January | 2018 | tomwrightdreamer

NaNoWriMo

WARNING: Contains swears, apparitions and the end of humanity.

As I said in an earlier blog, one of the great benefits of 28 Plays Later was that it unlocked my creativity, and that it showed me that I could make the time to write even in busy circumstances, and it emboldened me to take on the even bigger challenge of NaNoWriMo, writing 50,000 words (apparently the average length of the first draft of a shortish novel, I’m assured that they grow with each draft) through the month of November.

That turned out to be an even more profound experience; there is something remarkable about investing so many hours in your own creativity, without a likely return of money, fame, adulation. It’s a way of saying to your inner creative voice; ‘you have inherent value and I’m going to invest time and energy in to you.’ And, I found, the voice reciprocates.

I’ll write more about both the process, and the resulting novel in later blogs, but I want to share two of the short plays from 28 Plays Later which helped develop my thinking towards the novel.

As ever, I can’t tell you what the prompts where that led to these, but hopefully they will pique your interest. (A quick note, WordPress does not love tabs and indents so I have deviated from the standard British script format for these and all future scripts.)

THE VOICE IN THE WIND

This is a story I’ve been carrying in my head for over 10 years, never finding the time to get it into the world. Even knowing it so well, I was surprised by some of the details which came out.

ALICIA, 12, mixed-race, frizzy hair in buns, jeans, jumper, backpack, comes in to the room. Her parents hover in the door way. The room is clean but faded and aged. Bare boards. Bed. Dresser, fire place, standing mirror covered with a dust sheet.

She throws her bag on to the bed, which creaks.

DAD: On Monday we’ll got to Homebase and choose some paint. Then we can get this place fixed up. Any colour you like?

Pause.

Pink?

MUM gently thumps him in the arm. ALICIA wrinkles her nose at him.

DAD: Okay. Well, we’ll let you settle in.

He lifts in a large suitcase and closes the door. Wind whistles through the fire place.

ALICIA goes over to the bed and throws herself on to it. The springs creak.

SILENCE

There’s a big gust of wind. The lights flick off. The sun has set but there’s a little bit of gloaming left before complete darkness.

ALICIA tuts.

Wind starts to howl louder.

ALICIA rolls over.

WIND: Alicia!

ALICIA leaps up in the half darkness.

Pause.

WIND: Alicia!

ALICIA creeps towards the fire place. She’s about to get there when her DAD suddenly opens the door to her room, carrying a torch.

ALICIA shrieks.

DAD: Sorry! We’ve only got enough torches for me and your mother, but we do have some candles. Here –

He walks to the mantelpiece and places a saucer, candle and matches. He strikes a match and slightly melts the base of the candle. Then he lights the wick. A warm glow part-fills the room.

DAD: There you go!

He goes back to the door.

DAD: Dinner in a few minutes, I reckon. Luckily the gas is still working!

Goes, shutting the door behind him.

Pause

WIND: Alicia!

ALICIA continues slowly walking to the fire.

There is a sudden and much louder:

WIND: Alicia!

The candle flares brighter. She jumps.

Silence.

ALICIA listens. Nothing.

Then a crackling sound:

CANDLE: Alicia.

She draws really close to the candle.

ALICIA: Did you just speak?

CANDLE: Careful! You nearly blew me out.

ALICIA: Sorry!

CANDLE: It’s difficult to talk this way. Take the sheet from the mirror.

ALICIA looks around. She sees it and removes the sheet. She sees herself reflected.

CANDLE: Now draw the candle closer.

ALICIA carries the candle closer. It flickers slightly and suddenly ALICIA sees MARY, a 12 year old girl wearing torn and bloodied clothing circa 1830 in the mirror, staring back at her.

MARY: Help me!

ALICIA screams, accidentally blowing out the candle. And plunging the stage into darkness.

The dusty bulb in the middle of the room lights up. The mirror reflects the room.

ALICIA looks around, still holding the candle.

DAD: (FROM OFF) Help me set the table, Alicia! Dinner’s nearly ready.

ALICIA throws the candle down and rushes out of the room.

The light bulb flickers out. Mary appears again in the mirror.

MARY: Please, help me!

Blackout.

