I am working, honestly

Stewart Lee and Max Wall.

2012-01-31T07:37:00.000Z

Saw Stewart Lee's show Carpet Remnant World. Not often an anticipated experience delivers. I'd heard him speak about Jerry Springer at a theatre conference at Warwick. I'd read his book on stand up and seen his latest series on BBC 2. All of which made me want to see him live. It's a long time since I've seen someone so funny, so uncondescending, and so in control of the room. He has all the skills. He makes a point in his second book - If You'd Like a Milder Comedian - that he has no talent as an actor. Maybe. But he knows all about physicality and timing. In some ways it reminded me of seeing Max Wall who also used to deconstruct his act. He'd explain he was going to tell you a joke, explain its inadequacies, apologise for telling it, tell you where you'd laugh and why you'd laugh, all of which was immaculately funny, and then about half an hour later tell the joke and step back and watch disappointed as you fell about all over again. Lee doesn't do jokes, but in their technique they have much in common. I saw him last week and I've been smiling ever since.

The Giants in the Earth musical makes it onto film.

2012-01-19T10:07:00.001Z

So we have a trailer for the musical Giants in the Earth that Matt Marks and I have been working on with Oxfordshire Theatre Company. Please have a look, it's up on youtube. It's on the edge of the final rehearsal draft. All we have to do is incorporate what we learned from the two weeks Arts Council funded development period we had in November and it's ready to go. I thought it was amazing that only weeks after they'd pulled portfolio money from the company they were eager to put in eleven grand to finance our work. An endorsement of the the piece and of Karen Simpson's work as the artistic director, and what should have been proof o the board that they wanted to fund the company on a project by project basis.
Onward and upward. We're one step closer. Enjoy the short video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOsMNp68QU

Okay it took a while, but at last I really like Kate Bush. No pretending.

2011-12-28T14:59:00.000Z

I've always liked Kate Bush in theory. I wasn't ever going to like Wuthering Heights. Not when I hated the book so much. Not with all the other stuff I was listening to. But later. Running up that Hill. The Red Shoes. Hey, there Micheal - something about swinging on a chair in Abbey Road? I almost got here. Liked that she'd recorded them, liked that they existed, but not actually, as it were, to listen to. Admired her. Respected her talent. Just didn't listen. I tried to because I thought very highly of what I thought she might be trying to do - Hounds of Love - went back to that several times, couldn't do it. I wanted to like Kate Bush, I really did, I was the kind of person who should like Kate Bush. Only I didn't, so I obviously wasn't.
This Christmas I bought 50 Words for Snow for my wife, and because she hadn't got it, The Director's Cut. Played them on Christmas Day out of a sense of duty. And listened. And heard them.
Now I don't think it's all my fault. Everything's a matter of taste. But I loved Snow. Then I played Director's Cut. And I loved that too. It' isn't all my fault. I heard them because they are so simple. So paired down. So undramatic. So unlike Wuthering Heights perhaps? No, that's not the point. They are so bloody good. The songs breathe. Her voice so subtle. The lyrics so clean. And not so many notes, and, alright, I'll say the unsayable, not so much screeching. Whatever it is, I promise I will go back to the other albums and try again. And if it doesn't work? Who cares? 50 words for Snow and The Director's Cut will do for me. Happy Christmas Ms Bush. You (and Private Eye the First 50 Years) have made mine.

Harry Perkins - the best fictional Prime Minister we never had.

2011-12-13T20:03:00.001Z

I began this year reading Chris Mullin's diaries and twelve months later I've just finished A Very British Coup his thriller about what happens when a Labour government with socialist principles gets an overwhelming majority. It's such a good read that it would be unfair to give anything away other than what we already gather from the title - Harry and his colleagues are never going to be allowed to succeed.
I have always wondered why men and women of integrity, ideals, and conscience ever go into politics when they can only look forward to sliding from one frustrating compromise to another, notching up more defeats than victories. But reading Mullin makes you glad they do.
His thriller is amazingly prescient. It's exciting but it's so sad because the obstacles that prevent Harry Perkins getting closer to the world he's striving for are not a million miles from those that frustrated Mullin himself.
But the message of the diaries and the novel are the same. It may not be possible to make much of a difference, in a world that seems bent on protecting the vested interests of a few (cf Cameron walks away from Europe to protect the City which is of course in all our best interests. As in - Is it fuck.), a society based on freedom, equality, and justice may be out of reach, but that shouldn't stop us trying to put our small shoulders to the wheel.
A reasonable thought for the New Year.

How does an ordinary mortal get tickets to see Bruce Springsteen?

2011-12-05T11:16:00.000Z

Saturday morning. Eight fifty five. I'm sitting in front to the computer waiting for nine o'clock. The time that tickets for next year's Bruce Springsteen concerts go on sale. At nine o'clock I click on. All I'm offered is two at the very very back and at the very very highest point of the South Stand at Manchester. I try other sites. Nothing. Eventually I get a ticket for Hyde Park. Only one ticket as my wife is just over five foot and gets understandably fed up at paying good money to stare at somebody's back. So I'm going to see Springsteen. Not with my wife. Not at my venue of choice. Maybe I was just unlucky. Hundreds of thousands of people clicked on at exactly the same moment.
Yes, but hang on a moment. I've just been on e bay and they're log jammed with Springsteen tickets. 6 for Sunderland. 8 for Dublin. All about to change hands at huge prices. And then I went on to look for tickets generally and the sites that said they'd sell tickets on Saturday and didn't have any now suddenly have stacks of them at prices up to £1398.
Oh, and on Friday I went on the same sites and they were offering pre sale tickets - that weren't officially on sale yet - for inflated prices.
So it wasn't just bad luck or bad timing that prevents me and God knows how many others from buying tickets.
It's a huge fucking organised scam.
This is disgraceful, but it isn't news.
The ticket agencies either have inadequate security or they collude in the process. Because they can make even more money by allowing the bulk pre purchase of tickets that they can re sell at huge prices and take a rake off from that sale too.
I have one question and I haven't the faintest idea of the answer.
How can it be stopped?

More thoughts on Matilda and Giants in the Earth performers and the musical theatre.

2011-11-22T23:50:00.000Z

Went into the Watermill today and members of the Giants cast want to know what I thought were the highlights of Matilda. Obviously there are some bits that stand out, some excellent individual performances but for me it was the coherence from beginning to end that made the show. Coherence of intention, quality of performance, production values. They batted all the way down the order - not a weak link. They were a company, not a group of adult actors who worked with a different team of kids each night. The respect they had for each other was obvious.
And that made me think about the performers we're working with this week. And to start with I have to say that I'm not used to working with actors whose background is mainly musical theatre, and also I gave up being an actor, I'd like to say because I recognised my limitations, but really it was because I hated being out of work and at that stage in my life I couldn't handle rejection.
Okay. So between them our actors, and those I worked with on the previous development weeks, have been involved in a large number of the most popular musical.
Okay.
I do get irritated by what I see as the high level of drama that some of them bring to everyday events. Because I'm an impatient sod and I take no pride in that.
But.
And I think it's a large and mitigating but I do understand why some appear to live every moment of their lives at hyper intensity. Vulnerability. At every stage of the process they face rejection. They are too tall. Too short. Too thin. Not thin enough. They're the wrong size for costumes that already exist.
And.
They have to be the best. The voice. The dancing. Every move. Every note. Has to be right on the money. Every time. All the time. Every audition or they don't make the cut.
How do you erect the defences to cope with that?
God knows it's tough to be an actor but to be a performer in the musical theatre...
Okay.
It's a job. It's not coal mining. Or working on a deep sea trawler. Or being shipped out to Afghanistan with your regiment.
But, come on. We should applaud all those who face the vulnerability of human existence in whatever way it presents itself. So chapeau! To all those who are working with us. To all those who make the cut. And to those who don't make the cut but keep on hanging in there. Because that's what we're all trying to do, isn't it?

A musical week - Giants and Matilda

2011-11-22T09:17:00.000Z

Working in London and at the Watermill Newbury on the second development week for Giants in the Earth. Yesterday Matt and Neil the MD worked with the actors securing the music, today we'll start be doing more on the new sections in Act Two. When I'm working on a scene even if it might appear to be a mess I know what I'm aiming for and what the process is that will get us there. Can't do that with the music, not when it's as complex as this so in the afternoon left Matt and the others and went for a walk and by the time I got back the disconnected sounds had come together and I could see where we were headed. It's the same for him when I'm messing about. We trust each other's work and that's what matters. I loathe offering up hostages so I'll go so far as to say that it appears that what we have written may very well not be complete rubbish.
On my walk I passed the Cambridge and got myself a ticket to Matilda. Top tip - £25 next to the sound desk, and only a restricted view in the strictest sense. Brilliant show. Loved it. Go and see it - you don't even need a tame child to take as an excuse.

Crossed Purposes

2011-10-27T09:55:00.000+01:00

The concept of the past being a different country where they do things differently has never been so clear to me as during the last few weeks working on the Eastern Angles cross generational project Crossed Purposes. Together with Kate Hall, Mark Grist and Year 10 students from four Peterborough schools we have been collecting memories from elders in residential accommodation of their teenage years for those students to turn into pieces of theatre. Mark and I are shaping the material and Kate will help the them get the work up and on its feet.
The stories have been flowing almost too fast for us to record. They have been funny, heartbreaking, brave and absurd. Children running through the London Blitz with only saucepans on their heads for protection, a father rescuing two small children from where they lay next to an unexploded bomb, small tales of heroism, all shared with rare generosity. And it can't be easy to talk about your most formative experiences to a group of fifteen year olds you've never met before. The students have been magnificent, any initial nervousness disappeared, and old and young talked together with mutual respect realising that they shared far more in common than, I believe, either group suspected.
A woman who was born to an unmarried mother spoke quietly of the first time she met her father at the age of thirteen and how she used to meet him in a park on Sunday afternoons until her stepfather stopped. And how she didn't she him again until she had a child of her own. 'The last time had my first child with me and we bumped into each other in the street, he was living in one room he told me. He would have liked to have come to my wedding, I'd have liked him there too, but it wasn't possible then for that to happen. He said that if we bumped into each other again we'd make a proper arrangement to meet, but we never did, and I never saw him again.' Her only moment of anger coming when she said 'That's all I saw of him, but never once, although he tried to make me, did I ever call my stepfather, dad.'
As part of a generation that ,unlike my parents and grandparents, never had to be part of a war, I wonder how I would have coped. I sort through the memories we've collected, shaping them into a dramatic form and I pray to God I would have been able to muster a fraction of dignity and humour and honesty and sheer bloody resiliance that shines through our elders' stories. I have been very moved, very heartened by the humanity and compassion I've found, but at the same moment when I feel only a step away from weeping at the courage and pity of it all, there's that part of my writer's brain that won't stop sifting for material even through the most inappropriate events in my own life, muttering, 'This stuff is brilliant, there's got to be a play in here.'

Juggling.

2011-10-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

Back to work and no excuses. I've just started a project with Eastern Angles in Peterbrough linking school students and older people. Stories are gathered from the elders and are passed onto the kids to use in creating a piece of theatre. yesterday we were with a 92 year old lady who told us her experiences of being a WAAF - she had total recall, was very lucid and we felt moved and privileged that she's agreed to share that part of her life with us.
I've just finished writing up what she told us from my notes and next is act two of Summer. It's almost all there in my head so now I've got to write it to see how it works. Another couple of weeks and it'll be ready to send off.
A couple of days ago I went through the new act two of Giants in the Earth the musical I'm writing with Matt Marks. Matt liked it which is always a good start. Now it's over to him to have a think about how the music's going to work. That's got to be ready for the end of the month in preparation for the two development weeks with Oxfordshire Theatre Company what have commissioned the piece.
So the rest of October is going to be trips to Peterborough, Act Two of Summer, and, mustn't be forgotten, the adaptation of Haroun and the Sea of Stories to finish for Kazaliste Virovitica. Oh, and my birthday present, an afternoon roaring round a race track in a Caterham.

Responses to My Name is Stephen Luckwell - a big thank you.

2011-08-24T15:01:00.000+01:00

It's now a couple of weeks since Stephen was the Afternoon Play on Radio 4 and I have been surprised and touched by the response. Completely surprised in fact. I never expected complete strangers to e mail, tweet, and phone me to let me know how the play affected them. Parents of kids on the autistic spectrum. People on the spectrum. Even the National Autistic Society thought I'd got it right. So this is a big thank you to everyone. You do the research, then you find some characters, and do your best to tell their story and most of the time you keep your fingers are tightly crossed in case this is the time you get found out. This is the time it doesn't work. So once again thank you for liking it, thank you for telling me it meant something to you.
Right, that's quite enough self satisfaction, I think. Time to get back to the real world, staring at the blank screen and despairing of ever having another creative thought.

It must lead to inevitable disappointment.

2011-08-09T12:46:00.002+01:00

When you have a blog like this you are able to look up and see who is contacting you, mostly you see a list of search engines,. Lately some odd things have been creeping in. Motoreview.com. I clicked and it took me to a review of the Suzuki Swift. What have I written that could possibly have any resonance for someone looking for a review of the Suzuki Swift? Another one was a job seeking site. The most bizarre was a site about windmills. Actually that's not true, I made it up, because the most bizarre one was too bizarre to mention. What do they hope to find?
Normally I get about two people a month popping up to sample my self pitying rambles but the traffic has increased. There are some easy ways to increase it. You can slip in a mention to the Premier League, steam trains of the 1950's, or Britney Spears does the housework. But that would be very silly.
No, the reason it's increased is yesterday's Radio 4 Afternoon Play My Name is Stephen Luckwell. I've had more traffic than ever before, I've even had e mails from strangers who found something in it. So if you've just logged on because of Stephen Luckwell, or because your a follower of Ms Spears, I thank you, or apologise, or both. Either way,it's nice to know there's someone out there.

A trifle pathetic but I don't care.

2011-08-05T10:42:00.000+01:00

I bought last week's Radio Times on Tuesday. Turned to the schedule for Monday's radio and saw My Name is Stephen Luckwell, there, as I was told it would be, 2.15, right after The Archers. Yes, I am excited when I see it in print, but also I have to see it in print before I can really believe it's happening. A part of me wouldn't be surprised if on Monday afternoon an announcer - in my head it's always Celia Imrie - told the listening millions 'This afternoon's play will not be as printed in the Radio Times as fortunately we've listened to it again and frankly it's not up to standard. Believe me, you've had a lucky escape.'
Can't avoid it. The fear. Is this time I'm going to be found out?
On the stairs up to the office we've built in the loft are posters from different shows of mine. On the wall behind the computer monitor alongside photographs of my wife, my daughter, Brecht, Max Wall, and the bare grass of the running strip at Olympia ( the Olympia in Greece, not the one near Earl's Court) are the tickets, programmes, and brochures from my first play at Derby Playhouse. It's not ego, not entirely, more the exact opposite. I need these props to my confidence to remind what I did once in all probability I can do again, hopefully, with luck and a following wind.
Absurd. Yes. But I haven't met a single writer, no matter how much confidence they have in their work, each time they start a new piece, isn't half paralysed by the conviction that this is the time it goes completley tits up.
So I'll have my radio on at 2.15 on Monday. When it's over I'll feel pleased and grateful to the producer, the actors and the techies who made it possible, and next week's Radio Times will be placed carefully into the wall I keep building to shore up my tottering confidence as I move into the next project.

