I’m home back at home home and I’ve found it both a struggle and fairly easy at the same time. Dunno what I’m trying to say. I’ve been busy with actually writing these monologues and asking permissions from people I admire.
Just finished writing CLAIRE who I first thought was going to completely zap my energy because of the subject matter but actually she came to be born quite fluidly.
This is her name on the whiteboard. It’s quite self-explanitory that sentence so I’ll leave that there. I love my whiteboards. That one’s explains itself also. This is how I look and feel today:
And here is photographic evidence of myself and CLAIRE in the same room together. She’s treated me well:
And I’ve just gone to check CLAIRE off my list when I realise I only have three monologues left to write. These are all first drafts but still that makes me feel a tingle of something. Excitement? Dread? Both? Possibly a certain type of eagerness. It’s a jigsaw at the moment making sure each one isn’t completely off the radar so they hang together. They’re linked but not explicitly so. I’ll leave you in pieces/peace as I’m thinking aloud.
This is what I woke up to this morning (Charlie aka Shitface):
Sneaky marshmallow hiding in the corner of the packet I can see you…. Nom nom nommmmmm. Red wine flowing (from a bottle into a glass into my mouth into my belly and beyond). I’m leaving the flat I’ve been sitting for nigh on six(ish) months and I’m sad. Pizza was the farewell meal. Clothes in the suitcase. Work stuff piled around me high. Bare looking walls just like the ones I was writing about before Christmas for The White Room. Multiple cardboard boxes are breeding and being branded with crude felt-tip. Someone died in this flat and they left a legacy of frozen photographs and a plethora of books (with paintings to boot). I’ve lived in this flat. I’ve lived off this flat. Someone lent me their space and abode and I’ve kept it well and cherished the alone time I got. I miss my whiteboards and somewhat strangely my dog. Shitface. He’s not called that but it’s what I call him and it’s to what he responds – we didn’t have the best of relationships when he came home to stay at the beginning. I’ve written a lot here. It almost makes me think that I will hit some mentally enforced wall when I return to which I will spit at and will break down because I’ve got things going on. Projects spilling into my head thick and fast and not enough time to write them down. I’ll ignore the fact that when I do acquire this time I laze and procrastinate wildly. Profusely. Inanely. It’s what I do. Next up is deciding how I keep this up. I will. I will. I will. I will not slip back into my old ways of sitting not knowing what to do until the stupid hours of the morning living the tired regret of not getting anything done at all. I won’t. I won’t. I fucking won’t fucking think I haven’t got what it takes to take a project to completion. My name is Katie McCullough. My other names – Kate, Katikins, Beacon, Sassy Gal, BiNGO, Kattles, Sniglet, Katoir, Rottwer… The list goes on and is ever-growing. These be my monikers and with them a slice of what I’ve been, who I am and what I shall be. I’m going home and I’m going to be doing more than ever to keep this ball rolling.
I’ve always considered music and storytelling in any format entwined. Which probably goes to say why I prefer narrative music videos and overall songs with fantastic lyrics. (Don’t get me wrong I like a fair helping of hardcore techno as well). But I find music helps me to write but it also shows us structurally how a story unravels.
(This is one of my favourite music videos. Thank you Tunng.)
As part of the individual tutoring I’m doing at the moment I’m helping a student to write a monologue for her to perform as part of a playwriting exam. I told her to think of songs with lyrical content as the ultimate monologue. They can be in the first person or third person narrative but their intended goal is the same; to tell a story and keep us captured for however many minutes. There have been many times when lyrics hit the spot, they make us stop and sit up at how poignant they are. Or how they resonate. They’re both taking you by the hand and willing you to listen intently, which you do.
In my lesson before I talked at length about the Snow Patrol song ‘How To Be Dead’. I wouldn’t count myself as a massive fan but the reason I liked this song is because it doesn’t have a chorus (which is why it didn’t make that much of an impact on the charts). It’s a clear cut story with two parties identified and contains the beautiful lyric that I never forget, “It seems I’ve stepped over lines you’ve drawn again and again”. Crystal clear, beautifully written and forever imprinted in my mind. But aside from that it’s storytelling, it’s all dialogue.