NATURE

The antagonists in the story above were slightly hazy when I started writing but the short play below helped unlock them for me. This scene is based on Laban efforts, a popular technique for creating either natural, or subtly uncanny, movement, often taught in dance or drama schools.

CAST

(NB: There are 8 Laban efforts. Only five feature in this play)

Flicking: Flexible, Sudden, Light. Flicking is flexible in its use of space and it resists both Weight and Time. It is a movement with free flow. It is crisp, light and always brief. Flicking’s costume consists of chords and whip heads which can be cracked to illustrate lines and gestures. He speaks suddenly but gently, with a tease and a smile.

Slashing: Sudden, Strong, Flexible. This effort is usually performed with free flow. When we think of slashing, the general thought is a sword slashing towards an object and meeting resistance. When performing, this effort tends to fade into a float at the point it would meet resistance. Slashing’s costume consists of blades protruding along every major bone and jutting from joints so that the slightest move creates cuts in the air. She speaks with a sudden, strong voice and a scowl, cutting into the conversation.

Wringing: Flexible, Sustained, Strong. This primarily involves movement in the opposite direction, such as wringing out a towel where your hands will move in two opposite directions. Keep in mind that wringing is not restricted to the hands. The costume is gives the impression of boulders which scrape together with each movement on the joints. His voice wavers with effort, as of barely contained rage.

Gliding: Sustained, Light, Direct. This effort is a smooth movement, generally performed with bound flow. There is a high level of control in this movement which comes from muscular counter-tensions. This is the way in which this effort differs from floating; floating does not have that level of control. Gliding has wings of stretched material from leg to arm, like a power glider’s costume, and is attached to flying gear in the rig. His voice is high and smooth.

Pressing: Direct, Sustained, Strong. Pressing is applied to pushing, crushing and squeezing (pressing from both directions). It is efficient in its use of space and is performed with bound flow which means that the action can be paused but not completely stopped. However, there is still a sense of fluency similar to the glide. Gravity and weight are closely aligned with this effort as they can help or hinder you depending on the direction in which you are pressing. The costume seems to be made of solid slabs. She speaks very slowly and carefully, with great weight.

Source: https://savannahindigo.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/general-information-about-the-eight-basic-efforts-laban/

THE PLAY

There is a fog and a gentle but diffuse light – it is the gloaming time. GLIDE swoops gently around the stage, billowing the fog in his wake. He may gradually come to a stop and then begin again when speaking. All the characters fully embody their action rest and movement and above all in the quality of their voice when speaking.

GLIDE: I am here. Come my brothers and my sisters it is time for the moot!

PRESS enters steadily and upon finding a place to stop begins the slow process of settling which will take the duration of the scene. There is the sound of the ground being slowly crushed beneath her feet.

PRESS: I am here.

WRING enters, each move twisting upon itself.

WRING: I am here.

Suddenly SLASH has cut onto the stage and then is still.

SLASH: I am here.

Flick darts into the space opposite slash.

FLICK: I am here.

GLIDE: Brothers and sisters, we are here to discuss the human problem.

FLICK: Fuck ‘em.

WRING: Fuck them.

SLASH: Fuck them up.

PRESS: Crush them.

GLIDE: Noted. But we might need a more detailed plan if we are to rid the world of all of them.

PRESS: And return it to the old ways.

SLASH: Red in tooth and claw.

PRESS: Gray and black and moss covered.

WRING: Brown and green in twisting vine.

FLICK: Blazing white in lighting strike.

GLIDE: Unseen but howling with the wind.

WRING: They think they are the masters.

PRESS: Trampling our kind under foot.

SLASH: Raising our sacred places.

WRING: Tearing up the land.

FLICK: Burning our buried treasures.

GLIDE: Thickening our pure air.

PRESS: So, how do we take back what is ours?

SLASH: Disease. Let a contagion spread amongst them quick as fire.

FLICK: The Sun. Let a surge come. Turn their pretty toys to trash.

WRING: Heat ‘em up till they gasp for drinking water and war with one another for green land to farm.

GLIDE: Let’s suffocate them with their own poisoned air.

SLASH: Great waves rising from the seas to drown their cities.

FLICK: Great fires to burn away their homes.