Sibenik International Childrens' Festival.

2011-06-24T17:11:00.000+01:00

I've just come back from a week at the Festival in Sibenik. On the Dalmatian coast. It was all work, no pleasure, I promise. I'm shattered. This has nothing to do with any work I had to do out there but is the result of Croatian hospitality which is a wonderful and dangerous thing, experienced once and never forgotten. As I have been over there before I knew to make sure I showed as much restraint as possible but when you faced with over whelming good nature and equally over whelming generosity it isn't easy.
The Festival is in its 51st year and is a treat. Loads of stuff to see and do for all ages. It seems to have total support of everyone in the town. I'd been invited there by Kasaliste Virovitica - who have already done Warrior Square - to see their production of my adaptation of Ulf Stark's book 'Can You Whistle, Johanna?' It was excellent. Funny and moving and beautifully performed as I knew it would be. They are a lovely company.
Two other highlights - apart from the company, the weather, and the wonderful food - were an Alex Byrne directed production from the NIE Theatre, Oslo, of their own devised piece Tales From a Sea Journey. Wonderful. Simple. Clever. Funny. Moving. A great piece of theatre. And Virovitica's production of The 39 Steps. It was hysterical. So funny. So tight. And of course the piece is so much part of our culture that it didn't matter that we didn't understand word.

Back on the Chain Gang

2011-05-20T13:09:00.000+01:00

I wish I didn't have to go through fallow periods in my writing, but it happens. Days when you start brightly enough and after a couple of hours the good idea has whithered away. days when it seems impossible that you'll ever have an idea at all. When the characters don't come off the page. When the dialogue is either over written or hopelessly stilted. Days when frankly the best thing would have been to have anything than try to write a play. But of course I don't take the hint, leave the writing to go for a bike ride, go shopping, go for a walk, go anywhere as long as it's miles away from the computer, I sit there getting more and more depressed and filling more and more pages with unplayable crap. Hell, it's fun.
But then there are days when it starts to come clear again. When out of nowhere you see the way to go, the charcaters start to speak to you, to dictate the things they want to do. And then it's the best job in the world.
It's not been fun for a while now but I know the only thing to do is to push through and at last it's starting to happen again.
Giants in the Earth - the musical - is back on track. We're getting a shift on against a deadline of more development work in July. The production's been put back from this year as a result of the Arts Council cuts which at least has the benefit of giving us more time and Matt has produced some more music that's transformed Act One. next stop finishing the new draft of Act Two.
The piece for the Drum has finally resolved itself into a proper play and the first three scenes of the new draft seem okay. I've heard the recording of My Name is Stephen Luckwell - Radio 4 2.15pm 8th August - and it works. And I've been invited to Croatia next month by the theatre in Virovitica that previously did Warrior Square(Trg Ratnika in Croatian) for their production of Can You Whistle, Johanna? not this time to the company base in Virovitica but to a festival at Sibenik. Which just happens to be on the coast. Sea and sunshine. All worth a few months of depression, I reckon.

Don't know much about Mozart but I know what I like.

2011-03-28T11:35:00.000+01:00

Last week I went to see Peter Brook's A Magic Flute and loved it. Then I read the reviews and discovered that I shouldn't have loved it. The voices were weak, one of the singers was out of tune, the piano playing inadequate, the libretto hacked about hopelessly, the Queen of the Night a shadow, the whole thing was indulgent and hopelessly underplayed. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. I've never seen The Magic Flute, I found the recording hard work. That I think Mozart's Requiem is one of the greatest things I've ever heard doesn't entitle me to question the opinions of the classical reviewers who know what they're talking about so I'll just say this - Bollocks. Absolute bollocks.
It was great. A meditation on love, betrayal, death, hope, trust. And astute bugger that he is at the moment he thinks we might be getting a bit referential Brook puts the feast on a paint stained flight case - this is theatre, this is work, not a religious ceremony. He empties the stage and let's us fill it with our thoughts. We embellish his simplicity. And I thought the piano and the singers were excellent.
When my daughter was only a few weeks old I held her up between the speakers in the front room and said 'Listen. This is Mozart, this is Bruce Springsteen. Open your ears and enjoy.'

Completion Anxiety

2011-03-02T13:43:00.000Z

I read an interview with Green Gartside in which he talked about having heaps of songs and being unable to finish them and he described this condition as Completion Anxiety. I've got it. I'm within spitting distance of finishing the first draft for The Drum and I'm putting it off and putting it off. This is partly because I know that the less time I have the more I'll focus and mainly the customary fear that this time it's all going to go tits up. Happens every time. Happily I have a number of distractions lined up. This weekend we go into the studios in Birmingham to record My Name is Stephen Luckwell as an afternoon play for Radio 4. That'll be fun. And then on Monday I'm at Theatre 503 at the Latchmere for their Rapid Response Night where I'll have a short piece on. I went down to see The Biting Point (very good) last Wednesday and had to write a ten minute response by the Sunday. It was just what I needed, a real change from grafting out a full length script. But after next Tuesday the excuses will have been all used up and I will have to finish the Drum first draft. I will. I really will. No two ways about it. Got to be finished. Absolutely.

Johanna in Croatia.

2011-02-09T11:52:00.000Z

I've pasted below the Google translation from Croatian of the blurb for Can You Whistle, Johanna? from the Kasaliste Virovitica website. The theatre is very small and in a little town miles from Zagreb or any other big city. I spent sometime there when Warrior Square opened and if you have ever experienced Croatian hospitality then you'll know that any attempt to describe their generosity to strangers can't come close to the reality. The play opens soon March and if I have the chance to go back, I'll take it without a second thought.
They have few resources, little money, great talent, the highest standards, an adventurous repertoire, and an enthusiastic audience.

www.kazalistevirovitica.hr/

Do you whistle, Johanna?
Nick Wood

New dramatic contrivance Nick Wood who Virovitička audience knows well the drama of Warrior Square is an adaptation of the novel Ulf Stark. The story of a boy who goes into a nursing home to find his grandfather, a true or false, it's exciting to witness the generational gap that is artful dramatic intervention turns into a drama about trust and friendship. Told in the form of story-telling Do you whistle, Johanna dramatic experiment which establishes a provocative interaction between audience and actors. This will be an emotional drama in its Croatian premiere surely be another success Virovitica Theatre intended for both adults and children and the continuation of fruitful cooperation with exceptional English playwright.

Giants in the Earth at the Natural History Museum in Oxford.

2011-01-27T13:00:00.000Z

Composer Matt Marks, director Karen Simpson and writer Nick Wood at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Oxfordshire Theatre Company: A new work

By Nick Utechin

How long should a work in progress take to gestate and produce a result? The answer, so far as the Oxfordshire Theatre Company is concerned, is at least a year.
Some weeks before Christmas, they held an intriguing rehearsed reading and sung performance of what may or may not eventually be called Giants in the Earth.
Let me explain...

The preparatory reading was held in the University Museum of Natural History for an excellent reason: they are developing a piece of musical theatre that centres upon a race in Victorian times to learn from dinosaur fossil discoveries on a beach near Lyme Regis in Dorset and thus ask questions about Creationism.
The Oxford connection comes with William Buckland, who established the university’s first geology department, whose collection is held in the museum and who ended his days in Stonesfield.
The tale is told in word and song of how he met a workhouse girl, Mary Anning, who sold ‘snake stones’ from the beach (and later became the first woman to be honoured by the Royal Society), and how the pair vied with two contemporaries to uncover what would become geological history.
This true story might seem an unlikely subject for a musical production, but the bones of the idea came from OTC’s artistic director, Karen Simpson: “I wanted to do something connecting the arts and science, and something that’s not only about Oxford, but something that would help the company absolutely connect with all the scientific achievements that happened around this area.
“From that, we spread the word and Nick and Matt turned up on my doorstep with a proposal, which took me in a direction I hadn’t necessarily contemplated — fossil hunting!”
Nick and Matt are writer Nick Wood and composer Matt Marks, who have collaborated on projects previously.
The detailed concept of the race and its implications (“Six days to create the world? Impossible. But why can’t a day stand for a million years?”) was theirs: the cumulative pressures on Buckland leading to his insanity contribute to a mix of Darwinism and Dawkins-ism that is irresistible.
And there was another factor, as Marks told me: “We started with a man who not only was responsible for this building, but a man for whom one of his life’s aims was to eat his way through the zoological kingdom! So you have to be interested, don’t you?”
“Buckland ended up as the Dean of Westminster,” adds Wood.
“And had always had a complete belief in the religion that he was brought up; but then his science led him to find out all these things which were slowly disproving it and leading to chaos — not least for the government which became worried about people turning away from the church when it was suggested that the Bible was not literally true.”
The musical content as it presently stands is an interesting mix of chant — to imply prehistoric times – and fun songs like Chip Away — to cover fossil hunting.
Marks, whose influences for this piece are primarily world music and jazz, bridled when I suggested that, as the extracts of the work provided for us stood, there’s much acting and then along comes a song — “If that’s how you perceive it, then we haven’t succeeded”.
Karen Simpson jumped in: “When we were putting together another version of the script this week, and Nick and I were hot over the photocopier, I found we were developing something else: a lot of music, and then two pages of dialogue. So it’s slowly becoming more and more complete.
“Oh, and we’re not even sure yet that the title, Giants in the Earth, is right. What d’you think?”
For what it’s worth, I think it’s a very good one. The process is intriguing and the potential undoubted.

A public rehearsal put on many months before the final production in front of interested parties is unusual.

I look forward to the real curtain-up.

Getting Stuck and the Benefits of Timewasting.

2011-01-18T14:39:00.000Z

A couple of days ago a friend asked how the Drum play was going and what it was about, and I was stupid enough to try and tell her. By the time I'd staggered through the plot as it stands now, it felt like the biggest load of crap I'd ever tried to write. For two days I've sat in front of a blank page headed - PART TWO. I've covered the paper, deleted it, covered it again, deleted it again, complete waste of time. Then, out of nowhere, I realised I was trying to write the second half in a different style from the first. And, I wasn't giving any thought to what it was about, only to what might happen. Simultaneously I got the idea of a scene I hadn't thought of before, which I might not use, but it sparked things off, and I saw two things happening on the stage at the same time. I went up, very late, and wrote,

Wales. Jools is sitting at the table. Steve is standing upstage. Alex is downstage holding his bag. Jools is taking part in two conversations, one in Steve’s kitchen, the other, in a service station on the way to Wales. She only replies to Jools.

The next morning it started to work. The second part started to flow. I wrote the first scene. I made notes on where it was going and what needed to change in the first part and felt like a writer again. I wish I could say it all came in a flash of inspiration after hours of deep thought, but it didn't. After a whole afternoon playing Spider Solitaire, my wrist was aching, my brain was addled and I was awash with self disgust for having wasted so much time and teetering towards wondering if this time I'd have to send the advance back, when I suddenly thought, I wonder if it would work if I did it like this? Now I don't say it's going to be a masterpiece, but it just might work, and I know what to do with it tomorrow, which is what really counts. Onward and upward.

Thank you, Mr Franzen.

2011-01-11T13:14:00.000Z

Just finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen of oh, dear I've lost my glasses and can we pull the first edition because they are four too many commas fame. Well, that was the hype. And the greater the hype the less inclined I am to want to read the book, go to the show, see the film, look at the view. But. In this case. Bugger the hype. It is brilliant. I finished it yesterday and I I want to read it again. Now.
Okay there are big hints he sees himself scrapping with the big boys this time, in particular Tolstoy, to whom there are more than a couple of references, which could be seen as hubris, except that he pulls it off. Real passion. Real skill. Thank you, Mr Franzen.

Giants, the Beeb, the Drum, and the great Pete Postlethwaite.

2011-01-03T13:57:00.002Z

The show in Peterborough - A Workhouse Christmas - went very well. I couldn't get to see as much of it as I would have liked as circumstances prevented me from going more than once and at least two visits were necessary to see it all. It took place in Peterborough Museum and the Radio Cambridge reviewer said it was the best theatrical performance she'd ever seen ... in Peterborough.
Since I've been home I've got back to work. The second draft of Stephen Luckwell is nearly ready for the BBC and I think the ending works, or at least it's getting close to working. I've now got a first act for the piece for Plymouth and that is good because I was wondering if I'd ever fill all that blank paper with something worthwhile. It feels as though it might work and I'm now rewriting it before I start on the second act. At the moment all I know about the second act is that they're in Wales, not Scotland as they were before, and it will end reasonably happily.
Giants are lurking on the horizon. I was able to print out Matt's notes for the rewrite and I've started to go through those and I expect we'll meet up later this week and start work on the next draft. I didn't mean to have a break from writing but it does seem to have energised me, or possibly I feel that way because all the deadlines are so much closer than they were in November.
I've just seen that Pete Postlethwaite has died. I thought of him this morning as a copy of Bill Morrison's Flying Blind caught my eye. I saw him in it at the Court years ago and it remains one of the most exciting nights I've ever had in the theatre. A wonderful actor and a sad loss.

Fluchtwege in Zurich

2010-10-25T10:23:00.000+01:00

Vera Bommer and Brencis Udris in the Theater Kanto production of Fluchtwege.

Fluchtwege (Warrior Square) opened in Zurich this month.

Team of Rivals

2010-10-23T11:51:00.000+01:00

I finished Team of Rivals by Doris Kearnes Goodwin this week. I started this account of Lincoln's presidency and how he ensured its success by bringing into his cabinet the best men even if they were opposed to him in the summer and and enjoyed it so much that I rationed myself because I didn't want it to end. I could hardly bring myself to read the last 100 pages because I knew that bastard Booth was going to assassinate him.
I have a new hero. What a man. If there are other books that will tell me that everything he's supposed to have done was down to blind luck, and that the Gettysburg address was written by someone else, I'm not interested. In common with most nations the UK history syllabus is heavily nationalistic so I grew up knowing little or nothing about Lincoln. This book, so well written, was a revelation. I marvelled at each page, each new act of wisdom or magnanimity. And so astute. So human. I felt bereft as I read of his final visit to the theatre. Come on, America, you had Lincoln, FDR, Luther King, you can't settle for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Can you?
Mind you, who are we to criticize? Thatcher, Blair, Cameron... God knows, we need someone.

So come back Woody Guthrie
Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow
If you run into Jesus
Maybe he can help you out
Come back Woody Guthrie to us now

Christmastime in Washington - Steve Earle

The Giants in the Earth move on.

2010-10-19T12:22:00.000+01:00

We had the meeting about where to go with the musical. Fortunately the response to the two performances during the development week were very positive. As Matt says we can now start to take things out that don't work in the knowledge that we know exactly what kind of hole we've left to fill. I think I've mis-quoted him but anyway, it made sense when he said it. Structure ready by December, a script ready for the creative team, designer, MD, choreographer, marketing by Easter and hopefully into rehearsals in the last week of August.
No problem.
One apartment, two coats, one afternoon.

Thank you Stephen Fearing.

