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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.