Well, yes, being a writer is all very well, but you’ve gotta remember (and we can forget!) that it’s ultimately about getting the drama onto the stage. The work can be as beautifully crafted as you like, but audienceless, it’s meaninglessly mute.
I spent yesterday afternoon (+ will spend today and tomorrow) with the great cast from my piece at the recent 24 Hour Plays and Shane Morgan and Moira Hunt of Roughhouse Theatre. We’re working on the extended version of the 24-hour play script, exploring it as a script in hand. There’s something very special (as in “privileged”) in being able to do this. It’s a smart, smart team, with great questions and analyses of the play that far outstripped my original intentions.
Cannily, Roughhouse have told me I’m the dramaturg. Bang: immediate change of hats. They know me well: give the Kirk girl a job to do; don’t let her sit there as The Writer…Best thing they could say – make me look at the script with as objective an eye as I can right now.
So: today – time to peer over the edges, make words real and – simply – follow the sterling advice that has become a bit of a lodestar from fellow (but more grown-up) writer Emma Adams: “When we dare to deal with the material that we are most threatened by, we will grow most as storytellers.”
Gill Kirk, scriptwriter 