I'm not sure what to say...

It's fairly rare for me to have nothing to say. And it's not that there's nothing on my mind (the opposite is true), but I'm not quite sure how much more there is for me to say.

On Saturday, we added a few lights to the play and almost instantaneously it switched from being 'A Play That We're Rehearsing' to 'A Proper Production'. The set is also looking wicked, looks like a proper little home. Tonight we had some fuller lights and had the first run in complete costume. The costumes and make up look great but - oh. my. god. - just wait until you see Act 2's costumes; they'll blow you away!! Look out for one particular character (I shan't say who) - their costume looks superb.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's kinda reached a point where everything is slotting into place. We're in the position now where it's just lots of little things rather than anything too major - voices need to be a little louder here, lights need to fade slower there, blood needs to be....... etc. Sure I could list you all the things that need to be looked at, but then they're all relatively trivial. The performances are fantastic, the set looks brilliant and I just know that the cast and crew are going to do the script justice.

This isn't me signing off just yet (I'm hoping to update the blog after each performance this week) but in terms of preparing a production I don't think there's much more for me to say. If you have any specific queries then let me know but I guess the next time you hear from me will be when I tell you how the shows have gone.

And I can't end without telling you the ticket sale news: Thursday has sold about 20, Friday only has 6 tickets left and Saturday is SOLD OUT! A. Maze. Ing.

So I hope to welcome you along later this week; otherwise, keep an eye open for when I tell you all about how each night goes. Can't believe it's all happening now. It's time for the real thing...

(Slightly) Extended Run!

Tiny bit of exciting news - the decision has been made to extend the small run for The Family from two nights to three! This means that opening night will be Thursday 8th October 2009 at 7.45pm. The feeling is that we may be able to generate enough interest in the play to attract a wider audience. Ticket reservations haven't opened yet but details will be posted on here once confirmed.

More casting news!

What a brilliant start to the day!

I am very pleased to announce that this morning Mandy Humphrey agreed to join the cast of 'The Family' as Beth, the sister of main character Peter. Mandy will playing a pivotal role in the play and I'm absolutely delighted that I shall be working with her. You may have seen Mandy in the Archway Theatre productions of 'The Danny Crowe Show', 'The Crucible' and, most recently, as Dolly West in 'Dolly West's Kitchen'.

This now means there is only part to be filled: the Soldier. But it also means that we can start rehearsals on Saturday 1st August - if I have the Soldier by then that'd be great, but if not then we can make a start and it'll give me an extra week to find an actor.

Good times.

Casting announcement

I am extremely pleased to announce two confirmed cast members for 'The Family'.

Yesterday afternoon I was being a bit cryptic regarding the casting of Emma as I wanted to ensure that the unsuccessful candidates had been informed. Ella Sowton read the part beautifully in Monday's audition and, having seen her brilliant portrayal of Nancy from 'Oliver Twist' in Archway Theatre's Young Adults Performance 'Twisted Tales', I know she'll be a fantastic addition to the cast. I'd like to thank Katie Dunbar and Emma Ladd for auditioning for this role and hope that I am able to work with these talented actresses in the future.

I'm also chuffed to bits to announce that the role of the lead character Peter has been accepted by none other than Dan Woods. I choreographed Dan in 'Privates on Parade' back in 2007 and have been hoping to work with him again ever since. In fact, whilst writing 'The Family', Dan was the first person that sprung to mind to play the part. He's also got a part in the forthcoming 'Dick Barton' so there'll be plenty of opportunity to see him perform at Archway this autumn...!

Two down, two to go... There should be more news later this week - keep 'em peeled!

It's audition time!!

I ended the last post on a cliffhanger about the auditions and, before I knew it, the evening of auditions was upon us!

