made me pissed me off. We all have to roll with the punches, we all have to take bad reviews but this was more a drawn out sneer than a meaningful response, positive or negative to a piece of writing.

When you see a review that so flies in the face of the positive responses to a play , I have to wonder, why? I am not the only one, a debate has been sparked by this, a debate which includes critics, bloggers and writers.

What exactly was it about this well acted, written and directed play that had Mr BoJangles’s man thong in such a twist?

Perhaps:

Enjoyable, popular, unpretentious plays have to be demolished because they are popular, unpretentious and enjoyable.

Was it anything to do with the fact that the writer is new, northern, female and young?

Is he starved of attention?

Was it that the audience had to sit on cushions and furniture and his arthritis was playing up?

Who knows, only Mr Bojangles, his review made no sense to me.

Now going back to this family point, Mr BoJangels has written a play which opens at the end of the month. Our family of writers has a new, red haired step child in its midst. Despite the mean spirited reviews he has dished out in the past, I hope, as with all plays, that any reviews are fair and made in response to the work not the author. I hope Mr BoJangles finds his new family of writers supportive, more supportive than he deserves. But then again, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that somebody had broken into the theater overnight and shat on his set.

Success!

Yippee, the blog has had over 600 hits in nine days! I am delighted by that, it feeds my writer’s narcissistic need for an audience. Being a Luddite I still have no idea about feeds or links or have been able to enlarge and upload a copy of the Pub Quiz poster but still many people are reading or have read or glanced at the blog. There’s not been that many times I can claim a writing success but I insist that this is one of them, so three cheers for me and a big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my poorly punctuated ramblings.

More good news, we have an Asram. I’ve not met him yet but hear good things from Psyche. I have looked at his photo and agency details and he looks the part, can’t wait to see him what he brings to the play. (more soon)

Unexpected bonus of the workshops and development process of Pub Quiz has been the improvement in the scope and ambition of my new play ideas. I have three new ideas for plays sketched and a couple underway. Having Pub Quiz developed has been a real shot in the arm for me. I am hoping that interest from Pub Quiz if it does well, (oh please, dear God above) will mean another commission from somewhere. I am lucky in that all my theater commissions have been commissioned from a synopsis and have been developed in-house and that’s how I like to work, with guidance and input and a sense of who I am writing for. I think it would be hard to polish a theatre script without collaboration from the director and the company who plan on staging it but if nobody bites, that’s what I will have to do.

So for the time being I am feeling confident which is good but it won’t last and I will continue to balance precariously between self belief and doubt. I believe that a writer needs to be their own harshest critic and biggest fan. You have to write with confidence and the belief that you can and will pull your idea off better than anyone else but be critical enough to listen and filter (even reject) feedback and to work on your own to improve, rewrite and polish. As a writer you commit to working on your own, largely unpaid, on ideas that might never see the light of day and yet you have to tell each of those stories with as much compassion and commitment as if it had a mega bucks production deal attached. In short, you have to have insufferable pride in what you write.

I once heard that a script is not finished but merely abandoned and despite eight drafts so far, I know that the production process will continue to highlight failings in my script and improvements that need to be made, but at some point you have to say, enough is enough.

Right now it feels very much the calm before the storm. The final draft was finished months ago and apart from a few tweaks the script will be signed off for rehearsals. I always listen to actors reading my work with one eye on changes and my hand on the red pen of doom. Yes, I feel positive now because I think that this is the best script I’ve done, the time and input it has been given to develop and all the great strengths that are being brought to the script to get it off the page has made it good. Once in rehearsals and in production I will become painfully aware of everything that falls short of the mark. I hear each badly structured line thud to the floor, every lame gag belly flop, and cringe as my subtext prances around the stage flashing its nether regions. I will want to make more changes and improvements, it never ends and yet it must.

Writing is mostly a thankless task and also a compulsion. On a regular basis I note that I have suffered enough humiliation and rejection to last a lifetime and swear to give it all up, but like a grubby addict all it takes is one more hit of encouragement, one more promise of fulfillment and you’re wired up enough to go back to touting your bargain basement wares. So if anyone is reading this who is holding a sack load of commissioning money and who wants to make my day, I have three corking ideas outlined and ready to go. Don’t be shy…

Warm Up, my arse

Rehearsals start in just over two weeks and I will definitely be attending the first few. Which got me thinking about on an approach to the rehearsal process which some directors insist on and I hate, which got me ranting, which got my husband insisting I change names to protect the innocent and cut out half this post, which made me hold back, just a little, just a little bit more. Here’s what’s left of it:

One thing I hate about rehearsals and workshops is the warm up. Not everyone makes you do it or join in but you know it’s coming when you are told to stand in a circle and wriggle your limbs about and breathe deeply. Breathe deeply, the warm up makes me feel the need to breathe into a paper bag.

