Tag: Playwriting

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Two New Plays.

Eismas

Hurrah for a less didactic blog post!

Yup, this is a (shock-horror) creative update.

It seems like while since I’ve spoken about my creative writing, and this is mainly because I’ve been working on one particular thing, and wasn’t certain I had the go-ahead to talk about it. But I definitely have that now, so here goes.

I handed in the first draft for my first ever proper commission this Monday. It’s going to be part of a showcase of new writing, of 4-6, 15 minute newly commissioned pieces called Word:Play, and produced by the excellent (well yes I would say that, but I genuinely do think they are excellent) Box of Tricks Theatre Company. The pieces are all written in response to a single word, and the word for this Word:Play is obsession.

Here’s what I’ve been writing:

AWAKE

Awake is a monologue for two voices- the play happens somewhere between real and not, focussing on the relationship between avatar and identity. J0n thinks he is real, but he is Flo’s avatar. Flo has been playing an MMORPG until passing out from dehydration. She awakes, and meets J0n, finding herself in what appears to be a kind of digital limbo. The meeting is initially an affable (if confused) one, but as it emerges that only one of them can leave the space it becomes a fight for survival. Flo is dying, and to survive, J0n has to convince her life is worth living.

There have been several deaths and child-neglect cases related to MMORGS over the past 3 or 4 years. This short piece explores the identity politics, obsessive personalities, perfectionism, and the revisionism/escapism involved in the hardcore gaming community. It asks why people want so much to disappear from ‘our’ world, questioning how much we invest in our online/virtual presences, and how real our online personas are. The place in which the two characters are trapped could be some kind of digital limbo, but it could also be Florence’s mind. In this space J0n is realer than he has ever been, and Florence is dying. It becomes clear that Florence has a choice to make – between her obsession, and her life. What does she really have to go back to?

The first draft went… well it went the way of most first drafts do for me, it felt like my brain was bleeding. But I got it done, and in time. There’s a lot to work on – in character, and my ideas about the universe of the play etc. But the first step is there, and (considering how time is flying at the moment) it won’t be long until I have my first fully kitted out production (this Winter, probably in the new year, in London).

In other writing news Scary Little Girls Productions have offered me full a weekend in November to workshop Eismas (PDF), the first draft of which they seem really interested in, possibly for presentation in London just before or after Christmas. This is bloody excellent news, as I really do need a proper actor/director reading of that piece to love and hate it enough again to redraft. Plus to get it in front of an audience, to get them asking questions and poking holes would be very useful. Spec-fic theatre is still quite a rare thing, so in a lot of ways I’m writing into the unknown – I seriously appreciate feedback and debate about my writing, for me, theatre should be a testing ground as much as it should present polished ideas. So yes, here’s to general excitement.

And finally, in shamless-plug fashion, do check out the latest shows from both Box of Tricks and Scary Little Girls.

I’m not kidding, do it.

Hurrah for a less didactic blog post!

Yup, this is a (shock-horror) creative update.

It seems like while since I’ve spoken about my creative writing, and this is mainly because I’ve been working on one particular thing, and wasn’t certain I had the go-ahead to talk about it. But I definitely have that now, so here goes.

I handed in the first draft for my first ever proper commission this Monday. It’s going to be part of a showcase of new writing, of 4-6, 15 minute newly commissioned pieces called Word:Play, and produced by the excellent (well yes I would say that, but I genuinely do think they are excellent) Box of Tricks Theatre Company. The pieces are all written in response to a single word, and the word for this Word:Play is obsession.

Here’s what I’ve been writing:

AWAKE

Awake is a monologue for two voices- the play happens somewhere between real and not, focussing on the relationship between avatar and identity. J0n thinks he is real, but he is Flo’s avatar. Flo has been playing an MMORPG until passing out from dehydration. She awakes, and meets J0n, finding herself in what appears to be a kind of digital limbo. The meeting is initially an affable (if confused) one, but as it emerges that only one of them can leave the space it becomes a fight for survival. Flo is dying, and to survive, J0n has to convince her life is worth living.