Last night (Monday 20 July 2009) in the Archway Theatre Bar, a small group of us had a bit of a readthrough of the first act of the play. One of the male actors had called me earlier in the day to say he'd been called in to cover a shift at work and I shall be meeting with him on Thursday instead. Unfortunately, he would have been the only other male in attendance. Luckily, Emma Ladd had brought along her friend Phil who read all of Peter's lines - allowing me to be able to sit back and listen to the girls do their thang...!

For the role of Beth we had two auditionees: Roz Ingrams from the Young Adults Workshop, and Mandy Humphrey from the main theatre. I also asked Emma Ladd to read for her as well - more on that later... For the role of Emma I had three auditionees: Katie Dunbar and Ella Sowton from Young Adults, and Emma Ladd. In all honesty, I had been expecting a few more faces to show up - but that's the nature of the beast...! I'd already had emails and texts from various male and female potentials to say they'd not be auditioning - and they all seemed genuine in their liking of the play - but, sadly, due to time/work/commitments, they would be able to commit to the play. But I don't begrudge them at all - much better to bow out very early on than to dive in and find it becomes too much.

So we went through scenes 1, 3, 4 and 6 of the play (i.e. the first act minus the scenes between Peter and Soldier) with the girls taking it in turns to read. Very quickly I knew who I wanted to play Emma. Because I haven't told the unsuccessful auditionees their fate I shan't publicise on here just yet who has been cast - but I am happy to announce that I have a quarter of my cast confirmed! Hoorah!

For the part of Beth, Mandy Humphrey has asked for a little time to work out if she'd be able to commit to it, and I've also asked Emma Ladd if she'd reconsider playing the part (although she feels that learning the lines and the emotional weight of the character may prove too much - entirely understandable) andshe is going to take a couple of days to do so.

I'm hoping to be able to confirm the castings for Peter, Beth and Emma later this week, with Soldier shortly afterwards - watch this space!

Also, the first rehearsal has been booked for the Studio on Saturday 1st August. This hopefully also means that I'll be updating the blog on a weekly basis - it's all becoming real now...!!

The Second Workshop

Has it really been that long since my last post? Oh dear, I knew wouldn't be very at this 'regular' thing!! On the assumption that at least one person is reading this, apologies for keeping you waiting!

When I started writing this blog I wanted to make sure I was honest and upfront about the whole writing-workshop-performance process and that's exactly what I'm going to do - especially about the second workshop...

The Second Workshop
...was a very different experience to the first workshop. The first one had a real air and buzz of excitement - a brand new never-before read script was about to be explored and the day as a whole was very positive with a lot of encouragement for me as a writer and for the play in it's own right.

That isn't to say I didn't receive praise and encouragement in the second workshop - because I did, and I'm incredibly grateful to those that turned up and supported the play. However, the second workshop was a lot more critical of the text. I don't want to sound like I only want praise for my work - far from it; the only way I can grow as a writer is to be criticised, questioned and pushed on my decisions. But compared to the first workshop it was a sharp sudden shock.

Some points raised were valid - a character called 'Josh' has had his name dropped as it's pretty hard to say when used in the sentences it was placed in (e.g. "Josh just disappeared..."); the indication of wealth from the description of the cooker needed revising. Then there were other opinion-based criticisms, and the questions, and the nit-picking. Frankly, at the time it just felt like an onslaught, and I could feel the patches appearing in the pits of my t-shirt with the shame/embarrassment/pressure.

But in hindsight I learned two valuable lessons:
1. Even the best work has it's flaws and it sometimes takes other people to point them out before you spot them, and
2. If they didn't think the play was worth it then they wouldn't have turned up in the first place!!

One interesting point was that the group didn't realise it was a civil war and thought Peter had returned from abroad. This has meant a few clarifications and additional dialogue early in the first act but hopefully it should work.

The best outcome was that the play, based on the draft seen at the workshop, has been approved for performance. Hoorah! I'm going to keep rewriting and working on the text throughout the rehearsals as I'm sure things will need to change but we'll see...!

More to come later about 'Auditions' - check back this evening!

