Presentation

When I was a teenager I had a brief foray into amateur dramatics. In the heady days of fearless youth, I got up on a stage, and acted. (Badly, but enthusiastically.)

I even sang a bit. (In musicals. Because I was supposed to. Not just randomly, in the middle of Pinter of something.)

My trick, as I recall, was to leave my glasses off, so I couldn't see the audience. And yes, yes, I occasionally bumped into a table, or went off the wrong way, but that was basically the only way I could do it.

I'm giving a presentation tomorrow, as part of a postgraduate course. I'm incredibly nervous. It's not as bad as acting. I don't have to ask what my motivation is, or remember any lines. But it's still a but scary.

Unfortunately tomorrow I do have to wear my glasses or I won't be able to see the Powerpoint slides. So cross fingers for a sympathetic audience...

Chicken Soup with Barley

Samantha Spiro and Danny Webb in the Royal Court production.

Does plot or character drive theatre?

In Arnold Wesker's Chicken Soup with Barley, the answer, regrettably, is neither.

The play presents the disintegration of a family - the Kahns - in line with the disintegration of an ideology - communism. It's neatly structured in three acts, set in 1936, 1946 and 1956. The last year coincides with the violent repression of the Hungary by the Soviet Union, and the certainty that even post-Stalin, communism is a nasty, repressive regime.

But still, Sarah Kahn, matriarch as misguided hero, or something, stubbornly clings to the ideology of her youth, as all others abandon it.

It all has the potential to be fascinating. The mix of the personal and political. The strong female character at the heart of the action. But it just doesn't work.

The lack of action is a real problem. This is a political play that seemingly aspires to be a kitchen sink drama. Most of the first act consists of people sitting around a table talking about all the exciting things that are happening offstage (the battle of Cable St, an event which should be ripe for drama if ever there was one...)

Heck, I don't know if I've just been spoilt by the likes of Rupert Goold, who throw everything at the audience to create a frenzy of sound and action and entertainment. But honestly, in the protracted silence where the main character clears the table for 5 minutes for NO DRAMATIC REASON whatsover, I just felt aggrieved. That's my precious bloody time the director is wasting with this attempt to, um, um no - I can't even speculate what the director is attempting.

The characters are under-developed and unbelievable. It's almost impossible to like or care about them. Not through any fault of the actors I should add. Samatha Spiro does a great job in the central role of Sarah Kahn, but she's good despite the production, not because of it.

I get the sense that this is what (bad) theatre was like in the olden days. Solid, indigestible, with a vague promise of being good for you in some way that it doesn't really deliver on.

I should point out that my two theatre going companions were almost entirely in agreement. But none of us are remotely in tune with the critical consensus is that it's brilliant. I don't know why the critics think this. But they're wrong.

hello again

This is what I did: I resigned from my job and went to India. And I sort of thought about writing a big serious play about Important Things while I was there. But instead what I mainly did was to see lots of places and do lots of interesting things. And every day I woke up and gave thanks that I had escaped sitting in an office all day, burning through my confidence reserves at a dangerous rate and quietly going mad.

India was often challenging but endlessly fascinating. And out of it I wrote something new. I wonder if you can guess whether it was

a) a hard-hitting piece about poverty and globalisation
b) an experimental piece based around slums
c) a ludicrous comedy based around a Mills and Boon romantic novel.

Yeah. It was the Mills and Boon one. No discernable India references whatsoever. No political agenda. Just some funny stuff about romantic heroes wearing ruffles. Inspiration at its randomest...

This month I am mainly being distracted by

Matters of the heart: turns out I do have a heart! I wasn't sure for a while. Complicated, as always. These things always are. Especially as it turns out I'm attracted to the kind of lovely arty men who are SO MUCH fun to be with and SO UNLIKELY to be remotely sane and grounded.

All of which is pretty entertaining in any case. But not leaving me a lot of spare energy for writing. All my creative skill is being used up in emailing long and heartfelt and funny missives (this is a long distance relationship, soon to be internationally long distance because obviously I don't do things in any kind of simple way, not me...)

So the writing projects are buggered. Although you could argue that there is no finer writing project to be involved with than this. Playwriting will have to wait, then, for now...

hello lamppost

I met someone interesting a few weeks ago. I don't really know how I feel about this person except it's not like on rubbish dates where I find myself telling my face to look interested in whatever they're saying, cos I'm busy trying to be someone else. It's not like that at all. Beyond that I don't know.

I am being a complete woman about the whole thing by which I mean telling 50 people a day about the latest unexciting updates on the whole scenario. (I am in quite a tedious phase, I can't deny it. Like when someone says 'I'm thinking of moving house' or some such and I say 'oh that's interesting, this bloke I like lives in a house.')

I am also frantically scanning every text and email for every piece of evidence to show that this is great and totally going to work out or this is all rubbish and a total disaster, delete as applicable according to mood.

Do men do all this? I doubt it.

Sigh. We shall see...

Rehearsal

I sat in on my first ever proper rehearsal for something I've written tonight. It was very exciting. There were proper actorly things going on about motivation, and backstories and all sorts. I felt a bit unsure of my role, to be honest. I mainly sat there, nodding wisely whenever the actors said anything about their characters, which was mostly what I had in mind, with occasional flights of fancy on their part. This is fine, to be fair. The important stuff is in the script. I'm quite happy for others to fill in the gaps. That kind of feels like the point.

Sometimes they asked me things about the setting, and I had to admit that I hadn't fully defined it. Afterwards I thought I should have said something clever about it being deliberately vague in order to represent the essential homogenity of modern workplace. I didn't think of it in the moment though, I just gibbered a bit and looked embarrassed. This is why I'm a writer, not an actor.

Actors intimidate me slightly, if truth be told. They're often very funny and entertaining and have big expressive personalities which I sort of envy and admire. I'd like to think that I retain an air of mystique or some such. In fact I often just feel awkward and uninteresting in comparison. The funny stuff goes in the scripts. (I hope).

This time next week it will all be over. I'm cautiously optimistic. I've had a few things put on now, so I'm less willing to judge from the first readthrough. It will depend on how things develop at rehearsals (I won't be going to them all). And it will depend on the venue and the audience on the night. This is what makes it scary. This is what makes it so flipping EXCITING...

Hurrah!

Not one, not two but three productions in the offing! By which I mean one fully staged, and two rehearsed readings of short scripts I have written...

'Tis amazing, and very gratifying, and exactly like that bus metaphor (simile?) which it would be embarrassingly cliched to use, thinking of myself as a writer as I do...

(I didn't experience the truth of the bus metaphor till I moved to London. In other parts of Britain, the scenario would be, 'you wait ages for a bus to come along, but it doesn't ever arrive, because of cuts to the service due to deregulation, privatisation etc)

Not sure how I've made this mainly about buses, but anyway, the Thailand opus and the scary attempt at writing something not a comedy are both getting outings and for this I am glad.

More soon, sleep beckons...