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.

Johanna in Croatia.

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.

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.

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.