The original inspiration

I've realised that I haven't yet uploaded the painting that originally inspired The Family - and here it is.

Painted by Paula Rego, The Family tells the story of a father returning home and being manhandled by the females in his family. The narrative is ambiguous with the viewer unsure if the man is being helped or hurt.

Another work by Rego, Girl Lifting Up her Skirt to a Dog, shows a young girl doing precisely as the title suggests and implies that she is exploring her sexual boundaries at a young age.The two paintings' narratives have strongly informed the play's story and this should be evident in the final work.

The First Workshop

First off - crikey, over a month since my last post?!

And back to business... Today was my first opportunity to get 'The Family' into a public domain. I was extremely grateful to have a bunch of actors come along to a workshop I held with the intention to explore the play in a bit more depth. My original intention was for a day something along the following lines: read-through the script en masse; in groups and pairs, read a couple of key scenes again and re-improvise the scene; eat; spotlight interviews on the two main characters - Peter and Beth. And that's basically what I got, but with a few very interesting deviations...

I found the read-through absolutely fascinating - this was the very first time my characters had voices, the first time they became more than typed words on a page. I think I managed to contain my excitement... As the read-through went on, I found myself concentrating on how the words were read - for example, Peter W read what I originally envisaged as a very angry section of text, quite softly and calmly and, ultimately, quite beautifully. Like I say - fascinating! And then there were the cringing moments - the realisation that whenever Peter starts to reminisce, he begins by saying "I remember..."; or when Soldier tells Peter that he wants his skins or that he is coming - it sounded a bit more gay than creepy (that being said, we were all sat round so on it's feet it may have an entirely different feel). Interesting, exciting and very useful.

I then intended to launch straight into improv - two pairs working on the opening scene, one trio doing the last scene of Act One. I explained what I wanted, asked if there were any questions and it came: "Yeah, erm... What's it about?" Of course! In my excitement I'd entirely failed to ask for their opinions, their thoughts, their objections and their questions!! Oops!!! So I explained the background of my initial ideas of the play (inspired by The Family by Paula Rego) and how it evolved into the 46 pages sitting in front of them. I also explained that I'd read a couple of interesing news articles this week that I thought could direct and justify Beth's actions a lot more. My answers appeared to satisfy everyone and the improv began.......

Now, I haven't done improv for quite a few years and, judging by the fear in a few people's faces, neither had the actors. But they were great, really getting stuck in to the task. Quite naturally they stuck to the text for a while (there's direction and dialogue there for them - of course they'd be drawn to it!) but as time went on it was apparent that they were growing in confidence and felt able to lose their inhabitions. They took on the task well and seemed to have an understanding of the characters. A couple of things came out that I really liked, a few one liners here or there that spoke volumes about the characters ("You silly little girl" immediately springs to mind). One pair had an almost bickering brother-sister relationship which I'll almost certainly add to the opening scene - they felt natural together and, whilst their behaviour at times may not necessarily be appropriate, you could see their love for one another. I had my trusty camcorder on hand to film the lot so I shall rewatch in the coming days and see what I can take from their work.

The intention for the afternoon was to generate fresh material for parts of the text - first off, I needed to hear more about Beth's relationship with her father and was keen to see how the actors saw her and what she had been through. I also knew I wanted another 'war story' for Peter and pretty much asked them to come up with one, keeping in mind the landscape the play had already created. This time, the two groups took very different approaches - one dived straight in and started interviewing each other; the other group sat down and began to map out a background for Beth, making notes of their decisions about her to be used. And it was this that pricked my interest - I could tell that they each had very differing opinions and thoughts about Beth, her past, her relationships, and were debating about the route they should go in. I reacted to this and happily dropped the improv and asked both groups to focus on creating character profiles.