I also talked about how classic rock ‘n’ roll songs from the fifties are very ‘of the time’ and even more narrative. They’re all about losing their baby or wanting to kiss their girl before dropping them home and persuading them to stay out later or uncouth women (!). The reason I adore my motown is because the lyrics are familiar (not from over-play) because they a story and everyone remembers a good story. We’ll sometimes even go as far as describing a story as being lyrical. One of my most memorable motown songs is a classic, “The Tracks Of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson and The Band. It’s there in its sad tortured self for all to see it’s a story of love-lost and the forlorn qualities of seeing an old flame with a new spark. And it’s laden with beautiful images.
So building on the idea of songs being the perfect template (structurally, I understand that lyrics tend to be more expositional or abstract at times) for monologues my lesson plan included this task. Taking a song that’s fairly narrative add or detract punctuation and/or scene directions to change a list of lyrics into a performable monologue. The story is already there so that’s one less thing to worry about; your aim is to raise the tension, craft the drama and give it the theatrical flavour. As an example I read out lyrics to Death Cab For Cutie’s, “Bixby Canyon Bridge” and Elbow’s, “Scattered Black and Whites”. Then handed over both for my student to explore and basically hack into her own piece of work. As a further experiment to highlight how this might work I did it myself before the lesson and decided to tackle Human Leagues’, “Don’t You Want Me”. Stupidly I didn’t realise that the song is multi-narrative until I came to picking it apart so it ends up being a two-hander, but you’ll get the point.
Click on the photo and you should be able to read it.
I had immense fun doing this and it’s nice to concentrate on what makes something dramatic, garnering a sense of conflict from something that you know or might not know already. You shouldn’t feel constrained by repetition or lyrics that end abruptly or aren’t succinct sentences. It’s something to play around with. Looking at my example I merged sentences, I isolated certain words. I for one am a big fan or the power of silence on stage so play around with pauses. Nothing’s concrete as I keep telling myself and my student; just because you’ve written it down doesn’t mean you have to keep it there. Imagine how different something would read if a pause was entered before a revelation or after. If a fullstop entered half way through the sentence. If the character was whispering or shouting. Depending on what song you choose it’s only a page of work. If you do it yourself please tell me what songs you used and how you found it. Turn a song on it’s head. Maybe give it another meaning… nothing’s concrete.
I battled through with the troublesome CHLOE and eeked her for as much as I could in this draft of things. She now looks a little like this:
And now I’m onto a seventeen year old boy, ALEX. In a writing sense of course. He’s spouting a lot of nonsense at the moment but every other line is a keeper and I have a feeling he’s going to be fun to write. He’s a kid with a certain unease with the world and speaks a lot about the observations he’s concocted from the world he was born into. A real throw your fists in the air monologue but he’s a little unhinged which is actually quite fun to write. It’s not didactic at all, it’s merely presenting ideas and letting them dwell. With a little bit of shock in there.
I’ve not had that much time to dedicate to the monologue project (“I Still Get Excited When I See A Ladybird”) because of working or generally getting my car stuck in the snow and not feeling like it. Oh and the film I was involved with for the 48Hr Film Challenge over in Jersey won! Super mega chuffed and it was great to see familiar faces from what seems like a lifetime ago. The films are still up for people to view (I think) over here. But I’ve thrown myself back into the new project and it seems to be getting hard now…
…and I know why. So far I’ve written two male monologues, both older, and I find these relatively easy. I enjoy pretending to be someone else and really get my teeth into it. I’m now crafting a female monologue and she happens to be 26. That’s extremely close to my age and I suppose what I’m worried about is people will assume that this is my agenda, this is my message as a young female playwright of 25. It’s not at all, I’m merely exploring ideas that I’ve talked about with people but the content is very sexualised and delves into what we impart on people and what we’re frightened to admit. And it’s true, there’s a part of me in this monologue but there’s a segment of me in all of my writing and I’m trying to write and keep the flow of the narrative going without worrying too much about the repercussions. Counter-productive to be troubling myself with these sorts of things now but I can honestly say it’s making writing this monologue hard work. So when I get to the end of the first draft I’ll be leaving that in a drawer for longer than a week it has to be said.
Just in case you didn’t realise that the UK has snow of varying levels all over and have forgotten what my forlorn face looks like.