2010-10-17T14:06:00.000+01:00

We went to see Stephen Fearing on Friday night - together with nine other people. He played a great set and his affability and generosity helped turn what could have been an embarrassing evening into a good night out. A great guitarist with some cracking songs. His remarks about opening for Richard Thompson at the Royal Festival Hall and how his next cd would feature Emmy Lou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Cassandra Wilson et al emphasised that he is slightly better known outside Nottingham and probably served to remind him that he doesn't play to a handful of punters every night of the week.
Tomorrow I go with Matt to Sheffield to discuss with Karen our director where we should go next with Giants in the Earth , the Buckland musical. Now that the panic of getting it up and ready to perform in Oxford is past it's easier to start to see what should be kept and what should go. All we've got to do is make sure we end the meeting all agreed in which direction we should be heading. I've got some thinking to do and some notes to make.

Giants in the Earth

2010-10-09T18:00:00.000+01:00

Back home after a week in Oxford working on the Buckland musical with seven brilliant singers and an amazing MD who doesn't seem to have the same need for sleep as the rest of the world. I watched them do it but I still don't really know how they managed to learn the music, make sense of the script, and all the rewrites and produce a coherent exciting performance in three and a half days.
As I expected the main lesson of the week was cut, cut, cut. Matt and I felt that by the end we have a structure that we can build on. Now we have week away from it and then we meet again with Karen Simpson, the director, to discuss where we go from here.
It was a pressure having to produce a performance for an audience in such a short time but we did discover that a musical about searching for dinosaurs and fossils in the 19th century might sound a bit odd but it works, it's exciting and those who were there want to see more.
Onward and upward... with a year to go! I don't usually move from my usual position of positive pessimism, but, I think, we may, just about, if we're lucky, get it right.

Development week.

2010-10-01T15:32:00.000+01:00

Development week for the Buckland musical starts on Sunday. Next Thursday there will be two read/sing throughs at the Natural History Museum in Oxford and so the pressure is on as we're hoping not only to attract potential sponsors ahead of the cuts that every one is waiting for later this month, but also to interest other companies in a possible co-production. So the week won't only be there to try out ideas and possibilities but it also has to have an end product which is a little bit scary.
On the one hand Matt and I are telling ourselves we've identified a number of problems, we are looking forward to discovering more during the week, and then taking the piece into the next rewrite with a year to go before it goes into the production, and that gives us confidence and makes us feel as if we're progressing nicely. And on the other hand, we have to make sure that a show that's not got all the music, has only just arrived at its first meaningful draft, will, in three and a half days, plus several gallons of midnight oil, be ready to go in front of an audience that needs to be convinced that they want to become involved with its future development and eventual production. So you could say there was a certain amount of tension in the air - from all concerned. What's to say but - onward and upward.

Don Partridge

2010-09-27T11:28:00.000+01:00

Read this morning that Don Partridge has died. His big hit was Rosie. I used to see him busking as kid in London and I remember his Pie Shop in Camden Passage. His voice a breath of fresh of air.

Christmas in Peterborough

2010-09-27T11:15:00.000+01:00

I went to Peterborough Museum last week to look round as we're hoping to remount an extended version of A Workhouse Christmas there, we being myself and Kate Hall the director. It used to be an infirmary and still has the old operating theatre in there, now someones office. It's on the first floor and reached by a very impressive staircase, unless of course you were about to be operated on in which case you were winched up the centre of the stair well on your bed. Bit of a design fault there I can't help thinking. Apparently only a handful of people died from falling off their beds.
Last year's version of the show went on at the Old Still, an empty pub off the shopping centre with rambling rooms, oak panelling and a centre courtyard that made it an ideal location. Our promenade performance at the museum will be spread over three floors and the audience will have to go round in three groups of twenty. Today's task is to come up with a structure that will allow this to happen in a way that makes sense both in terms of the narrative and the logistics of moving actors and public. Then we wait to see if the project survives next moth's anticipated cuts, and if it does, I get down to writing the dialogue.
Matt has finished the script/score and sent it off to Oxford, so all I can do now about that is fret. No problems there, I'm very good at it.

Cut and Paste with real scissors

2010-09-25T19:22:00.000+01:00

Next Sunday Matt and I go to Oxford for the week to work with the director, MD and the actors on the current draft of Buckland. In order for this to happen we had to assemble the script, words and music. Matt has a programme that should enable him to move staves and words about at will but it is so complicated that he hasn't mastered it yet so we sat round the table with a guillotine, scissors, and a pritt stick. Just like being back at school getting your project ready to hand in, Cat said.
We now have a script with the music integrated into the text and already I think I can start to hear bits of it. Matt kept playing and replaying the recordings of the songs so that we could get the dialogue pasted in above the correct bars every now and then I got a sense of what it might sound like with real singers. Lets hope the reality stands up to the expectation. All we have to do is remember we have a year left and we're not working on the finished piece we're exploring ideas.
Got two contracts from the BBC this week for the adaptation of My Name is Stephen Luckwell. One for me to give my permission for the adaptation, the other to accept the commission to adapt it. Earlier this week when I was in Peterborough to see her production of Our Nobby I asked Kate Hall, who directed Stephen what she thought of my new radio ending. She is so much a part of it that I needed her approval and I got it. So if it doesn't have the requisite amount of 'jeopardy' for a Radio 4 afternoon play I shall feel able to fight for it.
One week to think about Plymouth and work out a structure for transferring Workhouse Christmas to the Peterborough museum and then it's heads down for a week on Buckland... with all fingers crossed.

Sam Baker

2010-09-21T16:05:00.000+01:00

I went to see Sam Baker on Sunday at the Maze. I'd heard of him through friends. Heard about him being blown up in a train in Peru, heard about his terrible injuries, losing his fingers, his hearing, the years of rehab, learning to talk, to write, to play the guitar left handed.
He talked more than he sang. Said he had to ramp himself up. The songs were spare, austere, words pared down, the guitar pared down. Not a word or a note wasted. Not good because he'd had to overcome hurdles, not good like what an achievement, just good. Very good.
Today I spent the afternoon in the garden dozing in the sun and writing nonsense in my notebook for the Plymouth play. I keep circling round what it's about, who the characters are, and for once, I'm not forcing it and something's on the way.
In just under two weeks Matt and I are off to Oxford for a week on Buckland - aka Giants in the Earth on the OTT website. It's going to have a read/sing through, two read/sing throughs on October 7th at the Natural History Museum in Oxford. Already I think we know where to go next, how to make it bigger, more all encompassing without losing the particular. I haven't done anything on it for a couple of weeks as Matt is busy composing and creating a score for the actors and the MD. It's going to be hard to concentrate on making what we've got so far work when we know that a lot of it will be left behind in the next draft.
Thank God we've got a year to go.

The first draft is done

2010-09-17T16:40:00.000+01:00

I've just sent the first draft of the adaptation of My Name is Stephen Luckwell to Radio Four. Now I have a week to try out some ideas for Plymouth and then it's off to Oxford for a week's development on the Buckland musical. The first draft is always a relief. In this case the problem was how to make a very visual production work for a listener. In particular the ending was difficult to solve as in the original it all depends on seeing what Stephen is doing on his laptop, a bit tricky that, on radio. I don't know if it works the way I've got it now, but at least there's something on paper, something we can talk about, and for now the main thing is - it is finished.

Zeitoun

2010-08-15T12:31:00.000+01:00

It's obviously the year of reading brilliant books I've missed. First Mockingbird and now Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. I picked it up in the excellent Bromley House Library, £60 a year and worth every penny, and read it straight through. A true account of what happened to one man and his family in New Orleans during Katrina. Brilliant. Below is an excellent article from the Guardian that puts it into context.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/11/dave-eggers-zeitoun-hurricane-katrina

To Kill a Mocking Bird

2010-08-09T12:51:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd read Mockingbird at school. I was convinced I'd seen the film. Anyway after hearing a programme about the book on Radio 4 I thought I'd read it again and I discovered I hadn't read it before at all. Or seen the film. And isn't it good? I love the structure. I love the way at the end it sends you back to the beginning again like A La Recherche... and yes, I have read it. So much understanding, so much humanity, so many surprises. Hardly a single character is as you expect them to be, they are full of contradictions, the liberal are prejudiced, the rejected show compassion, just like real people, oh, it's so good. I appreciate that gushing doesn't constitute a reasoned response but I don't care. If it hadn't been the 50th anniversary I might have gone through the rest of my life thinking I'd read it and there it would have been floating around in my head as a worthy novel about a white lawyer who opposes racism. Thank you Radio 4.
I've just finished another book that impressed me - Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen. I know Maria, we are both members of the Nottingham Writers' Studio and she suggested that I send my attempt at a novel off to an agent friend of hers who was very kind but by the time I got his response I'd decided that I'd be better off sticking to the day job.
I put off reading her book because of the cover. It's yellow, with a peasant woman wandering through some fields in front of a hillside village and that was enough to put me off. I immediately pigeon holed with all the other novels about Italy and peasants that have yellow covers, and I didn't want to read it because I thought I wouldn't like it. Because I might have to say something to Maria if she knew I'd read it. Like having to go back after a dodgy show and trying to find something encouraging to say to a friend in the cast. I'm hopeless at it. My lack of enthusiasm can be seen through in a minute. But, I picked it up, flicked through it, saw I was wrong, bought it, read it, loved it. A really good book. Again about memories, and again wonderfully structured, with characters that surprise you, and themselves sometimes, and at the end sending you back to the beginning.
I used to find reading stuff that makes my teeth ache it's so good very discouraging, but now I give a cheer and think right, you buggers, time to try and raise the game.

Housework is good. Let's hear it for boredom.

2010-08-04T15:02:00.000+01:00

You get stuck. You sit and stare at the screen. You play spider solitaire until your wrist threatens repetitive strain injury. You make coffee. You make toast. You do housework. I cleaned the kitchen, the toilet, the stairs, the landing, the front room and then I got out the hoover and I got it. Suddenly, from nowhere, I got it, everything I needed came in a big rush as I watched the dog hairs from under the chest whirl round and round in the cleaner.
Everytime I get stuck the idea always comes when I'm doing something so boring that I can't even be bothered to think.
Got the go ahead on an idea at the end of last week. Some juggling needed as I have three commissions on the go. This one needs a first draft by next march so plenty of time to think. And research. I was listening to Front Row in the Harrogate Crime Writing festival and one writer said that you only use about 10% of any research. I'm not sure as much as that surfaces in the final piece. You absorb all this stuff, try to forget it, and start writing. And what you hope is that little details will pop up when you need them to give the world you're creating its authenticity. That happened too this week shortly after my breakthrough moment with the hoover. I had requested a document when I went to the Natural History Museum for the Buckland research only to find it wasn't what I expected and forget all about it. And then, there it is, nudging it's way up to the surface wanting to be used.
It's a bloody mysterious business, writing. Nothing to do with waiting for inspiration and all to do with hard graft, but two things I do know. When I don't feel like writing and have to force myself to sit down and start I often do my best work, and when I can't think of what I have to do next, the solution comes as soon as I stop thinking.

Pitching

2010-07-15T10:05:00.001+01:00

I went down to London to talk about the commission with the Drum on Tuesday. I don't find any kind of pitching easy and this wasn't easy at all. Not because of any lack of sympathy from David who sat patiently through my disjointed ramblings, but because I'd convinced myself that I wanted to go with one idea and as I started to explain it began to unravel in front of me and I realised that what I really wanted to do was something else entirely. That's why they're giving me time to think. But I have felt under pressure - self induced - to try and come up with a killer idea, and that is a really stupid thing to do. Now having gone through that process with David I feel much freer and the other idea which interested him immediately - when I tried to elaborate after my first sentence he shut me up, which was very clever, and told me to not say any more but go away and think about it which stopped me destroying its potential on the spot - is gently establishing itself in my head. My task now is to write up the ideas I presented, there were three in all, and send them to him. So I've started with the one I now like least that I did like the most just to make sure I haven't missed a trick. Then I'll work on the one I do like which is tugging at my sleeve waiting for me to start writing a first draft.
Then it's down to the Post Office with a handful of copies of the We Didn't Mean to go to Sea playscript - published by aurorametro and available from amazon and all good booksellers - for those who might be interested. You never know your luck

Now it gets serious.

2010-07-05T06:28:00.000+01:00

A bit of good news on Friday - My Name is Stephen Luckwell has squairmed its way through options and will be on Radio 4 next year. Apparently I have to sign two contracts. One, as the writer of the original play, giving myself permission to adapt the piece, and the second, as the adapter accepting the commission. So much reading of the script I think before I start to turn it into a three hander.
On Sunday Looking for the Rainbow came to an end at Lakeside - a theatre on the Nottingham University campus, not the shopping centre in Essex - and that was fun. I hadn't seen it for six weeks and it had played itself in well. My three year old next door neighbour seemed to like it.
This week I have to finish part one rewrites on Buckland, and get my ideas down for the piece for Plymouth as I have the first meeting with them in London next Tuesday and I think they might be expecting something a little more concrete that I have to offer at this exact moment.
Buckland I want to finish today, which is why I've put off starting by doing this instead. I did a draft before I went away. Read it last week and rejigged it - cut, moved bits about, found a through line for all the characters that I was pleased with and came up with the thrust of the last scene/song that hadn't been working. Then on Friday I started going through it page bu page, cleaning it up, and making all the links and connections that are needed to hold it together as in 'don't use a gun in act three unless the audience have seen it in act one', said by I don't remember who. I hope to send that off today, ready for the meeting on Monday. Then it's heads down for reworking part two, which is sort of uncharted territory.
Memo to self : try and forget that the Tour has started and each day's stage is live on Eurosport.

Back to Work.

2010-07-01T13:31:00.000+01:00

I haven't had a month's holiday since I was a student. First night back I woke up in a panic. Why had I been away so long? How was I going to meet the deadlines? Then I remembered it was the end of June not the end of August. Highlights? South Pacific at the Lincoln Centre which I didn't expect to like and loved. The Picasso at the Met. Cartier Bresson at MOMA. Ahmad Jamal at the Bluenote. Not bad for the first three days.
And now back to work.
I got back to a copy of We Didn't Mean to go to Sea - published by aurorametro and available from all good booksellers - a rewrite for the Buckland musical and two weeks to firm up my ideas for the Plymouth commission. On this one I'm clearer on what I don't want to write than on what I do which is a step in the right direction.
And I have been working since Monday without a single displacement activity. Until now.

Looking for the Rainbow.

2010-05-24T09:24:00.000+01:00

It's not bad is it when a member of the audience of the audience describes your play as being the best story she's ever seen. Granted she was only four years old, but praise is praise. Penny and the team have done a great job with the show and it worked very well last Friday when it had it's first outing in front of real live kids. I was really pleased. Everything worked, and even when they had to play to 40 small people instead of the 20 it's designed for it still went down a storm - they sat riveted and offered up suggestions at all the right places.
If you have small people who need entertaining over the next month there is a list of public performances on the company's website. It's going to Derby, Lincoln, York, Nottingham and Lichfield to name but a few.

Tour dates can be found at http://bigwindowtheatre.com/projects/RainbowTourDates.html

The First Day of Rehearsal

2010-05-11T15:16:00.000+01:00

The first day of rehearsal. Wet, cold, and windy. Why wouldn't it be? It's the tenth of May. Kelly's set is there. Lucy and Kelly put it up and it's dressed with a few bits and pieces. We have a read through. Change a couple of things here and there. Dan starts working with Beth and Janet on the music.

