Further to my last post, when I was having a little moan about various confusing bits of advice I received, I wanted to clarify that I'm immensely grateful to people who can be arsed to read my random nonsense. I'm just a bit not sure what to do with it all sometimes.
But hell, I need to get a grip. My job is all about frickin' editing. No reason I can't edit my own stuff. Just need a bit of clarity...
Next up, when I have some spare brain, an exclusive review of the latest show in town!
(Not really, it's this, which has been on for a million years, but I'm not going to let that stop me chipping in my two-pennorth. Whatever a pennorth is.)
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
confused
What not to do when you return to writing a script after several months of not writing:
Don't under any circumstances get over-excited by your own brilliance and show your script to other people. And definitely not to more than one person.
And if you are foolish enough to do these things, don't encourage people to give you advice or comments on what you've written, because they will inevitably provide contradictory and downright confusing advice along the lines of:
'I love your main character don't you think you should change the entire narrative arc because the ending doesn't work...'
AND/OR
'I love the narrative arc but why doesn't your character have a more distinctive voice?'
AND/OR
'Your main character has an amazingly distinctive voice but why don't you set it in Grantham?'
(I don't why I said the last one. Clearly it's not real. Who would give you this kind of advice? Unless, perhaps you were writing a script about the early life of Margeret Thatcher and thought it would be thrilling to set it on Mars in a brave stab at a kind of counter-historical/fantasy genre. In which case it might be sensible advice.)
So when you sensibly haven't shown your script to anyone, and haven't had the remains of your brain power utterly scrambled by bucket loads of advice, you presumably won't feel confused and unsure and generally a bit stuck about where to go next.
I imagine.
Don't under any circumstances get over-excited by your own brilliance and show your script to other people. And definitely not to more than one person.
And if you are foolish enough to do these things, don't encourage people to give you advice or comments on what you've written, because they will inevitably provide contradictory and downright confusing advice along the lines of:
'I love your main character don't you think you should change the entire narrative arc because the ending doesn't work...'
AND/OR
'I love the narrative arc but why doesn't your character have a more distinctive voice?'
AND/OR
'Your main character has an amazingly distinctive voice but why don't you set it in Grantham?'
(I don't why I said the last one. Clearly it's not real. Who would give you this kind of advice? Unless, perhaps you were writing a script about the early life of Margeret Thatcher and thought it would be thrilling to set it on Mars in a brave stab at a kind of counter-historical/fantasy genre. In which case it might be sensible advice.)
So when you sensibly haven't shown your script to anyone, and haven't had the remains of your brain power utterly scrambled by bucket loads of advice, you presumably won't feel confused and unsure and generally a bit stuck about where to go next.
I imagine.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Comedians by Trevor Griffiths
Comedians was written in 1975, but it's a very timely revival, what with the recent Jimmy Carr/Frankie Boyle nonsense.
It's a play that looks at the purpose of comedy and what the things we laugh at say about us. For a comedian, what is the real cost of going for a cheap laugh?
It's brilliantly structured over the course of an evening: firstly, the nightclass where a number of aspriring comedians prepare for their big break - a showcase at a local club attended by a talent scout/agent. Then, the routines themselves, then the post-mortem of how it all went.
There's one pretty compelling reason to see this production, namely the cast, which includes Matthew Kelly, Mark Benton and Reece Shearsmith (ex League of Gentleman, total genius, and disturbingly attractive in full 70s get-up, including greasy moustache. I digress.)
I don't know if Keith Allen is a deeply unpleasant individual or an exceptional actor, but he's certainly very convincing as the arsehole agent.
I was going to have a whinge about how David Dawson hadn't had enough recognition for his frankly amazing performance as Gethin, but then I read the reviews properly and it turns out everyone thought he was great, not just me. So that's alright then.
This is an intelligent, thoughtful production that generates some decent laughs along side some genuinely uncomfortable moments as racist jokes of (hopefully) yesteryear make the audience wince.
After the mystifyingly well-received Punk Rock at the same theatre, this is a play that has something to say, and says it well.