In other news I’m beginning to get back some of my own time and am investing it into “I Still Get Excited When I See A Ladybird”. The photographic evidence below shows that I now have two 95% finished monologues out of eight. I would give myself a pat on the back but it really fucking hurts and I don’t know why. Guess I better go back to lying in the middle of the floor.
Gerry Hayes pointed me in the direction of this Polaroid app for the iPhone that makes everything look lush. And I miss being able to use my real Polaroid so from now on expect grainy nuggets like this from me (but not necessarily of me, that would be tedious).
Well not quite. But what I’m trying to get at is a little bit of time travel and a lot of your generosity. But let’s start at the beginning. In a manger not far from you a website was born called Metazen and three kings who were more than slightly tipsy on the wrong stuff and some shepherds that told their sheep to go wander elsewhere were asked to bring gifts for this shouty baby. And they did. And they begat-so-and-so and they begat-so-and-so and this child of all things Christmassy and whispery notions crafted a Christmas publication which you should go and have a butchers at. It was published on Christmas Day but time slipped away from me and someone spiked my sensibilities with red wine and a stonking cold. And let’s be honest Jesus was probably high on his own supply but nonetheless I want to plug it as Frank Hinton (obviously that was baby Jesus’ real name) put it together with a lot of effort and Christmas time to arrange it all and he’s a Lovely fella.
The e-book is free to download over at Metazen but donations are most welcome. More information on where your Lovely pounds, dollars and cents go to are detailed here and to be honest it’s heading in the right direction.
It features an array of writery peeps who deserve a round of festive/New Year/anytime applause including the rather delectable Tania Hershman, the delightful Gerry Hayes, the rectified Boudreau Freret, the soporific Finnegan Flawnt and My Good Self.
It has been brought to my attention that something extremely important is going on. Something is stirring in the creative masses and collaboration is being stewed, simmered and ladled out to the hungry folk. They’re armed with paintbrushes, microphones, cameras and material. They’re not stopping till they see big. No stone will lay unturned, no door will be locked and no avenue will be skipped. REMIX is heading your way and you better throw yourself down before them and sign up, this is one revolution you want to be a part of. Yes you, and you, the one moaning about how they’ve got an excess of creative juices but have nowhere to store them. Let loose and big yourself up so you can be heard because this people, this comrades, is exciting.
(In my head you’ve all grabbed the nearest thing you have to face paint and smeared the camouflage stripes across your face and round about now I’m leading you all in an Adam and The Ants strut. You with me? Thought not. It’s a cracking song though, c’mon…. “Don’t you ever, HUH, don’t you ever…”)
Dodgy staccato dance routines and wardrobe expenditures aside I’m here to tell you about REMIX and what the dandy it’s all about. And let me tell you, it’s a bit special. Ahem…
REMIX is fascinated with the idea of adaptation; in how content transfers but also how forms and skills translate. Why do we, as practitioners, choose the mediums we do to tell our stories we tell?
REMIX aims to bring together a creative team of exciting emerging practitioners who have asserted themselves as innovators in their own forms but who have never created a piece of theatre before. It will unite a fashion designer and graphic artist to work in design, a band to sound design, a poet to write the play as well as an emerging photographer and filmmaker. Together with Natalie Ibu as Director and an ensemble of professional recently trained actors, REMIX will create an innovative multi-disciplinary performance for the 21st century.
It will create a live performance but, also, four other versions of the performance – or four adaptations from four point of views. So, for example, the live performance may be accompanied with a fashion editorial spread version of the performance, an mp3 Play for iPods, website installation and an online series. Each outcome will be a bespoke adaptation of the play for the specific medium. These adaptations will be launched at a live event on 29th and 30th April 2010. The event will be a celebration, bringing together audiences and practitioners – old and new and from all practices – to toast the future of art and the next generation of creative practitioners. It will do so by showcasing the fruits of collaboration – the play in its five incarnations.
REMIX hopes that by bringing these first-time theatre-makers together it’ll create something bold, brave and enquiring – a project that brings together the very best creative minds to create a live performance and four form adaptations that alchemize the theatre, visual art, virtual media, fashion, music and literary industries. REMIX will steal all the best bits of all the mediums whilst leaving behind the constraints/rules. If Carlsberg made theatre…. It would be REMIX.