Penny,Lucy, Beth and Janet put up Kelly's set.

And then it's lunchtime and I go home. I'll return on Friday for a stagger through and then we'll see if there's any more work to be done. Now I'm at home working on a second draft and ideas for another commission. When I get back on Friday the set will be painted, the cast off the book, the music worked into the whole and we'll see how it feels, do what needs to be done and ten days after that the tour will start. I read an interview with Ridley Scott this morning when he said that he never forgets how lucky he is that he has a job that he really wants to do. I know what he means.

I do like designers.

2010-04-22T08:13:00.000+01:00

Designers are great. At least the ones I have been lucky enough to work work with are. You can do the most outrageous stuff and they don't object. You can put in a stage direction like 'The whale surfaces and the boat is sunk.' and while the director might go hairless the designer reaches for their sketch pad or the back ot a fag packet, depending on their working method, and gets on with it.

Kelly Jago is the designer on Looking for the Rainbow - a play for tinies that goes into rehearsal with Big Window next month and when I wrote it - and I am still amazed that anyone lets me lose to write for this age group - I filled the text with stage directions like 'and then they find something and something happens' then went and talked to Kelly who would immediately come up with the solution. I did it like this at first because we have a small budget and the design and what can happen within the set will be an integral part of the experience so the obvious thing was to discuss the possibilities with the designer. After our first meeting I did it because she had such bloody good ideas. The picture below doesn't give any idea of all the things the set can do as Kirsty and her Mum go on their search for the end of the rainbow. Creatures will appear, it'll become a cave and then a river, and finally of course a rainbow, and all done so simply and for next to nothing. Can't wait.

Model box for Looking for the Rainbow - designer Kelly Jago.

The Next Stage.

2010-04-15T10:27:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we finished the draft of Buckland/Giants in the Earth by getting it in a state ready to be sent off. This was more complicated than I realised - it being a musical with songs and music and lyrics and everythig. The text had to re-formatted to accomodate the lyrics, Matt and his partner Catherine Boot have recorded the songs and we also recorded some scenes as well to help make sense of what looks quite confusing on paper. I offered to sing but my offer was politely rejected, but I did get to do some dialogue. Matt puts everything through a program he's got on his Mac. We record something, then he mutters way to himself for a few minutes whilst whizzing the cursor around the screen and it comes out with all the words and the music in the right places. Mystifying.
It isn't completeley finished. Some of the songs are only repesentations of what they will eventually be and some scenes are only suggestions or experiments. And in Part Two the music and lyrics only exist as a series of notes. But the arc is there and our intentions are clear.
I'll pick up the disks this morning, print out the hard copy, add my own notes and send it off. Matt will disappear to China to work on a show until the beginning of June, and we'll meet up again when I get back from the States at the end of that month, and provided our director hasn't rejected the whole thing as a huge mistake, we'll get on to the next stage. Taking it all apart and starting again. But at least this time we'll have something tangible to work on.

Options.

2010-04-13T05:51:00.000+01:00

I'm in the process of preparing My Name is Stephen Luckwell for options, the final stage in the lengthy and mysterious process by which plays are produced on Radio 4. The idea has made it's way through several stages, the last one being pre-options and now this week it will go into the final stage and the decision to produce or not will be handed down sometime in July. My producer will write up the idea and submit it along with the other ideas from other writers she hopes will be taken up, and I will submit sample scenes. This is the tricky bit.
I get an idea for a play, and an image of how it starts, how it ends, and a feel for where it's likely to go and the first thing I have to do is write a draft to finds out what happens. As S Luckwell is an adaptation from an existing play I thought it would be quite easy to write a couple of sample scenes. Not so. As soon as I started thinking about it, and I've already written some pages for a previous stage in the process to see how it might work on radio, I found that it had become a new story. It now has three characters and moves in and out of the events of one day in a way it couldn't on the stage. And I need to write it to find out not what happens, but how it happens. So I've elected to have my sample pages be the start of the play.
Then it starts to get interesting. How much information can I give the listener, how much should I give? What can I sow in the first few pages to use in the later stages? At what point do I launch into the story? How can we use sound to help convey an impression of Stephen's autism. All of which makes me want to write it even more. I was supposed to send my ideas in today and so I worked on it over the weekend and sent it in yesterday before I tweaked it out of existence. Fingers crossed.

All Those Buses Coming at Once.

2010-04-10T07:36:00.004+01:00

I went to see 11 + 12 this week. Brook's style is something we've become familiar with but it's still a delight to see such focus and clarity. The performances had that effortless ease that only comes after the hardest work. The story is elusive. There is a mistake over the number of times a prayer should be said. The n mistake becomes a cause. Colonial masters misinterpret the signs. A war ensues. Deaths follow. A final death and the dispute ends. A meditation on our inability to avoid violence.
Last night was Chuck Prophet at the Maze on his own. Excellent. Sometimes I have to pinch myself at how lucky we are top have such a small venue that attracts such great performers.
All my buses have come at once again. As they do. We're on track to finish the first proper draft of the Buckland musical on time. The book is done for both parts, the music is place for part one, and more or less for part two, and Matt is cut and pasting the whole thing together. We send it off, we have discussions and notes, and we start on the rewrites.
Over the weekend I'll be working on My Name is Stephen Luckwell for Radio 4. It got through pre-offers and now I have to get sample scenes together ready for the proposal that will go into offers next week. I shan't be crossing my fingers because we won't hear if it's accepted until sometime in July.
And I've just found out that I have to rewrite and expand A Workhouse Christmas for production this year.
So that's a Buckland re-write and two new commissions. And the Beeb might say yes. And this morning I shall be mainly checking proofs of We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea soon to be published by aurorametro press and available from all good booksellers. Oh, happy day.

Small miracles do happen.

2010-03-18T15:30:00.003Z

Yesterday Matt and I went to Oxford to meet Jim Kennedy the Director of the Natural History Museum that William Buckland founded 150 years ago. He showed us bones that Buckland had collected, further remains of the Red Lady of Paviland and most importantly talked about the man and let us outline our approach. Gradually, gradually, it all seems to become clearer how we make a play out of this material. Today I have been working on the second act. I want it finished by the start of next week so Matt and I can work on it together. Got a bit stuck this morning so I went for a swim. After about 10 minutes halfway down the bath my problems started to resolve themselves and I could see the way passed them. Back to the pc after lunch and rattled off the transition that gets us into the scene we've been building towards since the start of act one. Now I've stopped and I'll write it tomorrow when I've let it float around a bit, but, to quote Matt, I think it's landed.
And now the small miracle that did happen.
Monday afternoon I get a phone call from a director I know - long given up any thoughts of him asking me to write anything - will I write a play? Yes. In two acts? Yes. The money has to be spent before the end of the financial year so we have to move fast. That's fine by me. A few more details about the nature of the commission and the contract, and then it's good we'll meet at the end of April and talk about what you're going to write for us. End of phone call. Literally, almost immediately an e mail arrives from the theatre will I please send in an invoice for the first payment together with all bank details. And then this morning a letter with the contract for me to sign and send back. I'll be paid as soon as it arrives at the theatre.
What happened to all the endless hustling to get work? And the endless nagging to get paid? (Not I hasten to add with every company that has employed me.)
Yes! I am so excited. Someone wants me to write a play. Never ceases to amaze me.

Wrestling with Buckland.

2010-03-15T15:14:00.002Z

After three great days in Newquay working on the plays for this year's Playhouse Project, and lapping up the sunshine and the sea air and now it's back to wrestling with Buckland. I heard some more of the music from part one this morning and some of the songs used my words which was a big thrill. But there's still part two to finish, and a deadline getting closer and closer.
There's a moment that comes after all the drafts, all the research, all the fretting when you say to yourself all I've got to do is write it. That's when you know you've got to the final draft. And I'm not there yet by a country mile.
On Wednesday we're off to Oxford to talk to Jim Kennedy the director the Natural History Museum that Buckland founded. On the phone this morning I was able to reassure him that we will certainly have Buckland's tame bear in the script, not to mention his horse. It was quite obvious in a brief phone call that he rates the man, has a sense of humour, and is going to be a fund of information. I want to try out our take on him and see how he reacts. See what he thinks about how we've treated Richard Owen. Basically I want to be patted on the head and told that I haven't got it all arse about face by someone who really knows. Very worrying writing about real people, even if they're a long time dead.

Hard Graft.

2010-03-05T17:38:00.003Z

After a week playing with actors and a trip to London to see the excellent Jerusalem - go see - hard graft set in as Matt and I took apart the first act of Buckland and looked for where the music would push the action on. Now we have a rough second draft and Matt is about to beaver away at the music while I set out on the relatively uncharted waters of the second act. He played me some of the stuff he's been working on this week and it was a real buzz hearing words that I'd had something to do with put to music and sung!
The end of next week has a particularly excellent jolly - sorry I meant three days of hard work - as I'm off to Newquay to a splendid hotel to work with other writers and teachers and theatre people on the plays that are going to be put on in schools as part of this year's Playhouse project. I was on it a couple of years ago and so I know what I'm looking forward to - it'll be fun.
And there was fun last night too when the wonderful Cosmic American Music brought Carlene Carter to the Maze in Nottingham. Very strange to hear her tales of being on the road with the Carter Family as a small child and realise that you're listening to someone who connects directly with a world that has vanished. A good night.

Buckland Rules! The first act is finished.

2010-02-17T11:25:00.004Z

When I say finished you'll understand that at the moment we are talking first draft, and that it has yet to be revised, and that it lacks any music which is sort of important as it's a musical, but it is finished, in that there are now words on paper, in a reasonable order, ready for all those things to happen to them. Hence there is a certain amount of jollity in the air. This might also be connected to the fact that this morning we booked flights to the States which means another stay in New York plus all sorts of other goodies and family fun yet to be arranged.
I have the second act mapped out and I shall start on that later today. Matt, who is writing the music should at this moment be finally having the operation on his back that has been postponed three times so far, but that shouldn't hamper his composing skills he assures me. It's a funny job writing a musical - especially if you haven't done one before - and we've decided that the best way in is for me to find the structure and then we deconstruct it and find the moments when the music can push the action on.
In complete contrast next week is the development week for a piece for tinys I've written for Big Window Theatre. We're not going to give the two actors the script but make them play around the action points because actors once given a script cling on to it like a comfort blanket and won't attempt anything that requires two hands. So that's going to be fun, and the week ends in London where I'll see Jerusalem, which had better be good because the ticket cost the bloody earth.

Sometimes the theatre's the best place

2010-01-31T17:49:00.002Z

I had a couple of days down in London last week and I went to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I've never really liked any of the films or the couple of productions I've seen, so I went on the strength of the cast. What a play. What a great big compassionate play. What a journey. I know it was made in 1958 but how did such an ordinary film come out of such a wonderful play? I was shocked, I was moved, I laughed, I was exhausted when I came out and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. And it made me cry. The cast were excellent, not a single weak link from James Earl Jones to the smallest child.
The only production I've seen to compare with it was the New York Waiting for Godot. Both paid the same rigorous attention to the text. And the rhythms in the writing were astounding. Because I doubt there will be a sudden deluge of excellent Tennessee William's productions I shall have to start reading my way through his stuff. Which will mean more books to add to the pile.
I've also just finished Christopher Reid's The Scattering, and I think I'll be dipping back into it for a while yet to get the most out of his writing. It's a wonderful collection of poems. Probably not a good idea to read it on the train as I did unless you want to spend a good deal of the journey staring out of the window trying not to weep. It's not all doom and gloom despite it's subject but it captures the moments of love so precisely that it hurts.

You can't please all the people.

2010-01-12T11:30:00.002Z

I got an e mail back from the company in Berlin who were considering doing it in English this morning. I was going to paste their reply in but for some reason I can't which is probably just as well. The gist of it was that they didn't like and they didn't see it as a stage play and they didn't see how it would how the attention of an audience. It lacked a strong conflict and a turning point.
I sent back a very polite e mail thinking them for their comments and saying that I understood that because a play has been successful in one country that doesn't mean it is suitable for another.
In fact I was less annoyed than I might have been because I have got used to the German habit of direct speaking. Germans don't go back after a disastrous show and faff about like we do, they get straight in there. The text was rubbish, performances were poor, the set unusable etc etc. And also because I said to me German agent that I didn't think it was a play he would go for because it lacked a strong conflict and a turning point. It's true what works in one country doesn't always work in another and there is a tendency in some of the German theatre to shoe horn in plot twists and conflicts so the audience won't go away feeling that it has missed out on its' regulation does of angst. That statement is of course very unfair and unjustly stereotypical, but I don't care because I'm miffed that they've turned it down.
When the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam got me to write a play about a group of kids putting a band together - About a Band, as yet to be produced in the UK, 5 actors, 2 acts, available for me - for them I asked why me, why not a German writer? They talked about the English attitude towards music being more fundamental, and admitted that they'd asked a number of writers but hadn't found what they were looking for. Then Andreas said 'We know you will write a play about a group of kids who want to make a band, not a play about a girl who gets cancer.'
You win some...

The Low Road.

2010-01-06T09:53:00.003Z

I got up early this morning sensing correctly that the silence meant that more snow was falling. I made a cup of tea and wandered upstairs to look out of the top window at the gardens running up the hill. Quite a reasonable covering but for those of us who lived through the day Sheffield was cut off from the world in 1976 (I think) it wasn't that impressive. After breakfast I realised I was wandering round the house singing 'You take the High Road and I'll take the Low Road' in a pronounced English accent. I learned it from the Singing Together booklet when I was at juniors. I thought it was stupid song all about the rather obvious fact that if you wanted to drive to Scotland in the shortest possible time you'd get there quicker if you kept to the A roads. I can't remember when I discovered that removed from it's Heather Club tweeness it was a bleak and moving acceptance of death.
I watched David Tennant's Hamlet before it disappeared from i-player. Brilliant performances all round I thought. A Hamlet who could have taken up the bare bodkin at any moment. Wish I'd seen it in the theatre.
Once when feeling very fragile I was walking above Hebden Bridge taking a break from an Arvon course and I heard the unmistakable clink of climbing gear. I followed to sound to the edge of a small cliff and as I got there I knew it was the wrong place to be and I had what I later found out was a panic attack. I ran as fast as I could across a field towards a wall. I vaulted over the wall and collapsed on the other side my heart beating, head whirling and feeling sick. I closed my eyes and tried to hang on to the earth and reason. After about five minutes I opened my eyes to discover I was lying in a graveyard. Suicidal thoughts can't survive feeling slightly ridiculous. I saw that in Tennant's Hamlet which made his final remarks to Horatio before following Osric to the fencing contest - If it be now, 'tis not to come... - all the more moving. Great stuff.
Hey Ho. Cheerful thoughts for a snowy morning. Time to walk the dog.

And so to work - possibly.

