I’ve been crazily busy with three different scripts recently. One children’s theatre script, one half hour screenplay and a full length play. Which is a short way of saying that I haven’t got round to blogging recently. But as part of research for the children’s theatre script I’ve been wandering around my village to the places I used to play when I was a kid. This beautiful place is at the end of my road and I (along with my older brothers) used to spend a lot of time wreaking havoc and getting muddy there.
The children’s theatre script is going to be a promenade performance in a small wood in Pembroke. So I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time walking through my childhood woods to get into the perspective of a child. Do we change where we look as we become older? I’m looking up feeling small with all the trees, but I’m sure I looked down at the insects when I was small wanting to feel big.
Juggling Scripts And Research May 19, 2012
Writing What I Don’t Know April 20, 2012
One of the projects I’m currently writing is all about hearts, more importantly a heart condition. It’s something I know sweet FA about. But I love research. I don’t think the well-worn mantra ‘write what you know‘ is meant to be taken literally otherwise we’d all have very sheltered plays. I’m writing what I know emotionally and I’m writing the characters that I know. Or something like that. Anyway, I’ve never done as much prep work on a play as I’ve done for this. My walls are littered with maps, diagrams, mythology, flat blueprints and more. There was a time when I found this play difficult to approach because it felt like it wasn’t allowing me to get close. Now I’ve fallen in love with it all over again.
I sliced into a pepper and found it’s heart so I let it beat in my hand before I ate it. It’s not cannibalism, it’s a vegetable.
