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!
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