Gill Kirk, writer

Category: Learning

  • Quickies

    Oh, it’s the end-of-year madness, which, like all other things seasonal, comes early. First of all, a massive grins all round as Venue Magazine released its judgement on the year’s best bits, rating May’s 24 Hour Plays at Theatre Royal Bath, run by the great Shane Morgan at Roughhouse  as 2nd best play of the…

  • A voice is for….?

    “Tale Man tell me what’s wrong with my life, am I only here to question? No, sir, you are undoubtedly here to cajole and make suggestions.” Julian Cope – “These Things I Know” – ‘Black Sheep’ album Excellent day yesterday at the Soho Theatre, where they held (yet another) great training session for writers, in…

  • Inspiration & Invention

    I met a man who refused to read Keith Johnstone‘s amazing book, Impro. It’s a stunning book – my new bible, a discovery I rave about, which half the theatrical world grew up with (I say half; I mean actors more than anyone else.) I can’t recommend it enough, so that’s ’nuff said on that.…

  • Putting on work = growing as tale-tellers

    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…

  • The Ustinov Writers’ Forum Moves to the Tobacco Factory

    As you might have spotted if you read this blog regularly, I’ve been a member of a superb group of writers at the Ustinov. This group is now moving to the Tobacco Factory and this statement from the Forum explains the how and the why. If you would like to know more about what we’re…

  • Quality control

    I’m in one of those “funks”, as 1950s girls’ books used to call them – a mental fuzz, blur, mash or mess where I can’t see the woods for the trees or the good for the bad. Yes, it’s Draft Two time. The story so far: draft 1: too many pages of too much talk…

  • Take a big STEP

    When I was about two years old, I went to ballet and tap lessons.  My parents still hoot with laughter at the memory of me reciting ad infinitum, “take a big STEP, take a big STEP,”  as I practised my complicated routine by striding around the living room. That’s the posting’s title explained–kind of. It’s…

  • Keep the Buses Coming!

    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.

  • Trying the strange

    push yourself – write in a new way, or about something new, in a new format, or by throwing all your norms to the four winds.

  • Re-writes

    Oh, loathsome rewrites: the most important thing, and the hardest. They’re my main preoccupation right now – even though there are many budding ideas shooting their way through, and an incomplete full-length thing which is chewing the back of my brain. But without them, without nips and tucks, excision and the bin, the thing’s not…

  • Competition Fever

    I may well be talking absolute rot, but it seems to me that a great way to drive yourself to write drama and then get it looked at is to enter competitions. You’re less likely (in my probably naive view) to be wasting any credit you might have with producing theatres, and the deadline side…