2010-01-04T16:46:00.002Z

Today I officially went back to work. And I did some too. I sorted out the rewrite of the schools' piece for York Theatre Royal, and worked on the Stephen Luckwell proposal for Radio 4. I had three attempts to get something down on paper and failed each time, then I decided I would stop trying to make it sound like something I was ending in the the BBC and write what I thought I'd like to do with it instead. And that got me started. And then I went for a swim. Halfway down length seven I thought of an ending of the SL radio version and now the notes are scribbled down ready to look at tomorrow morning.
I checked my e mails when I got back from the pool and there was one from a bi-lingual theatre in Berlin wanting to see the English text of SL. That would be fun if they decided to do it. And an excuse to go to Berlin again because I feel that I'm overdue a visit.
I worked today to Test Match Special which in all honesty wasn't an unqualified success. Several times I found myself listening to Geoff Boycott with my mouth open and my fingers resting on the key board with no idea of how much time had passed. I think tomorrow I will not go swimming at the gym but find myself an exercise bike. They have Sky Sports and much as I resent and despise Murdoch and all his works there is nothing like watching it live, and if I combine exercise with watching cricket which will relax me, get me fitter, and get me ready to go back to work invigorated, that's good, isn't it?
Tomorrow is more snow so there is a chance if it is really nice that a walk might be called for - especially if I can't get up the hill that leads to the gym - and I can always start later and continue into the evening. Yes, of course I can.
This year I will attack my work with resolution and vigour. I will.

A Workhouse Christmas in Peterborough.

2009-12-19T10:32:00.002Z

Seven weeks ago Kate Hall came to Nottingham to see a play of mine. We've worked together on a number of occasions, earlier this year she directed My Name is Stephen Luckwell at Nottingham Playhouse and we have both been involved with RSC community and education projects. She had this idea of putting on a short piece for Christmas at The Old Still in Peterborough where she lives. The pub has been empty for some time and at the moment is home to a group of artists. It's Dickensian in the extreme with panelled walls and a courtyard out the back. Her suggestion was an adaptation of the poem It was Christmas Day in the Workhouse by George Sims. Was I up for it? Absolutely. Any project with Kate is going to be fun. And this week it opened. A promenade performance with three actors, a choir, and mulled wine. What more could you ask for Christmas?

Sometimes I enjoy working at speed - especially if someone as efficient as Kate is taking care of all the difficult bits.

There's a bit in The Producers where Bloom and Bialystok are sitting on the roof with their Nazi playwright trying to convince him to let them put on his masterpiece, two Jews having to listen to his rambling homage to Hitler. He wants to emphasise how much better a painter Hitler was than Churchill and says -

Hitler. There was a painter. One apartment, two coats, one afternoon.

One apartment, two coats, one afternoon. What a brilliant line. And it's become something of a mantra for me and a few colleagues -removed I hasten to add from all Hitlerian context - to be used when any task is getting bogged down in too much detail.

Next Easter we're putting on Finnegan's Wake in a fortnight. Watch this space.

Oh, yes I did!

2009-12-17T10:12:00.003Z

Yesterday I went to a pantomime at the Palace Theatre in Newark. I don't have a long history with pantos. When I was five I ran out of Dick Whittington at the Dome in Brighton, never to return, when a gun was fired in a market square and I can't recall another one until I took my daughter to a Nottingham Playhouse panto and sat there wondering how anything could last so long.
So I'm not a panto fan, which disappoints me as I love variety and treasure memories of Elsie and Doris Waters, Sandy Powell, Peter Brough, Al Read, Max Wall et al. Cinderella at Newark didn't mark a Pauline conversion, but I did enjoy it.
It had a story. It had real actors who worked hard and were obviously enjoying themselves. It wasn't patronising. It wasn't full of jokes about the X Factor and Eastenders. And when a seven year old, asked by Buttons if he didn't feel he'd left it a bit late to send a letter to Santa, said it was okay because he was going to send an e mail he was generously acknowledged as having come out with the best line in the show.
There was a reason why I was there. My colleague on the Buckland project - that has just got the go ahead for 2011!!! - was the MD so I got to sit in the pit with Matt and Steve the drummer rather than amongst the hordes of screaming kids. I was able to watch the stage and the audience and I was taken by how much the kids were involved in the story, they were visibly angry at the way that the sisters treated Cinders, affronted by the injustice of it all, which gave me hope for the future generation.
Actually the best bit about the whole thing was Matt giving me a horn and allowing me to blow it during the car chase. Enormous fun. And something else for the cv, I think.

A positive approach.

2009-12-14T11:23:00.003Z

I don't normally greet the end of the year with any particular show of jollity. Default setting: creeping depression re: what have I achieved, Oh God another year gone. However this year is different. This is the year of the positive attitude.

So in particular order some of the things that have been dead good in the last twelve months.

Waiting for Godot in New York.
Steve Earle in Derby.
John Tamms, Chuck Prophet and Alexandro Escavado at the Maze.
Warhorse.
Seeing a bear on the Skyline Drive.
Joe Lavano at Ronnie Scotts.
Northern Broadsides Othello.
Sitting in on the dress rehearsal of The Tempest at Stratford and then working on it with kids in Rotherham and seeing again how without the baggage of exams and poor teaching they don't have a problem with Shakespeare - they get it.
Leonard Cohen in Cardiff. Not quite within the last 12 months but so good it's kept me smiling all year.
Seeing Guernica in Madrid and Les Demoiselles in New York.
The new gallery Nottingham Contemporary and the opening Hockney exhibition.
Taking my daughter to see John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett.

So not a bad year at all. Okay, the Hanover job went down the tubes. And I didn't get to the gym as much as I wanted to. But I'm still here and I know what I want for Christmas. Another Christmas.

The research can't go on forever.

2009-11-30T17:52:00.002Z

It's amazing how confident it is possible to appear when the meeting is discussing your latest commission. Actors are great at pretend confidence, they do it all the time. In an audition if you ask an actor a question they'll always answer 'yes'. Unless 'yes' is going to involve them in something illegal or disgusting, and not always then.

-Can you play the saxophone?
-Yes.
-Ride a horse?
-Absolutely.
-Ever removed an appendix?
-Frequently.

Bless them. Yes to everything and don't worry what you might let have yourself in for until you get the part.
I felt like that today. Is it possible for you get the rough draft in by the 10th and not the16th? As in the week after next. When you've got Peterborough, the thing for the BBC, and the outline Big Window to think about. So I lose six days. I can handle that.
Of course, no problem. Ahhhh!
I will get in by the 10th. I will. Absolutely.
But there is so much research, so much reading, so much to absorb and process into something that resembles the dramatic. Once it's all over and I've written The End, we can start to work on it and shape it into what we want it to be, but oh, how long away that moment seems when I'm only on page 53 with nothing more than the vaguest idea of where to go next.
I mean it is all there, more or less, in some sort of order. All I've got to do is write it. And forget about trying to get it right all in one go. At least she said what I'd sent her was easy to read - that's always a good note to have. Tomorrow I go to Peterborough for a read through of A Workhouse Christmas, but I don't have to leave until the afternoon so I could get a couple of scenes done. And tonight instead of the box set of Spooks I could reread my notes and get the timeline properly worked out. And if I don't take any time out to go to the gym or sleep I can get it done by the 6th which leaves me a couple of days to reflect and check for spelling mistakes before I send it in. Yes, I can do it.

Memo to self: don't over dramatise problems in case those who commission you read what you've written.

Alan Bennett, the Natural History Museum, and Toilet Brushes.

2009-11-17T16:52:00.003Z

Last night I went to see The Habit of Art and here's hope for us all because at 75 - which for all I know might be the new forty in a few years time - he's written another cracker. Before I saw it I read a piece Bennett had written for the LRB on the relationship between the writer and the director, specifically himself and Nicholas Hytner, which endeared me to him. He said - and I paraphrase - that he was glad that he wasn't so highly regarded that every word he wrote was accepted without question, he felt that the dialogue of development and rehearsal was an essential ingredient that his work couldn't do without. Or something like that. And it's true. I'm lost without the critical voice and I enjoy the process.
At the moment I'm enjoying the research. In London for a few days to spend time in the Nat Hist Mus library poring over old documents to do with Buckland, Anning, Mantell and Owen for the Oxford piece - which will continue to be known as the Oxford piece until the next stage of the contract has gone through - many a slip. It's great fun. Coming across quirky little details that immediately give you a sense of the person. And while I'm in there I get two messages. One, the German film of A Dream of White Horses has acquired a new producer and there are further hopes of money being forthcoming, and two, a company that want to work with me have got the money that will allow the project to go ahead, so a definite yippee for that one.
And it is in fact time I got down to work. Last week I spent in the Lakes with friends and my laptop. I didn't open the laptop, but I had a great time. It was self catering. For ten of us. You know you always get instructions left for you explaining where to find the stop cock and what to do when you leave. I don't really want to imagine what ghastly experience prompted our landlords to leave the following message:

On leaving there will be no dirty lavatory brushes.

Erotic Art

2009-11-06T10:14:00.002Z

The other week in London I went to the Pop Life exhibition at the Tate Modern. I came away with an increased admiration for Andy Warhol that grew the further I went into the exhibition. By the time I got to Damien Hurst and his identical twins I felt I was surrounded by naked emperors. And that is an appropriate image as by then I had had two of the least erotic experiences of my life. I wouldn't like to suggest that I am an aficionado of erotica but I know what I like. Jeff Koons. I entered the room that was barred to the under eighteens and saw the uber lifesize model of himself and his porn star wife shagging. (Incidentally I was charmed to discover that a poster outside a church in North Carolina advertising Saturday Night Shagging Classes for all ages was encouraging the faithful to learn a complicated dance step peculiar to the southern states.) On the walls in glorious technicolor were photos of Mr Koons inserting himself into various bits of La someone or other. I didn't stay long enough to comment on Mr Koons bit, but I did come away amazed at the size of his ego. Deconstruct the whole process, starting with all the assistants who must have been milling around during the photo session, the workers who made the sculpture and probably pissed themselves silly in the process and the words silly and exploitative come to mind.
Later in the exhibition I was particularly taken with the video of the couple having sex on a hotel bed. Apparently, it said on the card on the wall, she - I've forgotten her name - had approached a dealer to find a collector who would pay to have sex with her for an hour and be filmed. One was found, the deed was done, and a tape of this coupling plays - for an hour - in the Tate as we speak. I admit I only watched about thirty seconds and therefore I could be accused of jumping to conclusions, but frankly it is, if I may be excused for descending into the rarified language of art criticism, total bollocks.

Othello

2009-11-05T15:28:00.002Z

Last week I went to see the Northern Broadsides production of Othello and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. It was clear, the performances were excellent, it was moving, frightening, and three of the fastest hours I've spent in a theatre, and that is no mean praise because put me in a comfy seat, turn the lights out, and it's up to you to keep my attention.
One of the things you tell writers on workshops is that the most powerful thing you can do is put the audience in charge by giving them information that that is not available to the characters, and Othello is a master class of how to do it. From the moment Iago opens his mouth we know exactly what is going to happen. His technique is reminiscent of Max Wall who would inform you he was going to tell you a joke, outline what it was about, explain how it worked and where you were going to laugh, and then, tell it, and you laughed exactly where he said you would. Iago is a poisonous, twisted, evil monster, and yet he is funny and full of life and energy. I've just finished script reading and almost every play was written with passion about a cause or an issue that the writer felt deeply about, and in every case, those characters represented the opposition to the writer's own views were cardboard cutouts without an ounce of life in them. Can't say that about Iago.
It was the first production I've seen that captured the pettiness of Iago's imagined slight. Othello feels he's conferring a favour by keeping his beloved Iago close to him, Iago feels passed over for a new friend, Cassio. Straight back to the playground. But how often after the most terrible crime do we find out that the mayhem was precipitated by the daftest of reasons? And what about the end where, when questioned, Iago, who has poured words all over the play from the opening merely says,

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
From this time forth I never will speak word.

Shakespeare, what can you say?

There ain't half been some clever bastards.
Ian Dury

John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett

2009-10-26T07:25:00.002Z

I think as a parent one of the most important things you can do for a child is to introduce them to the things in life that have elated and inspired you and so that is why last night I took my daughter to see John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. She grew up listening to Otway's version of I Will Survive sung as if by Bob Dylan and knew of my enthusiasm for the man, so it didn't take a lot of persuasion to get her to indulge me. She was knocked out. During Bodytalk - performed with the aid of drum pads stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and a theremin - I thought she was quite possibly going to be ill. But what I loved was that she got it. Yes, it's funny. Otway is no musician, as Wild Willy never stops reminding us, but his songs are quirky, edgy, heartfelt and honest. He means every word and he is an extremely accomplished performer.
In one number he takes two mics, one in each hand, and sings into both alternately, sometimes a word at a time, whilst twirling them around his head and between his legs and twisting up the leads into a cat's cradle, but he doesn't drop them, and the whole works to the split second, he never misses a beat. He sends himself up and sings with absolute conviction.
When Willy Barrett tells us how Otway has been trying to see how he plays one particular chord all tour but he won't let him, and demonstrates how he can play it without Otway seeing, the timing tells you it's a piece of well rehearsed shtick, and it's ridiculous, but you know, it's also true, Otway does want to know how to play that particular chord, and Barrett, the virtuoso who can play anything, won't show him.
It's a rare thing - a performance that's absurd, weepingly funny, chaotically slick, and absolutely sincere. That's Really Free. Brilliant.

Script Reading

2009-10-20T09:43:00.002+01:00

Occasionally I'm asked to read scripts and I've just got a new batch. The number of unsolicited scripts floating around at any one time must be in the thousands. Every theatre company, no matter how small, has more than it can handle, but the majority of them get read, sometime, by someone, and sometimes that someone is me. I'm happy to do it. I feel an obligation to do it because my stuff worked it's way out of the pile because someone took the trouble to read what I'd sent them. There is an amazing amount of rubbish to be ploughed through, but I read them all because I don't want to be the like the bloke who didn't sign the Beatles, and every now and then you come across one that grabs you and there's a real buzz. When that happens you put in a recommendation that it be read again, and someone is on their way to getting noticed.
But I can't pretend that it isn't sometimes a frustrating exercise.

Top Tips.

There are probably enough musicals about Dracula and Princess Diana and yours might be the definite one, but I doubt it. Though a musical that had both Dracula and Princess Diana in the cast list might be a winner.
Plays about playwrights who can never get their plays put on are unlikely to be put on. You'd be surprised how many I've read. The best - and I use the word loosely - was about a writer who kidnapped a member of the Arts Council, the man's real name was used, because he had turned down a grant to the playwright. An indication as to why the Arts Council hadn't supported our bitter and twisted writer could be sensed in the final third of the play when having got his nemesis trussed up in a lonely cottage miles from anywhere, he talked to him about the play he'd wanted to write with the grant he didn't get and then let him go.
Try and visit a theatre once or twice before writing a play. It helps if you have a vague idea what goes on. For example - Plays use real live actors (one hopes) and there are all sorts of petty regulations concerning their well being that have to be observed. It isn't really practical to expect one of your cast to be tied by the ankles and dangled above the stage for the whole two hours whilst being periodically attacked by a cattle prod(sic), even if you have seen something similar in the cinema.
Don't send in plays that need a cast of twenty eight to a company that specialises in small scale touring.
Never write a character you don't want to play yourself. If you're not interested in them, who else is going to be?
Plays are about people. Not your own personal outrage. Not lists of statistics. We only understand the sufferings of millions through the experience of the individual as someone said much more succinctly than I've just done.
And remember it's a craft - it has to be worked at. Rewrites are a good idea.
Writing a play is hard work. But if you're serious about what you're doing don't look for other activities to distract you when you start to feel down hearted.