Listen closely theatre folk, writers have highly developed embarrassment genes and we hate warm ups and yet we cannot opt out without looking churlish at best. I do not want to play knobby trust games, I don’t like looking people in the face at the best of times let alone walking towards them ‘as if you have the hots for them’. There’s a time and a place for looking at people you’ve got the hots for, it’s private and it’s called the internet. I also have no desire to throw giant balls, bean bags or play the Farmer’s In his Den’ or pretend a belt is a snake, or have an imaginary tea party like a demented Brooke Bond chimp, or any of the other stuff I’ve had to do over the years in the name of the dreaded warm up and bonding.

It doesn’t warm me up, it leaves me cold. It doesn’t make me bond, it makes me embarrassed, awkward, resentful and annoyed.

Don’t actor types get it? Writers spend the vast majority of their time in rooms on their own and live through the worlds they create but don’t have the guts to inhabit. Please don’t drag us in to your warm up with thinly disguised, low level bullying. That forced laugh and smile you see and hear as I jump to your tune is masking a desire to detonate an explosive.

Psyche’s warm ups are quite tame and not too hideous yet they make me come out in a cold sweat remembering more painful times. The company which specialized in physical theatre and the sort of plays where actors wear white masks and stand on wooden blocks doing a sort of robotic dance instead of a prologue, made me join in warm ups for plays I had nothing to do with. They made me hop and skip and play frigging badminton every time I set foot in the place. I remember one particularly humiliating morning spent lying on the floor with a scrap of fur on my head being a polar bear, then the North Pole.

Their horrific warm ups which were extended if they hadn’t had time to go to aerobics in the local village hall and then ‘physical exploration and expression’ in reality, ‘let’s burn off that second bacon butty, Mavis’, took up most of the morning. I am surprised they never made us strip down to our vest and pants and run round the room pretending to be a leaf that had blown off a tree AKA 1970s primary school PE lessons.

There have been other times and other places when I have been made to crawl, skip, prance and mime and sing in close harmony. I’ve had to do the Gay Gordon, musical chairs, grasshopper leaps and cloth wafting and grabbing. I hated it all and hated myself more for putting up with it. Instead of politely saying ‘No, I would rather jab out my eyeballs with this stubby pencil,’ I spinelessly leap along giving high kicks, doings spastic versions of the hokey coky and animal squeals on demand.

So this is a heartfelt plea to all directors inclined to indulge in the inclusive and intrusive warm up: Let the writers sit it out. You know it makes sense.

Horrid Photos

January 30th:

Had my photos taken today and despite the professionalism and kindness of photographer Simon Veit-Wilson, it was as expected a less than delightful experience. We started off in the Tynemouth Lodge pub which was thankfully almost empty. I thought I could just hide behind a table, couple of quick snaps, job done. Oh no, I was posed by the bar while Simon equipped himself with various instruments of his trade. The session seemed to take forever as I grimaced and squinted (see marketing post) to Simon’s encouraging and gentle prompts.

I have sadly and inevitably put on a great deal of weight in the last five years, approximately equal to permanently carrying round a not so small, depressed poet, which doesn’t help confidence issues. (I’ve started reducing my inner, that should be outer poet, the journey of which surely deserves a separate blog). To add to this my new blouse once on looked like a utilitarian granddad shirt. Then there was my ‘prop’’ which I had to clumsily clutch on to. I had been asked to bring a copy of my script which I couldn’t find so I had shoved a load of papers in a folder and stuck a few Pub Quiz leaflets on top. I was asked to stand with my foot on the bar with my drink (apple juice) in front of me which looked like an extra large whiskey.

The combination of masculine pose, paper and leaflets, working man’s shirt, heavy make up, nervous blushes and squints made me look like an obese, alcoholic, transvestite lorry driver about to embark on a BNP leafleting campaign. That’s sure to improve ticket sales.

This was followed by a trip to Whitley Bay beach to prove I do in fact live in the North East and hadn’t had my passport stamped at the border. It was blowing a ruddy gale and so to avoid my hair rising to the skies in the style of Ken Dodd I slipped on my woolly hat and ended up looking like Hannah Hauxwell on a rare trip out from her one woman Dale’s asylum. Poor Simon.

I need a drink. Where is my make-up artist sister when I need her?