It's been a strange few years....

It’s been a strange few years. I wrote this little monologue for Dirty Protest Theatre Company and it was put on at the Royal Court, and then at Theatre Clwyd and then at Dirty, Gifted and Welsh. It was all beyond unbelievable.

John McGrath saw my little monologue One Hour and Forty Five Minutes and asked me to work on a seed commission. National Theatre Wales also nominated me for BBC Writersroom 10, I didn’t get in but just being nominated, by National Theatre Wales, was beyond unbelievable. I mean, seriously unbelievable. National Theatre Wales? Me? A seed commission?

I was also asked to join the all female playwright company Agent 160,  and my first short play for them will be presented this weekend as part of Fun Palaces at Wales Millennium Centre. I sat in rehearsals the other day, listening to words I’d written being performed by Llinos Mai, thinking - I wrote this, it’s good, it’s really funny. I love my job.

Then on the 12^th October some scenes from my seed commission will be read at the 2^nd Dirty Gifted and Welsh. Now last year at this event as one of the writers being presented by Dirty Protest, because mine had been on at the Royal Court, feeling a little dreamlike, I watched the pieces being presented by National Theatre Wales and I looked at the writers and I thought, that’s where I want to be next year. To repeat last year I said that’s where I want to be and this year I will be. I know! Unbelievable.  

It’s all just been beyond unbelievable – I spend a lot of time thinking I am going to wake up and the last two years has been a dream.  Seriously I don’t think ever since Tim Price phoned me up and I stood in my garden (the signal is shit in the house) and he told me my play in a bag piece was going to be on at the Royal Court it has stopped being anything other than surreal. But I guess that’s what it has to be like because you spend your life dreaming this dream of being a writer and working hard to achieve this dream. Writing and writing and writing. You get rejections, you get knocked back, you keep on writing and you keep on dreaming. Then you sit in the audience and watch your play at the Royal Court and it all just gets very surreal because you are living your dream.

But then now I’m sitting at my desk working trying to get the scenes ready for Dirty Gifted and Welsh. Yesterday I wrote a paragraph and then sat back and re-read it, I burst out laughing and kept laughing for a few minutes because I was looking at it thinking – that’s either utter brilliance or complete bollocks and I really don’t know which it is. That’s the thing with writing – every time you start something new you have to find new ways of doing things. I could just churn out the same old stuff, the things I’ve got comfortable with but where’s the fun in that – if I wanted to do the same thing every day I’d work in an office. Who the hell would choose to that when you can live the dream?

Objects as inspiration

Collection of shells
 

As writers we often find the same themes and subjects feed through into our work. For me I know that always my work has to have a strong female character either as a protagonist or antagonist, the flaws of relationships feature predominantly, female friendship also heads up many ideas but also too there is subtler repetition of themes and metaphor. Feeling isolated from ones environment, not being able to find your voice, suppression of abilities occur as themes regularly in my work and I know that nature, my garden, water, accent and bodily functions have been plundered for metaphor quite regularly.

Recently I have found myself very specifically on a course of repeating either a theme or a source of inspiration. The flooding that wiped out so many villages near to me last year in particular Talybont started a creative bent that made me feel almost guilty that I had sourced so much inspiration from something that caused so much heartache. A feature film, a radio play,  a short theatre play and a full length theatre play are all in development in either my mind or on my desk as a result of it. The themes of flooding, destruction, hopelessness of man against nature just kept sparking more ideas and offering more for me to write. But then I think that is what we do we look at the senseless things about us and rewrite them so that we and hopefully others can make sense of it.

My last few projects though have found a repetition in a different form. I was approached by an artist Ruth Hogg to work with her on a piece for the Crash Test scratch night. She had an idea for an interactive performance theatre piece and she wanted me to write in response to her idea. Her idea was to create a mandala of objects that the audience could select and build. Each object would have a part of a story linked to it and based on the placing of the objects would be the presentation of dialogue. The audience would thus control the order of the performed pieces and also the emotional impact of the story. It was an interesting challenge to write in response to objects - those objects being a dead lightbulb, butterfly wings, shells, pigments, pebbles, driftwood, feathers, petals and seaweed. Ruth talked to me about stories she had thought of and then I went away and created two characters, and because I didn't have long then I inevitably pulled from my bag of writing tricks one of my predominate obsessions and a relationship in the process of breaking down emerged. I found writing around the objects a really useful exercise though, something that held the dialogue together, created metaphor and added layers to the piece.

The object focus continued though as I found myself writing a short audio drama for the Scriptography Productions project. I love the idea that objects are imbued by the history that surrounds around them and so I created a play with the ability to see the history of an object if she touches the object - she sees the joy and also the pain of thousands of stories embedded in objects and as such is cursed because there is not enough joy to overcome the pain the fills the world.

Then objects haunted me again when I asked to write for the Dirty Protest Theatre play-in-a-bag project. The remit being all the props for the play have to be in a bag. After a moment of inspiration about this I began a search to find the objects that people treasure most, the objects that they would save in a fire, the objects which with their loss would cause emotional devastation. And so again I've found myself responding to objects.

So if you're stuck for inspiration and trying to find an idea or maybe even trying to add more depth to a character try this as an exercise. Think of five random objects that your character would hate to lose, write about why they would be a loss, what is the importance of the object to the character. or if you're struggling with a scene, place a random object into it and let the characters talk about the object. Or take a look at the mandala objects - create two or three characters and create scenes which features each of the objects.