PRESS: All of these, my brothers and sisters. All of these at once so that they are surrounded, by flame from the West, water from the East, plague from the North, surges from the South and slow death pressing on them from the skies. All of these, my brothers and sisters until the last one lies, broken and alone, screaming for mercy and then, they too will be crushed before our might, returning. And then there will be silence.

GLIDE: And then we will roam free, through the air.

WRING: And forest.

SLASH: And the waves.

FLICK: And the sunlight.

PRESS: And deep within the earth. Are we agreed?

GLIDE: Agreed.

WRING: Agreed.

SLASH: Agreed.

FLICK: Agreed.

PRESS: Then away. To work our terrible revenge.

GLIDE soars away, FLICK flashes off the stage, SLASH sweeps off, WRING twists away and finally PRESS rise like a mountain as darkness fills the stage.

11/01/2018

28 Plays Later

WARNING: Contains swears.

Part of the joy of 28 Plays Later is responding to the titles and briefs set by the Mysterious Overlord, Sebastian. Since I’ve never met him, half-way through the month I began to suspect that he’s not a flesh-and-blood person at all but some sort of sadistic AI designed to torture creative types by setting them bizarre creative hoops to jump through each day. Looking back over the month, though. I see that the variety of tasks was a great part of why the whole thing was so much fun; some might lead to flashes of creative brilliance which blossom into full plays, but others are the equivalent of lifting weights at a gym – developing parts of our writing we might have neglected.

But that does often make for odd reading. When you sign up, part of the deal is that we won’t circulate the prompts, which means I can’t tell you why I wrote this:

Fred walks in, covered with blue fur, beard, horns, bare feet, big beard. He walks over to the controls of the ship. He pushes some buttons.

Sephie, small and lithe, comes in after him, hisses and makes a bolt for the opposite door. The door hisses open to reveal Colin in a big coat, grinning, bald head:

COLIN: OFFIE!

Sephie jumps and races out of the other door. Fred looks up.

FRED: What is she going to look like with a chimney on her?

He sighs and goes back to pressing buttons. The door closes on a still grinning Colin.

A third door opens and a harassed woman is running towards it.

WOMAN: Aliiiiiiiiiiiiice! Noooo! She loves gloves!

The door hisses shut just as she comes to it.

The view screen of the ship is suddenly filled with a mysterious ginger-bearded face.

GINGER BEARDY: I am his reason.

A gangly youth comes on wearing tennis whites with matching sweatbands on wrist and head.

YOUTH: And then a duck walked in with a hat on.

FRED looks up and points at the view screen which changes to say the words ‘It’s Nice To Be Important But It’s More Important to Be Nice.’ The youth turns around and walks straight out.

The phone rings. FRED answers after two rings.

FRED: Hello, Two Ring Suzie here?

VOICE ON PHONE: (Very loud.) This is your early morning fact! Bromide is brown!

Dial tone.

FRED hands up and sighs.

FRED: Why do birds suddenly appear?

The door slides open and on the other side is a teenager wearing a green trilby and mac.

TEEN: Fish got to swim.

Birds got to fly.

Apart from ducks, which do both.

That’s that system of taxonomy fucked.

The door slides closed.

FRED looks back to the view screen. An Alien toy appears on the screen and goes ‘Rarrr!’

The lights go out.

FEMALE VOICE: (whispered) I’m breaking up with you and going out with Josh.

Lights come back on. FRED has disappeared. There is a bearded man in the chair instead.

MIKE: (To audience) Manchester is not a clever place.

The lights go out again.

MALE VOICE: While a live on turns the corner!

Darkness.

End.

Hopefully some of the other ones I’m going to share here will actually make sense, but I wanted to start by sharing this one, as I was reflecting on why I want to share these random nuggets of brain wind. Last year marked a significant step in reconnecting with my creativity – I made time for writing, not because it would further my career or boost my finances, but because it acknowledged and celebrated the little creative voice in my head which had been whispering, ‘Don’t forget me!’ I’ve spent so much time mentoring playwrights and theatre makers I was in danger of forgetting what it was like to create myself.