I went between groups, spending five or ten minutes with each, just listening - unless directly asked a question, I just nodded or smiled and intentionally remained as vague as possible. And I got so much more material from this than any improv could ever create!! They asked the questions I'd already asked myself but, more importantly, created questions that I'd never dreamt of asking. They began to question the reality of what Beth had told her brother; discussed how Peter's experiences of war had made him the man he was; interrogated the reasons for both characters' actions. After about 45 minutes of discussions I sat both groups round the table and asked them to relay their findings to the other group. This, in turn, raised more questions and will without a doubt help me write more material. The discussion ran on to the point of running out of tape in the camcorder - talking for nearly an hour! I'm going to watch the tape back tomorrow and my next post will be about these discussions...

Ultimately, an extremely valuable day for me. I'd like to thank all the actors that attended today for everything they gave me - in no particular order: Jo Ord, Jo Pickering, Sam Mansi, Emma Ladd, Peter Westmacott, Peter Russell, Stuart Martin, and Jo O's writer friend 'Gerard' for popping by for an hour or so too. They gave me the voices I needed to hear and raised the questions I needed asked. I'll be honest - I was shitting it a little bit: we were going to spend the day dealing with this thing I'd written and I had no idea if it was any good. But I've come away so incredibly encouraged and very excited about what is still to come. So thanks again - you've made my day! :-)

What a week!

Quite a few developments this week - I finally completed a full first draft of the script (more on that in a sec), a production page has been created on the Archway Theatre website, and I've got the ball rolling on workshop dates and actors.

So the full first draft has been done and delivered to a few interested parties and I'm awaiting their feedback. My view? It's a loooong way from being ready! But that's not necessarily a bad thing - at least I'm able to see that it needs work and know how I'll do so. I've spent a fair bit of time re-writing sections of the first act, so that's shaping up quite nicely. The second act, however, was very much 'bashed out'. My thinking for this was simple - although the rep committee need to approve the script, I've got a few months to do so. For me, it's better to get the story out and on paper so that I know the general shape, and then go back, rewrite, edit etc. On top of that, I'm going to hold at least one workshop with some actors to tear the whole thing apart, right down to the bare bones of it, to really test the text. Who knows, maybe it'll evolve into something else entirely - we'll soon see...

Beth's story?

So I've had some pretty great news today - the rep committee have agreed that publicity can begin for the play. Just means I need to finish writing the damn thing! As it stands now, Act 1 is six scenes and 29 pages long; Act 2 has three out of four scenes written and is only 12 pages long - eek. But I'm not too worried, I'm expecting the final scene to be the lengthiest but I reckon I'll gain a lot of material from the workshops with the actors.

Speaking of which, I had a quick drink with Emma this evening who I've worked with briefly before. As a woman she read the play differently and had an interesting perspective on the characters. Interestingly, she felt the male characters were more well rounded but Beth just comes across as a bit of a bitch. It is possible that the actress that plays Beth will need to work hard to bring through her sensitivities. However, she does go from quite nice to very nasty in a very short space of time so I think I'm going to go back and add a bit of backstory for Beth.

I also need to establish what makes Peter stay at the house - why doesn't he just up and leave; what's keeping him there? What drives the magnetism between Beth and Peter?

It's going to take some fiddling around with the whole thing but this is why I'm going to workshop the play - it's highly likely that the actors will be able add to the characters and story (and probably help remove things too) that I'm not too worried at this stage.

Plan? Finish a complete draft in the next fortnight and workshop within a month. Easy, eh? (Yes, you're right - those are indeed my Famous Last Words.....!!)

The Coma and the shadows

Finished reading 'The Coma' by Alex Garland. Very interesting book with some really clever ideas about perception of reality and dream-like states - both of which are themes that 'The Family' tries to explore...

I'll read you the blurb from the inside cover: "A young man is brutally assaulted late at night on an Underground train by a gang of thugs. Beaten unconscious, he lies for days in a hospital bed - but appears to make a full recovery. On discharge from hospital, Carl picks up the threads of his daily life, visiting friends, seeing his girlfriend - until he starts to notice strange leaps in his perception of time, distortions in his experience. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, or might he be terribly mistaken? So begins a dark psychological drama that raises profound questions about the boundary between the real and the imagined."

