Cursed

Cursed by Sandra Bendelow. Image by Boz Groden
 

Cursed is an interesting one, a short play produced for the EarCandy project, an audio drama project from a web platform.

It was a really exciting project to be involved in, 13 writers exploring audio-drama, learning what works and doesn't by writing, recording and then presenting the plays. And also very importantly having the plays available so that anyone, anywhere can listen to them - for free.

But Cursed as a short audio drama was created from frustration. A story I'd wanted to tell but hadn't been able to find a way to tell it. It had been bugging me for a really long time. The story of the Bells of Santiago which I'd discovered on one of though random journeys on the web. You know the ones where you click a link and then click another, drawn along a pathway by interesting stories until there it was the Bells of Santiago.

Now bearing in mind that one of my writing obsessions is how objects become imbued with the history around them, a story about a set of bells that hung from a tower in a church in Santiago until a fire which killed over 2,000 killed destroyed the church in which they hung, at which point the bells were transported to the Gower to hang in a church for several hundred years before someone realised their origins and shipped them back to Santiago - yes that's a story which is going to interest me.

Izzy Rabey recording Cursed

It's a story about a horrible tragedy, fire and bells, so it always seemed to be a radio play.

I took the idea to a writing workshop with Kaite O'Reilly and used it as a base for writing exercises, imagining myself as the bell, voiceless, thousands of miles from my home, haunted by a memory of thousands of people screaming when they burned to death.

And yet still I couldn't find the way to tell the story. I still haven't. It's still there waiting for me to find a way in. I'm almost there but it's not quite there yet.

But in the meantime as I tried to think of an idea for a short audio play, the story of the bell came to me and I found myself creating a version of it, drawing some of the elements from it - Swansea, a church fire and then drawing some elements from one of my other writing obsessions - magic.

And so here it is a play about a girl and a bell, both cursed by a tragedy.

The bell magnificiently played by Robert Harper and the girl and every other character played by the amazing Izzy Rabey.

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

Getting my head around too many hats

I’ve been struggling to find subjects to blog about here for some time now and have come to a realisation that this blog doesn’t sit well with the work I am currently doing as a result it needs to change. Strangely I have been making the mistake with it that inexperienced writers so often make in their scriptwriting. I have been trying to force my voice into the subjects I think I should be writing about to suit the audience and market as opposed to just writing about what I want to write about.

In the years since I began this blog I have developed, thankfully, into a very different writer and indeed person.
I have set up and run a very successful writing group and launched a theatre production company. As a writer I am still treading the pathway described when I began the blog working on my scripts for TV, theatre, film and radio but also I have become increasingly interested in developing my writing practice for theatre along more collaborative and innovative digital platform based aspirations. My work is increasingly not just about developing myself as a writer but developing other writers and developing projects that allow my work and others to be produced.

The other thing I have realised is that the separation I created between the different aspects of my work, the needs to earn money through digital marketing and freelance project work, the running of the writing group and the running of the theatre company is less applicable as the strands merge and impact on what I’m writing, what I’m doing and where my interests lie.

You know that moment when you introduce yourself to people? I have three or four of those introductions in my head and draw on the most appropriate one according to the room. But in economically challenged world of fast changing technology where a unique voice is ever more important I need to recognise that my diversity is a positive aspect.

I can see that in projects like EarCandy for the writing group all those diverse aspects of me are required. I am not a writer on one blog, a producer on another and a digital marketing person somewhere else. I need to stop changing hats and recognise that I need a hat that suits all.

This week I have been preparing a tender for a digital marketing film project, writing a short radio play, designing a digital marketing course for creatives and submitting a funding application for a collaborative text/choreography project. I run two facebook pages, three blogs and two twitter accounts and I’m about to launch another blog, another twitter account and another facebook page.

But what’s important is that here on these pages I’m not trying to force myself into being the writer me but that I use this blog to just be me. I am very aware that though I talk to other creatives about the importance of making sure you’re on-line presence reflects your creative practice and your personality, I’ve not really been practicing what I preach, nag and cajole other people into doing.

And so a refreshed website and blog is needed here, I need to stop separating out the strands and let them merge. I am Sandra Bendelow and I’m a writer and producer. I run the Aberystwyth Arts Centre’s Writing for Performance Group for whom I’ve produced three showcases of work and the next project for the group EarCandy is an audio drama project from a web based platform which will include stories using social media as a platform. I launched a production company Scriptography Productions in November 2012 and produced a new play by Catrin Fflur Huws, To Kill a Machine, about Alan Turing which was presented at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Sherman Cymru Foyer and was also presented as part of a science cafe event at Swansea University. As a writer I work in all mediums, and through all those mediums my work is about gritty realism, narrative drive, physicality and the extraordinary. I am especially interested in interdisciplinary platforms including digital mediums. I also run a small company offering digital marketing services and courses for creatives and I am extremely passionate about social media both for marketing and creative output.

And though I will be blogging elsewhere about the Writing Group, about Scriptography and about my digital creatives work - here on this blog I’ll be sharing thoughts about it all including those moments when juggling becomes jibbering.