But also though think about what are your recurring motifs, themes and obsessions. It's important to know what they are and either embrace them as strengthening your voice as a writer or avoid them as a challenge to push yourself onto a new pathway of writing.

Cursed, my short audio drama for the EarCandy project will be available to listen to from 2nd June after 1pm here

Women in Wales who inspire me: Kaite O'Reilly

I am very lucky to have many females in my life in Wales that inspire me on a daily basis. It is undeniable that I respond to strong, opinionated, straight-talking women in my work and life. It inspires my work and invigorates my life. However there is one woman in particular whose work, friendship and mentoring has been insurmountable in terms of the inspiration it has given me.

As part of the first year of National Theatre Wales Kaite O’Reilly adapted Persians for Mike Pearson and I can still remember the chills the Messenger speech sent through me as I engaged with the words she had written spoken, on a small TV screen, by Richard Harrington. She deservedly won the Ted Hughes award for poetry for her adaptation, though she still denies that she is a poet even though the poetry of every single line of her adaptation takes your breath away with it’s richness of metaphor and rhythm and poetic eloquence.

Her next collaboration with National Theatre Wales, In Water I’m Weightless was stunning, not simply because of the depth of the imagery embedded in the writing and the force of the dramaturgy but also because you couldn’t leave the theatre without having had your views on disability radically altered.

Her knowledge of theatre texts is astounding and constantly reminds me that no matter how busy or how few hours there are in the day, as writers we should always be reading and seeing the work of others. The depth of research she undertakes for every project is mind-boggling, in writing Leaner, Faster, Stronger she became an expert on genetic and bio-engineering so much so that it was hard to remember she was a playwright and not a scientist. For Persians she read every single translation of the play including ones in languages she didn’t speak!

Her energy is simply frightening at times, on courses at Ty Newydd with her I watch with awe as she powers the group through a day of workshops then will be the last one at night drinking, laughing, singing.

She doesn’t sit back and wait for an agent, director or company to bring her jobs she creates ideas, develops them, she goes knocking on doors to secure the commissions or the funding to ensure that she is working on her terms and producing the work that she wants to write.

She works in collaboration with performers and directors embracing different styles of collaboration, performer led with Good Cop, Bad Cop, director led with Phillip Zarilli and John McGrath and the performer/director/designer/writer melds of the Llanarth Group work.

She debates on forum and panels about the development of new writing or new work but her strongest argument for why writers should be firmly embedded in the development process for performance is proved in her work. She proves with her work that writers should be part of the idea process, the development process, the devising process and the rehearsal process.

She cares fiercely about everything, a quick glimpse of her blog http://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/ and you will see her writing about disability, feminism, arts funding amongst a host of other issues whilst promoting the work of other companies and artists like Maya Krishna Rao, Sophie Partridge and Agent 160, whilst also providing inspiration for writers.

She makes me believe that I am a better writer and person then I probably am and it is in living up to her belief in me that I find my way through days when the writing seems too hard and the work seems too overwhelming and so become a better writer and a better person.

She has held my hand firmly, given me the occasional prod, shove and kick up the arse, through every step of my journey setting up and running the Writing for Performance group, setting up a theatre production company and as a writer working on my own projects. Even when is chained to her desk working to a deadline or even when she’s on the other side of the world she always takes the time to support, inspire, challenge and sometimes determinedly push me into action. I know that if I asked “how many women are currently being supported, inspired, challenged and pushed to write, direct, produce, create, do something by Kaite O’Reilly?” the list would be endless, and it wouldn’t just be Wales or the UK it would be throughout the world. Because I know it is not just me who is lucky enough to be firmly embraced by her support but a whole mass of women who are embraced by this very special writer, teacher and woman.

Spread the Word 3

In the session we began to explore structure.

Branwen Davies the Associate Tutor began with a small exercise on sketching out what happens in a scene.

The idea in this exercise is to focus on drawing out plot and character without thinking too much about the actual dialogue.

We were asked to create 2 characters, to think about the relationship between the two characters, think about the setting or location of the characters. We had to think of a conflict so that they want something from each other. We were told that all dialogue had to use no more than 3 words.

I used my two main characters from the play that I’m developing for the Spread The Word project effectively for the opening scene in the play.

Richard has just found out that she is using personal details of their life in her stand up comedy routine, Hedydd needs him to leave as she is about to start a group therapy session with clients due to arrive any minute.

We were given ten minutes to write the scene and I came up with the following,

R: Feel so betrayed
H: Stop whingeing.
R: How could you?
H: Get out.
R: How could you?
H: What’s the problem?
R: The problem!
H: It’s just jokes.
R: My life.
H: Our life.
R: It’s private.
H: It’s your fault.
R: It’s wrong.
H: They’ll be here.
R: I’m not leaving.
H: Get out now
R: Never again.
H: If I want/
R: /it’s over/
H: it’s been over
R: I love you
H: I hate you.
R: I hate you
H: I hate myself.

It’s easy to see how you can quickly create an outline for a scene moving things forward using this technique.

We then looked at scenes that everyone had written based on the overheard dialogues. It was great to see the individual voices emerging, the differences in approach and the things that had attracted each writer to the different pieces of dialogue.

We then began to look at the idea of Time and Space in a play; open and closed time, open and closed space. We talked about the difference that these impose on plays, such as the energy created by closed time but complications that come with closing time or the expositional demands caused by choosing open. Not forgetting disrupted time - two different timescales and disconnected time - different storylines happening in same space.

I have a tendency to head for disrupted and disconnected but at the moment I'm trying to force myself into one space and time so I'm closing them both off and seeing what happens.