…Which is another way of saying, I feel as though all the buses have come at once. Check out the news pages for a detailed update, but I have been extraordinarily fortunate the last few weeks and months to have great people working with my scripts, and I’m learning (I hope) a great splodge of stuff as I go.
A fortnight ago, two were being performed as scripts-in-hand, with audience (and of course, cast!) feedback. The scripts (Away with the Fairies and Water’s Not So Thick) are very, very different, and so were the rehearsal and performance experiences. I learnt an enormous amount from the actors and directors, and with Water, went through a good rite of passage: defending your intention, while being able (I hope) to adapt and bend, to find better writing, but to stick to your guns if need be. I am always impressed – and grateful – at how actors can get to the nub of a line so quickly, and in both cases, they had two days or fewer to get the snipings, the unspoken, the fun and the entertainment squeezed from the pages.
And then last week, the Ustinov Writers’ Forum ran its second Script Exploration Day – 4 scripts, a pool of actors, a lot of exploration. And these guys stuck their fingers deliciously and vigorously into a third, less developed, script which has been haunting me for a good couple of years, but hasn’t been allowed air time for about a year. After a great reading, there was much debate, and I come away with pages of enthusiastic notes, liking the thing more than ever, and hopeful for its future.
But first, I have something else to work on. Of which, perhaps, some more another day….
Gill Kirk, scriptwriter 