Hello all,
So here is the first of my diary updates on what we are doing in the build-up to Daring Pairings 3: our third dynamic and experimental festival of new writing. Certain elements of the various projects have been going for a while, but it’s around now that we’re starting to feel it’s all gathering apace. Very exciting!
I’ve been thinking for weeks of some sort of catchphrase to use to sum up what we’re doing. But it’s not easy at all. It’s new writing. It’s collaboration. It’s bringing different voices together. But more than that, it’s pairing different ways of working – different approaches to theatre – even different art forms entirely. The best way we can envisage it is as a takeover: for two weeks we open up the building to dozens of different voices, they collaborate with us to make new work that does its best to shake the foundations. It’ll be clamourous and spontaneous, it won’t always be smooth or polished, but it’ll certainly be new.
This week. The Factory have been holding weekly sessions with writers for a number of weeks now: allowing the writers the chance to see their words made flesh instantly, as draft short pieces are acted out by the Factory actors and all possible permutations and interpretations explored. Writers have now used what they have gained from the workshopping process to produce short pieces to submit for feedback from The Factory. One of the tests of the pieces will be whether they could potentially be performed by actors of any age, gender, ethnicity etc, while keeping the writer’s intentions intact. The first feedback get-together was on Tuesday and the second is this coming Monday- the word is that there have been some very productive discussions, and The Factory are enjoying getting stuck in to a dramaturgical process (with their own unique angle of course). The Factory describe the process on their own blog which is well worth checking out: http://thefactory.wetpaint.com/page/Feedback+Session+1+Sept+2009. We are now only a few weeks away from choosing the final pieces for performance.
The Heat & Light young writers have now been selected, the senior writers are on board (April De Angelis and Molly Davies), and the project kicks off in earnest tomorrow when the two playwrights lead a workshop with their young collaborators. They have the initial theme of “Before and After” and can run with this as much as they like when bouncing ideas around. April and Molly will then go away and write ten minutes of story – it could be an end needing a beginning, a beginning needing an end, or a middle needing either - which they’ll send us next week! Then it’s up to each of the young writers to decide how to complete one of the two stories.
Nabokov are busy getting people on board for two collaborative projects, pairing a playwright with an exciting artist in another discipline. This may be a poet, a comedian or a musician; it isn’t yet confirmed who the artists will be, but I’m looking forward to getting the news very soon.
The Multi-Authored Play is steaming ahead as the five writers have been meeting (under Hampstead’s benevolent watchful eye) for the past few weeks, and have now turned in the first draft of their collaborative play. It’s fascinating to track how the tone of the piece changes subtly as different writers take up the thread of the story; while the majority of the scenes are written by two writers jointly (Samantha and Kieran, Kieran and Satinder, Satinder and Joel, and so on) so that it still feels quite fluid rather than unbearably disjointed. The next steps will be to refine and polish the script, making sure there are no jarring inconsistencies while keeping discernible the five different voices …and to think about how to conjure a flaming plane wreck on a bare stage.
Anthony Clark our Artistic Director will be directing Noctropia, the new musical by Judy Upton and Oliver Searle, to be performed by the Musical Theatre students at Central School of Speech and Drama. Tony’s been filling us in on the plotline, involving a modern-day man who lives out his dreams of empowerment through a comic book world of his own creating – until his creations break through to the real world. It’s looking like it will be quite sharp and very funny – and utterly different from the work we normally do here, which I guess is the point. We are really happy to have the chance to get “them over the road” into the building, in contrast to our usual baffled watching through the windows as they light fires in their back yard and literally dance in the streets. Tony is meeting with the students early next month so it will fully get going then.
That’s where we are. Phew.
Oh and the actual countdown - it’s 68 days. Me I’m almost counting the hours.
Corinne
