Crossed Purposes

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.

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.

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.