And as rewarding as 28 Plays Later and NaNoWriMo were I could just stop there, leaving the work in a digital drawer. They served their function in that I enjoyed making them and felt nourished by the process. But there was another desire at work. Theatre is my first and greatest love, and what I love most about it is that it is a collaborative art form. The feeling of bringing together a team of exceptionally skilled and creative people, working towards the common goal of giving an audience an amazing, coherent experience, is the greatest thrill I know. The moment of sitting in the audience, watching a production for the first time in front of the public, and not even being sure of which idea on stage emerged from which creative, hearing the audience laugh, or gasp or cry, is extraordinary.

But it is also immensely hard work – finding the funding, bringing the teams together, rehearsing, takes months, if not years, from conception to conclusion. So, I wanted to find another, contrasting outlet for creativity, which required less effort. Just me and my laptop and a few hours. But if it stops there, it’s not quite finished. I need to put it into the world, for it to meet an audience. Not so that they can love it and shower me with praise, but so that it’s completed the process of any work of art, no matter how rushed and flawed. Are the marks on a canvas a painting till they are seen? Are the notes a piece of music till someone hears them? Are these really stories till they are shared?

And also, in my growth as an artist, I need to keep pushing myself to get better at both halves of the process; creating and sharing. And this is a crucial idea which I think the Artist’s Way captured very clearly, and which I sometimes find hard to communicate to other creatives and writers whom I support; the desire for something to be perfect before we are prepared to share it can kill creativity. I know of so many plays and novels rotting in drawers and hard drives. I know of hundreds more which exist only in the minds of my friends and colleagues. They whisper alluringly but without the courage to even write them down they will always remain only whispers.

I used to think that not caring about the response of a piece of work was a cop out, that it meant abandoning any attempt at striving for excellence. But now I’ve seen how deadly that idea of excellence can be on a fledgling idea stumbling towards becoming fully formed; it is like saying to a child, ‘Don’t try walking till you’re sure you can do it without falling over.’ How will it ever learn? Better, as Julia Cameron exhorts, to focus on bringing the idea forth, trust the universe to worry about quality, and be prepared to learn from mistakes. And through this I have found that I am still a perfectionist, but the focus of my desire for perfection has changed; if I apply it to the individual project then my creativity will be stifled, if I apply it myself as an artist I can continue to grow.

A friend of mine was assisting the premiere of a new play by a very prolific and successful playwright. When the show met the audience for the first time in a preview, my friend spotted a flaw in the script which could be fixed with an easy rewrite. My friend took a deep breath and exceeded his role by suggesting the change to the playwright. There was a long silence and then the playwright nodded, slowly, ‘Yes. Yes, that would have been better.’

‘So are you going to change it?’ asked my friend.

‘No,’ replied the playwright, ‘But I won’t make that mistake on my next play.’

That attitude, of perfecting the skill, learning from each project, but not smothering each project with the unbearable expectation of being perfect, is probably why the playwright is so prolific and successful. (It also shows, I think, an awareness of the process – something might be an easy rewrite but not be an easy re-rehearsal for the actors during high-pressure previews.

All this is to say that I’m sure that some of these short plays I’m about to inflict on you are not going to be great, I’m learning to care less about that and more about what I learn from writing and sharing them. But, while I’m not worrying if you’re going to like them, I do want you to know that I appreciate you taking the time to read them, and so, to that extent, I hope they are interesting for your sake, if not for their own! Thank you, as ever, for coming on the journey.

01/01/2018

My Creative 2017

You may have noticed that there’s been a hiatus in blog posts of nearly three years! It’s been very interesting returning to it and thinking about how crucial my experience with the Artist’s Way in 2012 was to turning my life back on track.

This blog is about my creative journey as an artist, as opposed to my career as a director. For those of you who want to know more about that side of my work please visit www.tomwrightdirector.com or sign for my theatre newsletter here.

I’ve just posted my round-up of the year there, in which I describe the six remarkable and diverse projects I’ve worked on in 2017. Looking back at my posts from 2012 I see that I was indeed, as Julia Cameron says, in need of ‘artistic recovery.’ I was broke, and scared and stuck. The ideas I internalised during the (longer than) 12-week process of the Artist’s Way really helped me. Especially the idea that the universe wants me to be creative and that if I commit to the work (or ‘showing up at the page’) the creative force inherent in the universe (which as a Buddhist, I would think of as Buddhahood, and which Julia calls God) will support me in unexpected ways.