This is the latest in my continuing series of reviews that go up just as shows are about to finish, but if you can get tickets for the last week of the production, it's well worth seeing.
It's a play that looks at the purpose of comedy and what the things we laugh at say about us. For a comedian, what is the real cost of going for a cheap laugh?
It's brilliantly structured over the course of an evening: firstly, the nightclass where a number of aspriring comedians prepare for their big break - a showcase at a local club attended by a talent scout/agent. Then, the routines themselves, then the post-mortem of how it all went.
There's one pretty compelling reason to see this production, namely the cast, which includes Matthew Kelly, Mark Benton and Reece Shearsmith (ex League of Gentleman, total genius, and disturbingly attractive in full 70s get-up, including greasy moustache. I digress.)
I don't know if Keith Allen is a deeply unpleasant individual or an exceptional actor, but he's certainly very convincing as the arsehole agent.
I was going to have a whinge about how David Dawson hadn't had enough recognition for his frankly amazing performance as Gethin, but then I read the reviews properly and it turns out everyone thought he was great, not just me. So that's alright then.
This is an intelligent, thoughtful production that generates some decent laughs along side some genuinely uncomfortable moments as racist jokes of (hopefully) yesteryear make the audience wince.
After the mystifyingly well-received Punk Rock at the same theatre, this is a play that has something to say, and says it well.
This is the latest in my continuing series of reviews that go up just as shows are about to finish, but if you can get tickets for the last week of the production, it's well worth seeing.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
shuffle
Sometimes I like to do a spot of fortune-telling via my ipod nano. It's pretty simple: as I sit barely awake on the bus on the way to work, I hit the shuffle option, and decide what the day will be like depending on the title of the song that comes up.
It's a fairly inexact approach to predicting the way the day's going to go, but it amuses me.
One memborable morning, the signs weren't looking good. This is what came up:
Welcome home, Loser (Broken Family Band).
Not great. Sod it, I thought, I'll skip, and see if it gets better.
Snakes in the Grass (Essex Green).
Still not great. Skip!
I see a Darkness (Bonnie Prince Billie)
Oh, for fuck's sake...
I decided to give it one more shot. Yes, my music taste tends to the downbeat, but surely, I'd exhausted all the titles on my ipod that portended doom and gloom. Surely.
The fourth song that came up was a very nice tune by Roddy Woomble, off of Idlewild. The title came up:
As still as I watch...
Oh well, I thought, that's alright. Pretty harmless. Then the title continued scrolling across the screen.
...your grave.
As still as I watch your grave.
Brilliant, just brilliant.
Of course, when the day turned out to be only averagely bad, it felt like a real result. Yay (ish).
It's a fairly inexact approach to predicting the way the day's going to go, but it amuses me.
One memborable morning, the signs weren't looking good. This is what came up:
Welcome home, Loser (Broken Family Band).
Not great. Sod it, I thought, I'll skip, and see if it gets better.
Snakes in the Grass (Essex Green).
Still not great. Skip!
I see a Darkness (Bonnie Prince Billie)
Oh, for fuck's sake...
I decided to give it one more shot. Yes, my music taste tends to the downbeat, but surely, I'd exhausted all the titles on my ipod that portended doom and gloom. Surely.
The fourth song that came up was a very nice tune by Roddy Woomble, off of Idlewild. The title came up:
As still as I watch...
Oh well, I thought, that's alright. Pretty harmless. Then the title continued scrolling across the screen.
...your grave.
As still as I watch your grave.
Brilliant, just brilliant.
Of course, when the day turned out to be only averagely bad, it felt like a real result. Yay (ish).
Saturday, 10 October 2009
commitment, lack of
There are people, apparently, who sit down to do a task and do it. They plan it, and then they start at the start, and they keep going until they finish.
I think this is true. It sounds a bit like an urban myth to me. But apparently it happens.
I sit down to write something. And if I'm lucky, and I have a lot of ideas they all spill out in a big mess on the page and I get really excited.
This can continue for several weeks.
And then I look at it all, gathered up, and become overwhelmed at the thought of sorting it all out, and not really having any big purpose or reason to keep going.