The book's more surreal moments contain an essence of something I'm trying to capture in the play. Whilst reading it I kept thinking how good it would be as a short film - and this raised an interesting question for me: 'does my writing contain an element of screenwriting as opposed to/well as playwriting?' It would be fair to say that I have more experience of watching film and TV and studying the quality of words. It's no secret that I'm a huge Doctor Who fan - at times when watching it I hear specific lines that leap out: often fantastic, sometimes cringing. But there's something magical about what is written for that show - perhaps that is a feature of writing for sci-fi? But I've noticed a similar trait in my writing - specific lines that leap off the page (hopefully not into the cringe category!).

On the other hand, ITV's Whitechapel debuted Monday night and was, without a doubt, brilliant. The performances were excellent and the writing superb - but I don't remember any of the lines. But then does that matter? Does remembering a line mean it's good? Or does it stand out for another, more negative reason?

In other news, I've had some flashes of inspiration for the final scene of the play. Shadows will play a part so need to go back into the first act and add some hints to it. This actually comes from the poster design - when I made it about six months ago I knew I wanted the image of dark shadows appearing to push through - I had no idea why but that it had to be included. And now, it all slots into place... 'citin' stuff!

The Family - The Poster

Just a quickie - here's the teaser poster for The Family. 99% certain that is going to be the title - nothing else could be more appropriate really...

Currently reading 'The Coma' by Alex Garland. 2 quid in Fopp and proving to be very useful study material... It's a very short book and it's taken me an hour to get about a third of the way through so expect some form of review shortly.

Playwriting-wise it's all going very well - currently working on Act 2 Scene 2 at the moment. It's crap at the moment and definitely needs work - but at least I'm able to admit that!

Giving in to temptation

I've spent the last week taking charge of my life. I'm starting to speak my mind a lot more (not that I was particularly shy or retiring before) but I just feel like it's time to grow up and get on with things.

I've never really seen the point of blogs before. I get the whole personal diary thing, or blogs from public figures and organisations - but never really understood why people would want to read a complete stranger's most intimate thoughts. I've also thought of it all as a bit of an ego-trip - to big yourself up into thinking that anyone would give a shit about what you've got to say.

Earlier this week (Tuesday 20/1/09) I had a chat with Gary from my local theatre group. Last summer I sent him the first draft of the first act of a play I'm writing - and then I just left it. The theatre were keen but for some reason I just pushed it all aside. Then I bumped into gary while choreographing the panto and he seemed sooo enthusiastic about getting a meeting together. So I went to the meeting with a little trepidation - I genuinely didn't know what to expect, would he shoot it down in flames and tell me I couldn't write for toffee? Would he think I was a perverted deviant for the 'adult' nature of the text? Or would he just say that it was good but not what they were after, do I have anything else...?

Well, as it turned out - none of the above. There were a few grammatical things and a few writing tips (personalise this bit here, why say this when you could say more with a look or gesture, that kind of thing) but it was all incredibly encouraging. We talked about potential actors, chatted about deadlines and I left the house buzzing. I've made some changes to the first act and now moved onto the second act (it's a bit similar to that 'Second Album Syndrome' bands get but I'm on track now).

Part of my problem has been that I don't really have an outlet for my ideas and thoughts - I'll go to bed at night and not get to sleep cos I've all these ideas in my head. So what I'm hoping is that this blog will act as an almost 'Making of' for the play, what's influencing my writing, how the writing is going, and for me to have a bit of a rant about my frustrations. I'll probably chuck in one or two reviews of stuff I've watched/read/listened to etc.

And so begins my blogging. 2009 has got potential.

(Temptation-wise, I've also given in and shall shortly be acquiring an iPhone - more on that as and when!)