I have really found that to be true, and the work I on myself did then is why I was able to work on such exciting projects now.

This year, I decided that on top of my work as a director, I really wanted to ensure that I made space to develop my own creativity. So much of what I do as a director is about facilitating the creativity of others; weeding out my own ego and need to control, and instead empowering others to trust their own instincts. As Rufus Norris, Artistic Director, once said to me, ‘the director is the person who recognises the best idea in the room, not necessarily the person who has it.’ In fact, I’d go further these days, and say that when I direct, I try to be the person who enables everyone else to have the best ideas. Part of that has definitely been by using Julia Cameron’s techniques for quietening the inner critic, long enough to allow those ideas to start flowing.

But in the midst of supporting others to do that, I realised that I was running the risk of neglecting that quiet whispering voice in my own head which says, ‘I want to play too!’ So I made some time for that voice this year. In February I took part in in the brilliant 28 Plays Later where I wrote a short play every day in February, which was intense as I was in rehearsal for Handbagged at the time.

This competition is simple enough – you all contribute £19.28 to a pot, and then submit a play each day, which can be as short or as long as you like, on a topic set the day before by our leader in speed writing, Sebastian. If you fail to make the deadline on any day you forfeit your money, and the remainder is divided amongst the winners – the last people standing at the end of the month – minus a contribution for admin. As a result of the drop out I made a staggering 36p profit. But, far greater than that, was the value I got from being forced to write every day.

Lily, one of my sisters, put me on to it and we both approached the challenge in very different ways. I could only spare a bit of time each day, so I would start a 45 minute timer and would just bash through with no prep, research or editing. Lily was up till 1am every morning honing tiny masterpieces. It’s perhaps telling that all that love and graft led to one of those plays becoming an excellent production just a few months later.

I didn’t create any masterpieces, but I did fall back in love with spending time with just me and my creativity. And the advantage of having a crazy-tight deadline, and a miniscule financial incentive, is that it didn’t give my inner critic any time to engage, so I was able to write from a quick, clear place I haven’t accessed for years. Looking back over them a few months later, none fill me with the desire to put them on stage, necessarily, but they do serve as a good expression of where I was emotionally back then. And two of them fed in very directly to my next challenge!

In November, because I felt writing 28 short plays was too easy, I put myself through National Novel Writing Month and wrote a 53,000 word first draft of a story I’ve been carrying in my head for years. But that’s for another blog post!

This coming year I am going to post here fortnightly with plays, extracts of the novel, and reviews of creativity books and aids, so stay tuned! And remember, if you want to keep up to date with my theatre productions please see www.tomwrightdirector.com, where you can find out about my busy year ahead, including being artistic director for Generation Hope, an event supported by SGI-UK, a society dedicated to Buddhism in action for Peace, taking place for 6,000 guests across three cities using satellite broadcasts to link the venues on 17^th March, aiming to inspire young people with the confidence to change the world.

As closing treats: here’s a video of me explaining Buddhism at Bettakulcha, an evening of presentations where everyone delivers a talk with 20 slides pre-programmed to change every 15 seconds! This was a few years ago, but I realised I never got around to putting it on the blog. I was speaking at breakneck speed and you can’t see me because I’m so tall my head was in the light, but it might be worth five minutes of your time!

At the other end of the spiritual spectrum, I’ve achieved my life-time ambition of being on a podcast! Poet and theatre maker, Jack Dean recorded this with me and Amie George who was the Yeti in Jack’s Horace and the Yeti. He gets his collaborators sufficiently drunk, then makes them play a storytelling impro game from the 80s. We had a lot of fun making it! However, be warned, it features both obscene language and, well. . . obscene things. Please don’t listen if you are of a delicate disposition, or, in fact, you want to be able to look me in the eye next time we meet.

I hope 2018 is a year of brilliant achievements for you, whether that’s in your work, relationships, or in making the world a better place, and thanks for following me on my journey in to having an even more creative year!

tomwrightdreamer

Month: January, 2018

24/01/2018

NaNoWriMo

11/01/2018

28 Plays Later

01/01/2018

My Creative 2017