And so I start something else.
And I end up with 5 beginnings of potentially interesting stuff that I'm not really sure of what I'm going to do with.
Which is more or less where I'm at right now.
I think this is true. It sounds a bit like an urban myth to me. But apparently it happens.
I sit down to write something. And if I'm lucky, and I have a lot of ideas they all spill out in a big mess on the page and I get really excited.
This can continue for several weeks.
And then I look at it all, gathered up, and become overwhelmed at the thought of sorting it all out, and not really having any big purpose or reason to keep going.
And so I start something else.
And I end up with 5 beginnings of potentially interesting stuff that I'm not really sure of what I'm going to do with.
Which is more or less where I'm at right now.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Punk rock
I think Simon Stephens may be stalking me. Every flipping time I go out, there he is.
Ok, to be fair, it is just the times I go to the theatre.
...and see plays that are written by him.
Is it just coincidence or do playwrights all go to every performance of their stuff?
Whatever the answer, it does make it sodding hard to fully critique the play in the bar afterwards with when the tall, affable writer is lolloping around and hugging the cast and generally popping up just at the point you start to loudly discuss all the bits you didn't like.
Now, at Pornography, this wasn't so much of an issue. Had Mr Stephens troubled himself to listen in, he would have heard (almost) nothing but glowing praise and positive comments and gone away quite contented, in the unlikely event he cares what random, picky punters think.
At Punk Rock, however... not so much.
Now, I went on the Lyric website, and apparently the play 'expose[s] the violence simmering under the surface of success'. This is news to me. It's also pretty telling that I had to go and check what the play is saying its supposed to be about because it's not exactly clear from watching it.
Here's what I can tell you: Punk Rock is set in the library of a fee-paying school in the north-west. New girl Lily arrives from Cambridge. Kids hang out. Drama doesn't really ensue. Not for the first hour at least.
A cursory glance at the publicity reveals that this is a play about teenage violence, so I don't think I'm giving too much away by saying it all ends in a hail of bullets. So the first 20 minutes is spent as a kind of exercise in who will do it:
The nervy eloquent one?
The bullied maths geek?
The outwardly confident new girl with self-harm tendencies?
Or one of the other ones.
Frankly, it's hard to care.
It all builds towards the violence with a minimal amount of drama, or tension, or action of any sort. Nervy boy asks new girl out. She's already shagging the sporty one. Twatty bloke is twatty. Maths geek has slightly pointless speech about, well, the pointlessness of it all. Someone spits in someone's face.
I don't know if I caught an off night, but the whole thing felt flat.
There are some decent things about it. The dialogue is sharp, if oddly timeless. Apart from the odd chav'n'climate change references, this could be set at any point in the last 40 years.
Some of the performances are great. Tom Sturridge seems to be getting a lot of love in the reviews, but I found his wandering accent far too distracting to fully appreciate his work. But I did like Katie West and Harry McEntire who gave unshowy performances in difficult roles.
And, er, the set was very atmospheric.
(I think the point at which you start praising the set is probably a barrel-scraping moment for positive things to say).
But the fundamental problem with the whole thing was the complete lack of a point. There was no believable build-up to the act of violence. And in an odd coda, the reasons variously tossed at the audience without any discernible commitment ranged from mental illness to celebrity culture to just because.
It wouldn't be so bad, except one of the characters speechified in a very mouthpiece way about how 99 per cent of the yoof are absolutely fine, it just never gets noticed.
If this is what the playwright really thinks, then I wonder why he decided to write a play where one of the other one per cent shoots a load of people at the end.
But maybe that's just me.
Ok, to be fair, it is just the times I go to the theatre.
...and see plays that are written by him.
Is it just coincidence or do playwrights all go to every performance of their stuff?
Whatever the answer, it does make it sodding hard to fully critique the play in the bar afterwards with when the tall, affable writer is lolloping around and hugging the cast and generally popping up just at the point you start to loudly discuss all the bits you didn't like.
Now, at Pornography, this wasn't so much of an issue. Had Mr Stephens troubled himself to listen in, he would have heard (almost) nothing but glowing praise and positive comments and gone away quite contented, in the unlikely event he cares what random, picky punters think.