Ah... Right.

High School Musical

2009-10-11T14:17:00.004+01:00

High School Musical. Three words I never thought I'd write. Last night we started on the box set of Almodovar that I bought after my wife saw Broken Embraces and after enduring Strictly Come Tedious - one has to make some sacrifices - we watched All about My Mother. When that stunning film came to an end at about midnight we didn't go straight to bed because you need a moment after something as powerful as that, so I made some coffee, flicked back to the TV and scrolled through the channels. I stopped, unintentionally and only to take a sip of coffee, on a couple of kids singing and before I could change the channel we were both sitting with our eyes fixed on the screen. Forty minutes later we were still there. Sucked in. It was dreadful, it reached beyond cheesy, it roared past sentimental until it got stuck in some vomit inducing hinterland, it was shite on a stick, but we were watching High School Musical and we had to make an active decision to turn it off and go to bed. We were in danger of caring about the outcome, we had been overwhelmed by Almodovar's film on almost every level you think of, it's skill, it's nerve, it's compassion, it's humour, it's honesty, it's vision, I could go on and on and I haven't even touched on the acting, and yet we sat there until nearly one in the morning watching manipulative bollocks. Inexplicable. We were suckered in and I feel the need to make amends.
Tomorrow we're off to Lyme Regis on a jolly disguised as research and I shall be taking with me the copy of Finnegan's Wake I got last birthday and have yet to open for more than a casual glance as a penance.
But I do hope they got to play the lead, and the timid little composer was finally acknowledged as the talent she obviously was, and that Troy and his team won the basketball, and the girl with the blond hair and the absurd name I can't remember get their comeupence - we went to bed at the point where it looked as if she and her twat of a brother were about to scupper our heroes chances at the call back by locking them in the toilets but I could be wrong - and everybody was friends in the end and the final performance was very moving and great lessons were learned about life and stuff. Stuff culture, I bet you can get an HSM box set on Amazon.

The German Anthology

2009-10-06T14:38:00.003+01:00

I have just finished my 6000 characters including spaces introduction for the section on A Dream Of White Horses (Traum Weisser Pferde) for the anthology that's being put together by the prof in Bayreuth. I'm not sure if my 6000 characters including spaces will work out the same when it is translated in German. Deeply shaming that I have to write it in English. I'd love to speak German and I do try, but it's their own fault that my German doesn't improve. When I ask someone in the street 'Wo ist der hauptbanhof, bitte?' they inevitably reply 'Take the second on the right, go straight on and you can't miss it.' In perfect English. And if I try to speak German my listener will only let me have a couple of sentences at the most before forcing me back to my own language.
Doing the introduction so promptly was of course a classic displacement activity to prevent me from starting on the Oxford commission. I've said Oxford and that could be bad luck because I don't generally go into any detail until the contract is signed, oh, well, it's done now.
I had to answer the usual questions about the genesis of the idea, the characters, my writing style, and so on. I enjoyed doing it. It was interesting to reflect on something I wrote nearly eight years ago. One of the questions was - Has it been produced in the UK? - the answer to which is a frustrated 'No'. It got close a couple of times and people have liked it and given me work on the strength of that liking, but that's a far as it's gone. One day.
I woke up this morning with a brilliant idea for the Oxford piece as it is now officially known. Hymns. Specifically 1. Immortal, Invisible. and 2. All Things Bright and Beautiful. Off I went to check the words on Google to discover that both of them had been written after my protagonist had died and so he could hardly have sung either of them in the dramatic context I wanted him to. I mean to say. That's hardly helpful, is it?
I used to tell my family that I know that House is not a real doctor, I know it's Hugh Laurie and I know he's an actor, but if ever I'm in extremis he's the man for me. Not any more. I watched the first episode of series God knows how many and I have shifted my allegiance back to Anton Mayer as the ultimate surgeon - come on, make an effort he was the cold as ice heart surgeon in Holby City before it became really silly. I have also decided not to go mad in the States if there's a chance of ending up in a mental hospital like the one that is currently housing House. If you didn't watch it I haven't the energy to go into detail but the end made the words struck off and criminal charges come most readily to mind. And it was so good...
While we are still on a what's the world coming to vein, a new Winnie the Pooh book? In which we learn that much of Eeyore's sadness was because he was once disappointed in love? I do hope I've got that last bit wrong, but I probably haven't.
And today my daughter had her first seminar with her new English students. University students. Second year. Afterwards she had to ring me up for counselling. One of them when pressed to reveal something she'd read and enjoyed said - 'Look, I'll be honest with you, I don't like reading, and I don't remember the last book I read. And to be really honest I didn't read any of the books on the course last year. I still passed.' Whatever.

Research Research Research

2009-10-02T16:20:00.002+01:00

Lots of reading. Lots of Googling. Lots of cups of coffee. Lots of trying not to think about how it's all going to become a play. Which hasn't been too hard as I have had plenty of distractions. Last night we went to the Broadway - one of several good reasons for living in Nottingham - to see Broken Embraces. It was the first Amaldovar film my wife had seen, and I came to it with the zeal of the newly converted having only recently zipped my way through a box set while she was away down at her parents. I'd picked it up, largely because a friend of mine has been nagging me for years about his films, not really expecting to enjoy them very much and was, of course, knocked out, as was Anne last night. Great film. And Penelope Cruz.
Another good reason to celebrate Nottingham has also been providing plenty of distraction. Cosmic American Music. Where would we be without them? Two blokes who promote concerts in and around the city, chiefly as a labour of love. Most of them take place in the Maze, a small club at the back of the Forest Tavern. Great acoustics, good beer, and a capacity of a hundred and something. In the last few weeks I've been to see Steve Earle, Richmond Fontaine, Chuck Prophet and Mission Express, and Band of Heathens. Next week it's James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards at the Rescue Rooms.
Never let it be forgotten that one of the benefits of being a freelance is not having to worry about having to get up early for work after a late night mid week.

A reasonably frabjous day.

2009-09-30T15:19:00.002+01:00

Last Friday we had the meeting about the commission that wasn't going to happen and it happened. Me and m'colleague have to produce a draft suitable to be taken to a development week that will end in a workshop performance by the beginning of April 2010. Full production in Autumn 2010. It's going to be a play with songs, and I think that sounds a lot less scary than saying it is going to be a musical. I have an exceptional amount of justified faith in m'colleague's abilities on the musical front but it is I, Leclerc, who has to come up with the play bit, asap.
So, so far situation normal, elation on Friday, terror by Tuesday.
I have started by making lists. Things to read, places to visit, people to speak to. Already I have a pile of books and I'm halfway through the second one. I'm caught between writing notes or not writing notes. The play has a historical background and sometimes if I make notes to begin with then I get submerged under the facts. It seems better to read as quickly as possible and then go back to those bits that stick and look at them in more detail. I have four characters to work with and I have to make them mine without doing them a disservice or, to put it more bluntly, bending the truth out of all proportion to serve my own needs as a dramatist.
In my head I want to write it all at once, but I can't. I'll take it slowly. Read. Ruminate. Scribble down images. And try not to think that the company would like a title and a pretty good idea of what it's going to be like - for the advance publicity to the bookers - by November.
November...
Ahhhh!

Pessimism has its good side.

2009-09-24T10:59:00.002+01:00

Last week I went to first read through of the youth theatre piece, now tentatively titled The Journey, and listened while the group read it through for the first time. it seemed to make sense, helped by some very impressive sight reading, and I am hopeful that it will work for them. Then yesterday I went to the first performance of the abridged Tempest I did for a Nottingham Playhouse co production. I had provided the text for the company - who work with deaf and hearing audiences - so it was interesting to see how they'd used my contribution. The most impressive aspect, probably because it was so unfamiliar, was the signing. They went for signing meaning, not individual words, and I became fascinated by the way their hands danced around the text. So that meant in under a week two projects had more or less come to an end which always leaves me feeling a bit empty and let's in my natural pessimism which is only exacerbated by my being a freelance playwright, two words designed to mock any idea of financial stability.
Obviously my immediate feelings as I left yesterday's performance were of undiluted pessimism. The proposed tour for next year won't go ahead, the various companies that are considering my ideas will all reject them, Stephen Luckwell won't get a German production(it has been nominated for a Writers' Guild award which it won't get but it's nice to get the nomination), and basically I am probably looking at having to get a job delivering free newspapers. But the good thing about pessimism is that there is always the chance that things will not turn out as bad as you predict, and they haven't. Last night I got a phone call inviting me to meet and discuss a project I thought had died in the water weeks ago and this morning there's an e mail from Germany from a prof at Bayreuth University who wants to put A Dream of White Horses in an anthology and asks if I can supply a few well chosen words about how I came to write it.
I am cheerful again, I haven't been forgotten after all. Onward and upward.
Pathetic, isn't it?

Blithe Spirit

2009-09-09T10:28:00.003+01:00

Last night we went to see Blithe Spirit at Nottingham Playhouse. It's not a play I know well, in fact all my knowledge of it came from half watching Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford from the sofa one afternoon dosed up to the eyeballs and nursing a heavy cold. We joked about how nice it was to see a proper play with proper French windows, real scenes with real curtains that feel between each of them, and a real fire in a real fireplace, but it was very very good. Okay there's a bit of a problem when Charles says that his dead first wife is upstairs with his dead second wife and then the scene finishes with Ruth's - the dead second wife's - entrance as a ghost when we already know that she's up stairs with the dead first wife. And Ruth doesn't seem particularly miffed with Elvira for causing her death in her attempt to kill Charles and have her to herself forever but perhaps in the afterlife such petty resentments. And then it is sort of convenient that the maid is one wot dun it all along. But, it was, is, very very good. Good production too.
But what has really got me is that I read in the programme that he wrote it in the Blitz in five days flat ans six weeks later it was on the stage. And here am I trying to get beyond page eleven after God knows how long. What a bastard! I imagine living and working in a war zone does concentrate the mind a tad, but five days, that's just silly.

Rehearsals on Tuesday.

2009-08-30T11:26:00.002+01:00

It's meet and greet and a read through for an adaptation I've done. Wednesday I'll also have to go in, but after then probably not very much at all as my work is basically a template for the company to work from, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with. It feels odd and something of a relief to know that what I have written will be regarded as a starting point and changes will be made from day one that have nothing to do with me. Also this month I shall have the first meeting with the youths from the youth theatre and then we'll see how many of them have dropped out, how many more have joined etc etc, and I do expect to have to do considerable rewrites. I enjoy it. It forces you to be flexible and come up with solutions that meet their needs but are still integral to the play. Nothing wrong with a bit of pragmatism.
Question about a previous show.
'I loved the way the battle scene was so stylised. You used two actors standing on opposite sides of the stage and a sound scape. So simple. What gave you the idea?'
Answer.
'The other actors dropped out at the last moment and it was the only thing we could think of.'
Necessity is the mother of something or another.

Feelings of virtue.

2009-08-25T15:36:00.002+01:00

Today I have been mostly doing my tax and that makes me feel virtuous. I have done my travel, payments, and expenses and bundled them up for the taxman. I get ridiculously overexcited about doing tax returns, even though I have alarmingly little to return this year I couldn't help but notice, because I feel sure that I am going to be hauled over the coals for some infringement I don't even know about, although I am scrupulous to the point of paranoia about declaring everything and not making dubious claims. I think it's because every year I make a error that throws everything and takes me hours to discover. This year the totals across column across wouldn't match the total down column. It took me over an hour to discover that I'd transposed a couple of figures in the the total for expenditure on computers. But, it is over for another year, and I shall continue feeling virtuous for quite some time yet.
This hasn't solved the problem about what I'm going to write next. I know what I'm going to write for the various people who want me to write something for them, but I am determined that this year I will write something for myself and it will be good, which, of course is the difficult part.
I have a notebook, several notebooks, full of ideas. Last night as I was dropping off I had a cracking idea. It came to me fully formed and I thought it through there and then. Needless to say in the morning I couldn't recall a thing. So that is why this morning I started on my tax. Nothing creative, had to be done, and now I have a clear desk. Tomorrow I'll go back to making notes, tomorrow it will all be clear, and I shall start on the piece for myself. Unless I go round the scrap yards looking for a rear light for the Peugeot. Depends on whether it's raining.

I'm not sure how but I think it's going to work

2009-08-18T19:26:00.002+01:00

I finished the youth theatre piece today. This was made easier because last night I got an email from the teacher in charge saying that she liked it. All I needed. A bit of reassurance that it wasn't complete pants and I could get my head down, make decisions, cuts, additions and there it was, finished. I've been farting around with it for too long, but then that's what happens with every piece, until it gains some kind of momentum of it's own (spurred on by a bit of praise/reassurance) I feel as if I'm wasting my time - which of course I am, playing spider solitaire. I'll have another look at it and then send it off. I think we can leave it now until the kids read it through and start to do some work on it, but at least it feels like a proper play. Onward and upward.

Advice

2009-08-06T11:09:00.002+01:00

This morning I got an email from someone I taught once a million years ago in another lifetime. It didn't say that I'd blighted his life and made his every moment at school a living hell, in fact, he seemed to have quite enjoyed the work we did, so that lifted my morning before it began. I remembered all the things he referred to except an amazing piece of advice I'd given to another student. Sadly, he didn't say what this advice was which prevents me from passing it on.
Last night I went to see Bruno. Not as sharp as Borat was my opinion. There were some stunning moments, most of which I watched from behind my fingers like I used to watch Doctor Who but for different reasons. There were two in particular, one, when he consulted two American 'ministers' whose mission is to convert the gay to the straight, and the other when he set up a cage fight as Straight Dave and then proceeded to make man-love to his assistant - too complicated to explain - in the cage in front of a crowd of baying red neck heterosexuals. But, in general, the targets seemed to diffuse, too easy, lacking the attack that there was in Borat. Maybe the character was too outrageous to take in any but the very dim, or perhaps people are getting wise to him. Actually, as I think about it there were more than two moments. The martial arts lesson where he was shown how to repel a homosexual armed with two dildos was especially wonderful.
I keep wondering what this amazing advice was. I asked him to tell me, and I'm sue when he does it won't be amazing but something really silly, but I'd like to think I came out with something worth adhering to as I feel in particular need of guidance myself at the moment.
We did get a reply about the commission. Our director wants to like it and would like us to come up with a page of A4 to show how it can be made to look exciting. Now that is something I could do with some advice about.
I mustn't do myself down, I did give some excellent advice to my wife last week as she turned out of Salisbury's car park and onto the main road. I said - Now we're back in England, I think you should drive on the left.

Is it really the right moment to call?

2009-08-04T12:36:00.004+01:00

Some months ago a friend suggested someone she knew might be interested in my work and it might be worth while getting in touch. Some months ago. I sent the e mail today. I can't begin to list all the excuses I had for not sending it but basically they all boil down to how do I know this is the right moment to make the approach? If I send it now they might have a head ache, they might be in the middle of something really important and they'll shove my little plea to one side and forget about it, they might be sick to death of unsolicited requests, they have just split up from their husband/wife/partner, their dog might have just died. I don't know these things, do I? And so I put off the email, delay making the phone call. In this case I got an out of office reply saying that they wouldn't be back in until tomorrow. I immediately I decided that they would have such a backlog of e mails that mine would certainly be discarded unread.
What's even worse is trying to work out the right moment to call to find out if the first draft's been read and is it alright? If I don't get an answer to that one within a day, two at the most, I get definitely twitchy. And what's worse still is making the call to ask if the commission we discussed is going to happen. You ring someone up about that one on a bad day and you're buggered before you start. All of this is obviously nonsense, but that doesn't stop it being real - for me.
This morning I talked to a colleague about the commission decision we're waiting on and we worked out what he should put in the email so we didn't look too demanding, so it isn't just me.
On the upside Sea is on it's way to the publishers and the yoyth theatre piece is in front of me, and as soon as I've had lunch, yes, it will be started.