They are completely committed to theatre but recognize the criticism that theatre is slow at letting itself go, of shedding old forms and embracing the possibilities of the future. The project aims to reflect our rich, inter/multi-disciplinary, world – a world where we’re constantly sharing and borrowing from other forms and references. They want to experiment with how we might make theatre more like a magpie in order to mirror the way we live – it’ll be borne of the iPod-listening, blog-writing, Vogue-reading, YouTube-watching generation and therefore speak to those very people.
In our current climate, theatre must assert itself as a place for everyone in order to survive. This project aims to seduce our peers from gigs, cinema, performance poetry, events, clubs, galleries and bring them back into the theatre whilst also allowing the emerging artists to extend their networks, develop their portfolios, begin new working relationships and assert ourselves as gutsy and visionary practitioners of tomorrow.
REMIX is already causing waves across the creative board and has caught the attention of the Innovation Fund over at IdeasTap (which if you’ve not heard or spoken with your own mouth before get the hell over there….. Once again with more emphasis AND feeling http://www.ideastap.com ). What’s more the Innovation Fund were so darn impressed with the motivation and intensity of this project that they’ve thrown money at the thing which is great because this is only the beginning.
Mother of REMIX Revolution
But who are these peoples exactly? I hear your cries and they sound beautiful and eager, tinged with a parched choke like when you swallow apple juice wrongly. It’s a sweet taste and I shall impart on you the relevant nuggets of information. These wonderful, bloody determined folk have done many things. Calling up front to see your creative wares is Field Marshall aka Artistic DirectorNatalie Ibu (see enchanting photograph above). She’s an established Assistant Director, emerging Director and emerging Producer. She has recently been awarded the IdeasTap Innovation Award and the Lilian Baylis Award for Theatrical Excellence. In July 2009, she completed a year’s residency at the Royal Court as their Trainee Director. In 2008, she completed a Live and Direct residency at Contact in Manchester and in 2004 she won a year’s attachment as Trainee Theatre Director with New Perspectives Theatre Company. Since graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Theatre in 2004, she has been awarded bursaries from ITV Directors Scheme, the Federation of Scottish Theatre, Scottish Arts Council and Arts Council East Midlands. As Director, credits include 24 Hour Plays : This Is Not The End (Old Vic); Dirty Circle, Starlings, 24 Degrees, What’s Lost? (RR – Royal Court); The Red Shoes: Re-heeled (Royal Lyceum Youth Theatre); We Were… Re-Imagining the Mother, We Were… In Development, We Were… In a Café, Say What…? (We Were Here / G12, Citizens’ Theatre, Gramofon, Arches) I Know All The Secrets In My World… (Contact); Women’s Voices (New Writing NewWorlds/G12); Hang Up, Lesson Learned (Citizens’ Young Co.); Holly’s Chariot (RR – Theatre Writing Partnerships); Blooded (Fresh Perspectives); Road (De Montfort University). Assistant Director credits include Jerusalem, Grasses of a Thousand Colours, Tusk Tusk, Seven Jewish Children, Wig Out!, The Girlfriend Experience (Royal Court); Zameen (Kali Theatre, London); Fugee (Lyceum Youth Theatre, Edinburgh); Peter Pan, Desire Under the Elms(Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow); The Shadow of a Pie (Lung Ha’s Theatre Company, Edinburgh); The Ghost Downstairs, The Butterfly Lion (New Perspectives Theatre Company, East Midlands). She is a Script Reader for the Royal Court Studio, Royal Exchange, Soho, Script Online, and is a Studio Support Worker for the Royal Court, Director of the Churchill Young Companies and Workshop Director for Associated Performers’ Studio.