At Punk Rock, however... not so much.
Now, I went on the Lyric website, and apparently the play 'expose[s] the violence simmering under the surface of success'. This is news to me. It's also pretty telling that I had to go and check what the play is saying its supposed to be about because it's not exactly clear from watching it.
Here's what I can tell you: Punk Rock is set in the library of a fee-paying school in the north-west. New girl Lily arrives from Cambridge. Kids hang out. Drama doesn't really ensue. Not for the first hour at least.
A cursory glance at the publicity reveals that this is a play about teenage violence, so I don't think I'm giving too much away by saying it all ends in a hail of bullets. So the first 20 minutes is spent as a kind of exercise in who will do it:
The nervy eloquent one?
The bullied maths geek?
The outwardly confident new girl with self-harm tendencies?
Or one of the other ones.
Frankly, it's hard to care.
It all builds towards the violence with a minimal amount of drama, or tension, or action of any sort. Nervy boy asks new girl out. She's already shagging the sporty one. Twatty bloke is twatty. Maths geek has slightly pointless speech about, well, the pointlessness of it all. Someone spits in someone's face.
I don't know if I caught an off night, but the whole thing felt flat.
There are some decent things about it. The dialogue is sharp, if oddly timeless. Apart from the odd chav'n'climate change references, this could be set at any point in the last 40 years.
Some of the performances are great. Tom Sturridge seems to be getting a lot of love in the reviews, but I found his wandering accent far too distracting to fully appreciate his work. But I did like Katie West and Harry McEntire who gave unshowy performances in difficult roles.
And, er, the set was very atmospheric.
(I think the point at which you start praising the set is probably a barrel-scraping moment for positive things to say).
But the fundamental problem with the whole thing was the complete lack of a point. There was no believable build-up to the act of violence. And in an odd coda, the reasons variously tossed at the audience without any discernible commitment ranged from mental illness to celebrity culture to just because.
It wouldn't be so bad, except one of the characters speechified in a very mouthpiece way about how 99 per cent of the yoof are absolutely fine, it just never gets noticed.
If this is what the playwright really thinks, then I wonder why he decided to write a play where one of the other one per cent shoots a load of people at the end.
But maybe that's just me.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
please please please let me get what I want
Something else to add to the list of things I'm learning about myself through the medium of trying to be a writer: if I can leverage in a gratituous Smiths reference in, I will.
(If I can leverage in a Belle and Sebastian reference, I'm flipping ecstatic. But it's a bit more challenging).
And so, with crushing predictability, I'm giving in to the inevitable and rewriting some serious heartfelt words and reworking it all as a laugh every few minutes (I hope) comedy. Honestly, this is an absolutely last ditch attempt to make use of all these sodding scenes I wrote and liked, and tried to make into a play and failed entirely.
So we'll see if it works, or if this writing quite simply belongs down the dumper (copyright Smash Hits circa 1992).
And with a startling lack of imagination, I've been listening to the Smiths as I edit, and so I'm calling it after one of my favourite songs they do.
The fact that I'm sitting in on a Friday evening writing and listening to the Smiths probably tells you everything you need to know about the chances of me ever please please please getting what I want.
But that's another story.
(If I can leverage in a Belle and Sebastian reference, I'm flipping ecstatic. But it's a bit more challenging).
And so, with crushing predictability, I'm giving in to the inevitable and rewriting some serious heartfelt words and reworking it all as a laugh every few minutes (I hope) comedy. Honestly, this is an absolutely last ditch attempt to make use of all these sodding scenes I wrote and liked, and tried to make into a play and failed entirely.
So we'll see if it works, or if this writing quite simply belongs down the dumper (copyright Smash Hits circa 1992).
And with a startling lack of imagination, I've been listening to the Smiths as I edit, and so I'm calling it after one of my favourite songs they do.
The fact that I'm sitting in on a Friday evening writing and listening to the Smiths probably tells you everything you need to know about the chances of me ever please please please getting what I want.
But that's another story.
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