PS. 10pm. Got an out of office reply in response to the query about the possible commission. Won't be back at the desk until September. So that means I've got a whole month to not worry about it.

I really have started.

2009-08-03T20:51:00.002+01:00

Today I made a proper start. Not to the youth theatre piece because I thought I needed to get back in the swing, but I began revising the text for Aurorametro who are publishing We Didn't Mean to go to Sea in the spring. They want everything by September so I thought it would be a good way to get the wheels turning again.
I spent a good part of the morning working on the dedication. I've never dedicated a book before and they said I could so I thought ti was important to give the matter some thought. It didn't really need much thought because there's only one dedication I want to make - to all those who got me started and sailed with me and my family and helped us to have such a good time messing about in small boats. (I've phrased it better that that for the book, but that's the gist.)
It's true- the smaller the boat, the greater the fun - that is until you injure your back so every time you get on board and you're bent double like a hairgrip you can't wait to get off again. Which is why I am an ex-boat owner. But trailing our boat down to sail around Salcombe and Dartmouth and the years we had in the Walton Backwaters gave us some of the best holidays imaginable - if you like getting cold and wet, mud, anti fouling in the pouring rain, engines breaking down at exactly the wrong moment, weeks waiting for the weather to allow you out of your berth, and toilets getting jammed... no, it was brilliant, all of it.
I'm on my own this evening, if you don't count the dog, so I have started on the text itself. I did have a bit of a problem deciding which was the definitive text out of all the rehearsal drafts, alterations, the final drafts one and two, not to mention the three versions with track changes from Ivan Cutting the director, but I think I found it, and with luck, and not too many distractions, I should be finished by tomorrow. And then I'll start of the youth theatre piece properly. I will.

Waiting For Godot Mk2

2009-08-01T11:55:00.002+01:00

Last Thursday I went to see Godot, which means that having not seen a production since I was student I've now seen two in a matter of weeks. It was fascinating how different the London Godot was from New York. It seemed cosier, an investigation of the minutiae of a relationship, domestic rather than universal. Great to see McKellen and Stewart playing off each other of course, but it lacked the focus and precision we found in New York. Lucky's speech was a good example. John Glover was both funny and erudite. They had obviously put in a huge amount of work on the text, following the logic behind the seemingly disjointed thoughts. Each segment was begun with confidence and at any moment you felt he would be able to marshal his arguments and break through to some universal truth. We waited in tense anticipation, as did the other characters, for the revelation that was so nearly discovered. It was like when you are lying in bed half asleep and your brain is within a hair of grasping the reality of the infinity and then it suddenly lurches off into some nonsense about fishing for crabs off the top of Big Ben and the moment's gone. In London Ronald Pickup had to play it as nonsense that made the other characters laugh at him. At one point the tramps leant against the pros exaggeratedly miming their boredom - wasn't much he could do after that except soldier through to the end.
Last night four old friends came ot saty and we went to see the Hot Club of Cowtown - hot jazz meets western swing - at The Maze and they were absolutely brilliant. And I heard that a mate - Graham Lester- George has won SOHO Rushes with his short film Washdays. Tonight we're going to see Wilko Johnson.
Monday I will get up early and start the rewrite. Target - to get a draft finished by Friday. It is attainable. It can and will be done.

The Thing is...

2009-07-28T08:56:00.002+01:00

The thing is I've decided to try and think about the problems I've got before I start work. The youth piece. I don't know exact cast numbers - between 20 and 30 - or the number of boys to girls, I know there will be more girls than boys because there always are, but not how many more. I can't have a couple of protagonists who run all the way through the play because they won't be able to make every rehearsal as they'll have extra science or a job at Morrison's. I can't have more than a handful of named characters because I don't know about the cast, so it has to be possible for the dialogue to be distributed easily, but I can indicate where a precise number of characters are talking to each other and that is useful. And I've made the decision that the story is going to be told by the group. I've got three characters that we see at the start and who crop up throughout and that helps hold it together and give the audience a way in from the beginning to the end. Always nice to see a friendly face. I've got an opening and a big finish. It's the bits in the middle I've got to sort out.
The first draft has given me the structure and a lot of the incidents. Some of them just need tightening. Others need chucking out because they don't earn their place, they don't move the action on, or they don't tel us anything we don't already know about the characters, or because they are pretty boring. That's okay. Sometimes the first time round you think to yourself, I know more or less what should go here but it's not quite there, and so you write anything knowing that it will be changed. There are moments when it is enough just to cover the blank paper with words. You can always rewrite rubbish, can't do much with a blank sheet.
So, the next step is to rewrite what I've done so far, this will involve cutting the naff bits and leaving holes in the text, that will be followed by rethinking the whole piece, and starting again. Deadline the end of August.
In fact the rewrite is the best part, and I am looking forward to getting to grips with it. No, really. But I did bump into a mate last night outside the Broadway - we went to see Harry Potter which is very long - and when I told him that I was allergic to Facebook as I don't need any more displacement activities, he reminded me of a night at the Nottingham Writers' Studio when five of us stood round comparing the different things we do to avoid writing. This blog is not one of them - it is an important part of my creative process and as soon as I've finished it, had breakfast, read the paper, and done my turn clearing up the house for the friends who are coming to stay, I shall start work.

Back to the grindstone. Well, sort of...

2009-07-27T13:04:00.002+01:00

I started work again this morning. Two and a half solid, more or less solid, hours on the youth theatre piece. I did have a coffee. And I read the post. I had to check my on line account and transfer some money. And I had to send Mik Godley an e mail about his piece in Staples magazine about his Virtual Silesia project which is brilliant. But I'd say that work was done and progress was made. And now I'm stopping. For lunch. And to go to town and pay my tax bill and pick up some tickets for Wilko Johnson at the Rescue Rooms. Then I've got to go to the gym and try and work off three weeks in the States, and then to the Broadway this evening for Harry Potter which I suspect will be long.
I know I haven't done much, but I've made a start, and that's the main thing. Also I need some thinking time about what I'm going to do next in the rewrite and about an idea that's just started to work it's way into my head. So, onward and upward, and lunch.

Only in America

2009-07-26T18:56:00.002+01:00

Only in America is a wonderful phrase. It can be said with pride, with baffled amusement, in disbelief, in anger, in any way that suits the moment. In Staunton, Virginia there is a replica of Shakespeare's Blackfriars Theatre - only in America. The only one in the world.

Staunton is a small town. Probably about the size of Mansfield, possibly smaller. Jim Warren and Ralph Cohen the co founders wanted to build their theatre in Harrisonburg. Harrisonburg wasn't keen and so they took the idea the Staunton who said , yes, please, and now every spring, summer, and autumn there is a programme of plays from Shakespeare and his contemporaries. And it supports a touring programme. We saw Merry Wives, and, carried on its cast's enthusiasm, it made for a very enjoyable evening. As far as I could discover the actors are mainly amateur at the moment, but they hope that will change soon. The whole place is full of enthusiasm. Enthuisasm is a good thing. If someone suggested a similar project here in the UK - cf The Globe and how long that took - we would only see potential difficulties, over there, a small town took about a week to say - Okay,why not?

Next year in Staunton they intend to start building a replica of the Globe (sic).

http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com

Stephen Luckwell

2009-07-20T13:37:00.003+01:00

I heard this morning that at the season review at Nottingham Playhouse the staff voted My Name is Stephen Luckwell the best show for direction, writing, acting and design. What a perceptive bunch. And very gratifying too. I'm still hoping that it might get another production somewhere, I know it won't be in Germany next season but Boris thinks it is only a matter of time before someone takes it up. I'm tempted to think about Edinburgh next year, but it could be a lot of hassle for nothing, and it would depend on everyone being available.
On Tuesday I'll be home and, having switched off to such an extent that I was wondering if I'd ever feel like writing again, now that the plane is only a day away the itch has returned and I want to get back and get going once more. The second draft of the youth piece waits, and there are other ideas to follow up. The Sea script needs to be to prepared for publication, tightened up a bit, and a few messy sections need to be rewritten to make them easier to read. I hope it'll do quite well with the Ransome following, even if they hate I think they might want to read it. Fingers still tightly crossed about the tour - 'several theatres interested, none confirmed as yet' was the last I heard from Eastern Angles.

I could get used to Southern Hospitality

2009-07-13T23:37:00.003+01:00

I'm in Charleston South Carolina. Pelicans have flown by, the fan on the back porch is moving the air around, and I am sitting in a rocker with a cold beer, dependant on the kindness of strangers. Not actually strangers, but my stepson and daughter in law who have invited us to share their holiday with them. There's a pool and a golf buggy in case we can't be arsed to walk the hundred yards to the beach.

I haven't written a word since 26th June. My notebook is unopened. I haven't had a creative thought in weeks. Oh, the guilt, the guilt.

It Doesn't Do To trust the T'Internet.

2009-07-12T01:37:00.008+01:00

I finished the youth theatre piece the Friday before I left for the States and sent it off by e mail. Just over a week later I got twitchy as I'd heard nothing so I e mailed the school and they hadn't go it. Without quite realising how I'd signed up for and got back up from the Virgin service V Stuff so I was able to download the text from my pc back home and send it on. Should have sent it by post.
My sighting of Steve Earle has been overshadowed this week by the black bear cub we saw on the other side of the road when we returned to our car for a walk. Now I don't know much about bears but I do know that cubs have large mothers and so after a quick photo we got in the car and locked the doors. From there we watched a family of four disappear into the woods following the bear to get a better photo. Mum and dad were large, didn't look quick on their feet, and the kids looked - if you were a bear - tasty. We didn't hang around.
Still plotting how I can get get a sabbatical in New York.

New York.

2009-07-03T03:06:00.005+01:00

At this moment I am feeling as near to cool as I am likely to get I think. I'm writing this in a cafe on Bleeker Street. Last night we went and saw Waiting For Godot and the night before we sat listening to the blues in Arthur's Tavern. Oh, and a few minutes ago I bumped into Steve Earle. That is, in fact, strictly true, because I did bump into him.
Godot was excellent. Tight, disciplined, and very very funny. I'd read that some of the dark side was missing at the expense of the comedy but that is not so. Please let there be tickets for the London production.
We are staying in a basement bedsit in the Village having bagels for breakfast and I'm getting quite taken with the idea of staying right where I am and not coming home at all.

Lowdam Book Festival

2009-06-27T16:09:00.002+01:00

I did my schtick at the Lowdam Book Festival this morning. I did about 45 minutes with two actors taking care of the readings. For the opening moments I kept calling one of them Kevin, although I knew that wasn't his name I couldn't stop myself, and eventually he interruptede to point out that his name was Gary, which I knew perfectly well. There were more there than the one man and a dog I expected which was gratifying and It seemed to go okay - people said nice things afterwards but then they would, wouldn't they?
Still no word on the project we pitched last week. Although we know we won't hear anything until the company have had a couple of important meetings, you sort of hope that there'll be a phone call along the lines of 'I'm going to do it, I'll make the board approve it, it's the best idea we've had pitched to us in years. The contract's in the post.'
Tomorrow we fly to New York for four days before visiting family in North Carolina. Sunday night will be a meal in Little Italy and jet lag. Tuesday night we're going to Waiting for Godot . That leaves two nights in hand. Monday at the Village Vanguard? Try for tickets for Shakespeare in the Park? The free concert at Battery Park? Which day do we spend in Brooklyn? So many decisions to make. I can't remember having gone on holiday in June before and it feels very decadent, like coming out of the pictures on a Sunday, or coming out of the cinema to find it's still daylight.

Cracked it!

2009-06-26T08:05:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I finished the youth theatre piece, one day ahead of schedule. A small miracle. I spent an hour or so in the evening looking through it and correcting the most obvious typos, and then gave up when the urge to start rewriting became too great. As soon as I've finished a first draft I can see, with great certainty, exactly what to do with it next, and I'm almost always wrong. Which is why it's a good idea not to touch it but put it away for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. This morning I shall e-mail it off, send in the invoice, and pretend to forget about it for the next few weeks.
Tomorrow I'm doing an hour at the Lowdham Book Festival. I usually do this sort of stuff for writers' groups but I thought it might be a good idea to try the stuff out on a more general group. I shan't be alone as I'll have a couple of actors - Kevin and Sylvia - with me to read the extracts. I'm trying to tell myself that it isn't a shameless act of self promotion, but I know it is. I did it once before in a public library in North Carolina on an RSC residency with two actors from the company. The majority of the extracts are examples of bad writing and usually get a laugh but on this occasion we were greeted with baffled looks - my fault, I'd not explained it was supposed to be funny.
The contract from aurorametro for the script of We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea came in the post. They are publishing it early next year and then I shall have two books in print. I can't see how they make any money out of it, I certainly don't, but it is good to have a book on the shelf, it keeps you noticed and prolongs the life of the piece. They sent me a catalogue too, and it was already in there, and I got really excited. Hopefully, the retour with Eastern Angles will come through and the book can be launched alongside it. One of the best parts is googling the title and discovering that it's in the library of the University of Miami, or being sold second hand in a bookshop in Brooklyn. How did it get all the way out there on two print runs of 500? I'd like you to know that googling my one published book is not an obsession, and it's just by chance that I happen to know that at the moment, on the Amazon sales chart, it's rated 2,158,327th.

It's research, not a jolly.