Step up General aka Producer Lisa Macfarlane. Lisa started off her a career as an actress performing at several venues such as the Hampstead Theatre and National Theatre Studio whilst still undertaking her degree at Central School of Speech and Drama. However after landing the role of Executive Producer of the Accidental Festival at the ICA at just 19 ,she decided this was the path for her. She went on to assist Sue Scott Davison, Erica Fee and James Seabright working on shows such as Liberty starring Belinda Lang and John Bett ((Shakespeare’s Globe and National Tour), Potted Potter (UK tour and Trafalgar Studios), Totally Looped starring Phil Jupitus, Sanjeev Baskhar and Marcus Brigstocke (UK number 1 tour). She has also made her presence felt at the Edinburgh Festival assistant producing Clarkson and Crouch and Learn to play the Ukulele in Under an hour (Gilded Balloon). Lisa also worked forJames Seabright on his 19 shows at the Edinburgh Fringe 2009, alongside judging that year’s Total Theatre Awards. Lisa was also a Panelist at The Entrepreneurial Artist, Theatre Materials Conference and a Guest Lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama and the Aim Higher education conferences . She is currently producing Biding Time in association with Pippa Bailey and is now Creative Producer of Offstage Theatre with her first production The Swimmer at the Bridewell Theatre in January 2010. She believes in crossing over art forms to inform her practice and has consequently worked on several commercial projects including publicity for Sony BMG.
Salute the Lieutenant aka Marketing Manager Ruth Hawkins. Ruth is an emerging Arts Marketer. She graduated from Central School of Speech and Drama in 2009 and attended the Brits School for Performance Arts and Technology. She has trained with Punchdrunk, Kinetika and in radio production and film editing. Whilst completing her degree in Performance Arts, she was Marketing Manager of the 2008 Accidental Festival at the ICA, Marketing Intern at the Royal Court and coordinated discussions and writing workshops with writers Tarell Alvin McCraney (Wig Out!, In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz – the first female playwright to have a production on the Olivier Stage at the National Theatre. In 2009 she wrote, directed and produced a reading of her play The Blunt Potato Peeler . She is a founding member of arts marketing company Yo Theatre, which gained interest from GQ’s magazine editor. She has worked for the Royal Court and Nabokov Theatre Company in a variety of roles, mainly focused within Arts Marketing, Audience Development and PR. She was Production Assistant and Marketing and Press Coordinator for October’s Nabokov Arts Club – working alongside Paines Plough’s new Artistic Directors George Perrin and James Grieve. Ruth is currently working for the fashion and advertising photographer Rankin, and is also on the Invitation Group of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme. And even more spectacular news comes in the shiny wrapper that she’s just been appointed Communications Assistant at the Royal Court. Ruth is an advocate of audience participation and believes a key element to the progression of theatre is driving it out to a wider audience demographic which she endeavors to accomplish within REMIX.
We should break for a bit. Join in, you so know you want to.
Musical interludes ensues…
Now this is where you come along and stick you hand up. In January, the REMIX team will be out on the streets looking for creatives. They’re looking for the very best creative minds. They’ll be trawling events across London to watch you spit your lyrics, graffiti up some underground warehouses and use your scissors to make their creative teams heads turn! If you’re a fashion designer, graphic artist, photographer, filmmaker, band, actor, singer-songwriter and want to invite us along, email: Natalie Ibu (clicky her name and a magical email window will appear which means you have to email her or else something sticky will happen.)
In your email, detail who you are and what you do, what you’ve done and what you want to do and what and who you like. Please also attach an up to date CV and portfolio and details of where and when they can see you doing your thing – whatever it may be. Shout out about yourself and be heard because they’ll be listening!
A certain Mister James Hopkirk had this to say about the idea and he certainly knows what he’s talking about:
“We were struck by the confidence and ambition of the REMIX project, and are convinced that Natalie is well placed to make it a success. The panel liked the innovative way that the project works across a variety of art forms which is exactly the kind of project we aim to support through the Ideas Fund.”
James Hopkirk : IdeasTap Editor
They’re openly asking people to stalk them and there’s nothing I love more than people inviting this kind of behaviour because heaven knows I’m running out of places to put my restraining orders. Someone mentioned I should throw them away but I’m more inclined to make origami swans out of them and make a day of it at the park.
STALK AWAY
Here: twitter
And here: facebook
And what about here? : ideastap
Have you thought about here? : myspace
And have I not mentioned here? : blog
My oh my aren’t they a greedy bunch! But with very good reason. I think that’s plenty of stuff to be getting on with people. Go, shoo, that way my Lovelies. They’re waiting. And remember… “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of…”
In commiseration of the death of a production I ended up watching music video channels till 3am. Post show blues already. 14 hours ago
Cast fucking SMASHED it last night. Room full of heady laughter & intense sorrow. #LondonPride was beautiful. My love for you lot runs deep. 14 hours ago