There have been several deaths and child-neglect cases related to MMORGS over the past 3 or 4 years. This short piece explores the identity politics, obsessive personalities, perfectionism, and the revisionism/escapism involved in the hardcore gaming community. It asks why people want so much to disappear from ‘our’ world, questioning how much we invest in our online/virtual presences, and how real our online personas are. The place in which the two characters are trapped could be some kind of digital limbo, but it could also be Florence’s mind. In this space J0n is realer than he has ever been, and Florence is dying. It becomes clear that Florence has a choice to make – between her obsession, and her life. What does she really have to go back to?

The aesthetic of the piece is one of flickering poor reception on a TV set.

The first draft went… well it went the way of most first drafts do for me, it felt like my brain was bleeding. But I got it done, and in time. There’s a lot to work on – in character, and my ideas about the universe of the play etc. But the first step is there, and (considering how time is flying at the moment) it won’t be long until I have my first fully kitted out production (this Winter, probably in the new year, in London).

In other writing news Scary Little Girls Productions have offered me full a weekend in November to workshop Eismas (PDF), the first draft of which they seem really interested in, possibly for presentation in London just before or after Christmas. This is bloody excellent news, as I really do need a proper actor/director reading of that piece to love and hate it enough again to redraft. Plus to get it in front of an audience, to get them asking questions and poking holes would be bloody useful. Spec-fic theatre is still quite a rare thing, so in a lot of ways I’m writing into the unknown – I seriously appreciate feedback and debate about my writing, for me, theatre should be a testing ground as much as it should present polished ideas. So yes, here’s to general excitement.

And finally, in shamless-plug fashion, do check out the latest shows from both Box of Tricks and Scary Little Girls.

I’m not kidding, do it.

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Flipping the Script Follow-up

I thought I should do a quick follow up entry to the Flipping the Script live-stream issues. In case you didn’t see, insufficient planning/equipment meant that the exciting streamed new reading didn’t actually work until the last 20 minutes, and at that point was running very poor video, and appalling audio quality.

I found this really disappointing for many reasons, but most particularly because as my role as a freelance online comms bod for Theatre Writing Partnership, I’d really been pushing the event, and felt we’d been let down, and worse, had let others down, when it turned into such of a shambles.

This was my (ranty) reaction as I left the mini event we’d set up at the TWP offices:

Listen!

It turns out they had been trying to use a webcam over a shared wifi connection to run it, and according to a friend who had logged on earlier, had only tested it an hour previously. Although admittedly the reaction audiobooed above is very ranty, the whole experience has reminded me of the importance of emphasising the need to make the tech part of a project, rather than adding it on at the last minute or treating it as a gimmick.

Of course I’m sure Talawa/The Young Vic aren’t going to jump at my height-of-anger offer of interference (why would they), but I was pleased to see that Talawa did respond to the comments in the chat-area of the livestream:

I would like to thank you and at the same time apologise sincerely for the loss of our streaming feed yesterday. Unfortunately, we were relying on WiFi and once the studio doors were closed the signal went with it. We subsequently established a permanent cable link but it was late in the reading. We are grateful for your comments and the very lively exchanges. We learned quite a lot from you and are now ready to hit the ground running with a boosted up, infinitely more reliable, and multi-camera streaming on 8th October. So please join again, or email your comments and/or introduce yourself to me christopher@talawa.com.

I’m really glad that the first knockback hasn’t phased them, and hopefully the 8th of October will provide the brilliant experiment in online new-writing dissemination that the 8th of September failed to deliver. This has been a reminder on my part not to make assumptions about companies’ knowledge or tech-capabilities (for better or for worse), and by far the most positive thing about the experience is that they have revised their approach, and are trying again. Kudos.

Also, on a personal note, my subsequent rant in the mini-gathering at the office about the need to integrate and investigate technology in theatre got me another invite to talk at a conference! That makes three in total, before I’ve even officially started my work. Though always surprised to find people think my rants are of exterior value, it’s thrilling to see that other people are thinking about these things too, and makes me really excited about the prospect of my research. Good stuff.