2009-06-25T10:09:00.003+01:00

I went down to London yesterday. I was supposed to be going to a Writers' Guild Theatre Committee meeting but they'd changed the date. I could have got a partial refund, or tried to change the tickets to another date, but, as there is the possibility of a commission in the offing that if it comes through will need a trip to town, I decided to have a day in London. When I got home my wife asked if the trip had been useful.
Yes, it had. Firstly, on the train down I had listened to music, dozed, and made notes for the youth theatre piece I have to finish by this Friday. Taking a day away when I should have been working is good because it means that now I only have two days to finish the first draft and that will help to concentrate the mind - as soon as I make a start on it, that is. When I got to London I had a cup of coffee and watched the world go by, because it isn't good to rush into things, and then made my way across town to the building I wanted to visit. (Please note that I shall remain coy about the proposed project until it becomes a reality and contracts are signed. Could be thought of as needlessly superstitious but I don't care.) Mooched around there for a while. Went to the V&A. Stuck my nose into the Science Museum. Discovered the Serpentine Gallery is closed for redecoration, got nearly to the end of Melvyn Bragg's brilliant, honest Remember Me in Hyde Park as I dared, stopping only when I was in danger of weeping in public, caught a bus to Trafalgar Square, crossed to the South Bank, had a coffee outside the National, bought Kenan Malik's latest book in the NT Bookshop AND discovered that they had a copy of Warrior Square on sale, and yes, I've looked for it every time I've been in and I don't care about that either, wandered up to the Algerian Coffee Store for 500 grams of Java, had a glass of wine in the French, a meal in the Amalfi, and went home. And that is a useful day.
Why? Because I didn't talk to anyone all day. I wandered. I did nothing. I stared at the world. I sat on trains. And ideas seemed to pop up all over the place because I wasn't searching for them. Most of them won't be any good, but some of them might. In the building I visited for the project that shall be nameless I only wandered about, but my characters will go there, and it is important to them, and now I've been there, I can go there again, with them - if the pitch worked and we've sold the project, fingers crossed. I suppose what I'm really trying to say is that writing is a selfish and solitary commitment and much as I need and relish people - especially those I love - a bit of self imposed exile, even if for only a day isn't a bad thing.
Got back to an e mail from Boris my agent in Germany saying that he'd like to try and get a theatre to take up the project I was working on for Hannover and would I send him a brief expose. I note this as it is the first time in eight years he has ever misused a word in English, and he doesn't think he speaks the language very well; I wish my German was as bad. I shall do this, but not as it was for Hannover because I've had time to think and I want to do something different now, and anyway I think it's not a bad idea to leave some room for manoeuvre.
Also discovered an e mail from Paul Harman saying that he'd read my blog and that he'd enjoyed it. That's the third person who's told me that they've read it.
Right, it's now 10.45 am. Time to start work on the youth theatre piece that's due in on Friday. That means I open the document, look at yesterday's notes, decide to play best of three Spider Solitaire to clear my mind, make a cup of coffee, look at the document again this time scanning through to the last page, play more solitaire, and eventually, hopefully, actually write something. And I wish I was joking.

And so to Warwick

2009-06-18T09:20:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I was at Warwick University for a theatre conference - All Together Now? The British Theatre after Multi - Culturism - a topic that the conference was successful in avoiding for most of the two days. There were some real high points, amongst them were Michael Boyd on Shakespeare's own relationship to history both cultural, historical and personal, Stewart Lee and Richard Bean and particularly Kenan Malik on the nature of offence. And it was good to see colleagues and to meet new people. But I wish we had spent more time discussing how we move onwards to a more inclusive theatre.
One of the speakers looked forward to a time when theatre audiences can be shocked and offended rather than the offence being reserved for those on the outside of the building holding the banners. But we can't be seen to be offended even if we are, because we're all part of the same club, and to be offended would mean that we lacked the sophistication to understand the metaphor, and we also assume that whatever happens on stage can't really be about us. I resisted An Inspector Calls for years but when I saw Stephen Daldry's revival I realised that it was so much more than an amdram warhorse, it was a precise and brutal dissection of the hypocrisy of the very people who would have been sitting in the stalls on the first night. But of course, like us, each one of them would have been convinced that the play was about someone else, not them.

Young Voices, Punk Rock, and Warhorse.

2009-06-12T10:49:00.002+01:00

This week I finished the Young Voices project I have been working on for Nottingham Playhouse. The seven plays the children had written were linked together to form a narrative about three children who meet, fall out and play together on a piece of waste ground. The youngest writers were top infants, the oldest top juniors. The writers were invited in for the dress rehearsal which was also watched by Club Encore the Playhouse over 50 group. It was good to see the adults wanting to talk to the kids about their work, and the surprise on the kid's faces when they realised we meant what we said when we told them their work would be performed on a real set, with specially composed music and real live actors. It was a long project, frustrating at times - organising anything involving seven different schools is bound to be fraught - but ultimately, I think we got it right for the kids.
The same night I went to see Garage Band Andy Barrett's new play about a group of 40/50 somethings who try to recover their lost punk youth. I can't remember when I've seen four actors having so much fun.
The one piece of theatre that's stuck with me since I saw it a couple of weeks ago is Warhorse. We nearly went one Sunday afternoon in November when it was on at the National, and they had some returns. I actually had the tickets in my hand when I sensed something wasn't right. I turned round, saw my wife's wobbly lip and handed the tickets back unbought.
We'd recently been to see John Tams, who did the music for the show, and he played a couple of the songs explaining the context so movingly and singing them so beautifully that there was hardly a dry eye in the place when he'd finished - Anne's included. And mine, a bit.
Since that Sunday when we had to return the tickets she read the novel and the play text and finally decided she was ready to go a see a play where horses die.
She was a little watery as she read the programme and we couldn't leave our seats at the interval but she survived and she's now able to talk about it without bringing on an emotional crisis. I don't get easily affected by cheap emotion, but this wasn't cheap emotion so I had tears on my face almost continuously from beginning to end and there are moments it's not safe to dwell on even now, three weeks later.
I keep thinking about it because it is like nothing else I've seen. True the story gets a bit lost, it takes a while to get going, because of the size of the horses the actors are literally left on the periphery most of the time, and it's all a bit shouty, but I bought every minute of it. A friend asked me if the horses spoke and they don't, but they are so eloquent they might as well have voices. I have no idea how they did it but I believed every moment and at the end all I wanted to do was to go and give them a pat and an apple.

Welsh Connections.

2009-06-09T06:07:00.001+01:00

I spent the last couple of days in Cardiff at a small conference on German Theatre for Young People organised by Kevin Lewis of Theatr Iolo. We looked at six plays in all, workshopping four of them and seeing rehearsed readings of the other two. On the surface the overall impression was that German writers see life for the young as very serious business, suicide attempts, death, abuse, loneliness, violence, sexual assault, on the face of it not a lot of laughs. But it did underline how much more freedom there is in the German theatre for writers and young people. Everything we do has to be filtered through the national curriculum and how will it play in a school hall with an audience of year four.
I like visiting Cardiff. I lived there for a short while when I was small and I love the Taff and the arcades and the bay where I was never allowed to go because it was Tiger Bay then and a den of vice and iniquity in my aunt's eyes. But most of all I love Spillers - the oldest record shop in the world. For the last few years it has been hidden away in the building site that seems to have taken over more and more of the city each time I visit. Kevin has taken a pledge to buy his cds nowhere else in his own personal effort to help it survive, so I did my bit with the new Christie Moore and another Spillers t - shirt, very good value at only £6.99 and almost guaranted to get you into conversation with interesting people when and wherever you wear it. In Nottingham we are dominated by HMV and that is not good, If you've got one, preserve your local record store, Amazon is no substitute.

On a roll?

2009-05-14T16:47:00.002+01:00

I've spent the last week reading round an idea for a new piece. I'll be collaborating with a friend and now we've got to the point when we think can take the idea to a meeting with some confidence that we can make it stand up. In other words if we do any more work on it we'll be in deep and there's no point in continuing if it's not going to be commissioned.
I've found it increasingly difficult to work on something that hasn't been commissioned. When I was trying to get out of the slush pile I did it all the time, but then I was only hoping to have someone read it, I never seriously believed that any of my work would get produced, I knew they were calling cards. I got GFA money the other year to develop and write a play and it's not bad, people like it, it's got me work, but it hasn't found a production. I can't bear to put all that graft in if it's not going to be produced. I do write all the time though around ideas I've got to see how they might play out, but that's not the same as committing myself to a complete play with no sign of interest.
Now, because I've got an unexpected gap thanks to Hannover, I am working on an idea I've had knocking around for a time and I keep returning to it and I think each time I do it gets simpler and therefore better. The other day I worked on it morning and afternoon and then when I was on my own in the evening instead of falling in front of the TV for some aimless channel hopping I went back upstairs and carried on. I feel as though I'm on a roll, but it could be an illusion. Again.

Somebody actually reads this!

2009-05-07T14:59:00.005+01:00

In the last couple of days I've met two people who've confessed to reading this blog which was ... nice. I haven't consciously thought about anyone reading what I write which is probably a good thing. I try to make what I write reflect what I'm doing at the time, and of course it is an act of shameless self promotion because what I'm really about is getting people interested in my work. I do know that I'm not as honest as I could be all the time. I don't mean I make things up, but I don't think it would endear me to potential employers if I started sounding off about how this director ruined my work or that literary manager demonstrated the cultural awareness of a flea. Not - I hasten to add - that any directors or literary managers I have had dealings with ever since the dawn of recorded time could possibly fit either description.

I was talking to colleagues about pitching the other night which is surely one of the black arts I have yet to master. If you know and have worked successfully with the person you are pitching you can just about get away with - I've got this idea about three blokes on a mountain, I don't quite know what's going to happen, but it's going to be good - provided under interrogation you're prepared to flesh it out.
Assuming you've requested a meeting with someone you haven't worked with yet there are a number of pitfalls to be avoided. I don't think you should give your idea away in advance of the meeting because it gives them too much time to come up with a mountain of reasons why they don't like it before they've even met you. Too much detail is a bad thing too. So I believe is relying on the stunning one line - Think War and Peace set on a lighthouse helipad. Obviously that is an inadequate example because I'm not going to waste something good, but you get the point. If someone tells you to think something, the natural response is - shan't. The best thing is if , by subtle prompting, you can get the pitchee to pitch your idea back to you the pitcher, so they become totally committed to the idea believing that it was theirs in the first place, but, be warned, it's high risk and I've managed successfully only once. The worst moment is when you see the glazed look descend within seconds of opening your mouth. Then the best thing would for both of you to admit that the meeting will go nowhere, but politeness prevents this and for the next half hour you listen to yourself losing the ability to string together a half decent sentence until the outline of your wonderful idea starts to sound like a badly told joke - There's this man, well, actually there are two men, and two women, but there's only one man at the start, and he's got this wheel barrow.... etc after boring etc.

Just when you think you've got it cracked...

2009-04-28T21:30:00.004+01:00

I knew I shouldn't have got so excited about sorting out the German play. This morning I was talking to a friend about it and I said 'It's all there - all I've got to do is write it.' This afternoon I got 2 e mails. One from my agent in Germany and one from Heidi, my German director, and surprise, surprise, the play's been dumped. A new artistic director has come in and told Heidi that she can't programme the 10/11 season because he hasn't made up his mind if she's still going to be there. What a way to treat your staff...

I knew it felt wrong. I couldn't get a contract, Heidi kept being given different reasons why it was not quite ready, at the same time as being told that everything was fine. And now they've screwed her, poor woman, and for all she knows, having only been appointed about eighteen months ago, she could be out on her ear and looking for a new job. Wonderful. I feel more pissed off for her than I do about the play I've almost written.

I was in Sheffield on Friday last to see the Rotherham kids present their take on The Tempest at the Lyceum and they were brilliant. I'm not sure how many boxes they will have ticked on the national curriculum and I don't imagine what they achieved would have impressed any OFSTED inspector I've ever met, but how many times do you come across a theatre full of ten year olds who know, because they and their teachers weren't afraid to attack the text on their feet and not behind desks, that it doesn't matter how long ago he died, because they love the language and they know Shakespeare is speaking to them? Dump the pointless testing, get rid of SATS, let the teachers out of their straitjackets and let them and the kids rediscover the excitement of learning.

How long does it take you to write a play?

2009-04-23T11:55:00.002+01:00

How long does it take...? It's the most frequently asked question, particularly from novelist friends who all secretly harbour a bitter resentment that we lucky playwrights only have to write a handful of words and our work's done while they are still struggling with chapter four. And when I'm asked about a particular play I can never remember and mutter something about it not taking very long once you've got it all sorted in your head. And I think that's because once I've really got into the piece and produced a first draft - after which the writing starts to become fun - I wipe away all memories of how desperate it was trying to find my way into what I wanted to write. Yesterday afternoon I sensed that I might have found a way into the play I'm writing for Hannover and this morning I think I have.
I have thought this several times before in the last few weeks only to discover that all my great ideas folded under pressure. But this time... This time I feel all I have to do is write it. And when I get to that moment it usually means the first draft is on the way. So how long? From the first thoughts, through the first meeting in Hannover, to now, today, has been eleven months. And I really thing that at last it's there, and now I'm scared that if I rush into the next section I might mess it all up so I'm going to do the only thing possible and leave it until tomorrow afternoon when I get back from the RSC Tempest Playback session with the kids from the Rotherham schools at the Lyceum in Sheffield and go and cut the hedge.
I saw The Tempest again last week because I wanted to see it with a full audience, not in a rehearsal, and it was as brilliant as I thought it was going to be. I also went to the young peoples' version that Kate Hall was running on the Thursday afternoon and that was really good too. I've been avoiding reading the adaptation as I'm doing one for a Nottingham Playhouse co-pro but as I'd finished it and sent it off I felt it was safe to go. I find myself missing loads of stuff, films, novels, plays, if I think there might be some thing in there close to the work I'm doing - terrified of copying someone else without realising it. And that's what I did all the time, for years, when I was trying to write, let myself be influenced by someone else - trouble was I didn't know I was doing it until too late and I'd written a second rate version of someone else's play.
Had a good day on Sunday too down at the Trent Navigation. Matt Marks, who I've worked with a lot, was playing there late afternoon and Andre the percussionist from the Tempest company came down to sit in on drums. I watched the three of them Matt, on keyboards, Steve on bass, and Andre negotiate their way through the first set. The grins became wider and the music more adventurous as they started to play off each other you could feel their pleasure in what they were creating. I wish I could manage more that C F and G.

It's hard to get started.

2009-04-14T18:02:00.002+01:00

I started this morning on the piece I'm writing for Hannover absolutely certain that I knew where it was going. That confidence lasted for about ten minutes. Then fear set in and I retreated into games of spider solitaire. Eventually I forced myself to think of something useful I could do and I went back to the adaptation of The Tempest. I took it into the garden and read it through. One, it didn't seem too bad, and two, the bits that needed changing were immediately obvious. So that took me through to lunchtime. After lunch I went back to Hannover and this time I realised that half of it needed to be cut and I worked on it more or less successfully until about five.
I wish I knew how I arrive at an idea that works. And why it takes so long. And why it doesn't seem to come at the end of any logical thought process that I can identify. I have discovered that two things seem to work. Despair. And a fast approaching deadline. Not an original thought but it gives some comfort.
The last series of The Wire arrived this morning and I haven't watched any of it yet - and that is impressive.

Krazy Kat and The Tempest

2009-04-09T07:55:00.004+01:00

I've set up this blog because the news section of my website has become too cumbersome. It takes forever to load and I can only access it form one computer... to try and explain any further would only emphasise my own inadequacies. Basically it's down to two things, one, my lack of expertise, two, Paul Nix, the kind man who set it up for me is longer with us and without him I don't know how to alter any of the settings. So if you've navigated here from my website that's why.

I spent last week working at Nottingham Playhouse on an adaptation of The Tempest - a co - production with Krazy Kat a company who work with hearing and deaf audiences and actors. I'm only starting to get a taste of the politics of the deaf world and I don't understand all of what I'm learning, but I know that the company doesn't have the approval of all because of their inclusive nature. I took the job because it was unlike anything I've been asked to do. I discovered too that the artistic director, Kinny Gardner, has spent the last twenty years working with Lindsay Kemp whose company left a great impression on me when I first saw them when I was student.

We spent the week playing with the text, different performance styles, signing, design, music and puppets. We ended up with a feeling that all the different aspects of the production were facing in the same direction. My job is too provide a textual framework around which everyone else can work. I got the groundwork into place fairly quickly and now thankfully I've got a couple of weeks to try and shape it into something the company can use.