Task 2b & 2C – Journal Writing Experience / Reflective Theory Task

Barbara and Pete rehearsing for 'There's No Tomorrow'

Now, I’ve taken a major liberty here and decided to incorporate both parts 2b and 2c. I found I was repeating a lot of the same stuff and really didn’t need half of it.

Well my most recent experience with performance was Shakespeare’s Island but I’ll take it back a bit to February. It was a week of performances at Chickenshed that was called “The Emerging Writers Week”, this was where a few members of the company wrote individual short stories based on personal experiences or just themes we wished to explore. I have always enjoyed writing but found the idea of have a group of people looking at and watching my work played out for the first time in front of a public audience rather daunting. I was told back in July that this was going to be put on and had to think of a subject to explore. Considering that I wanted to explore the themes of integrating different age groups and creating work as one unit I found myself leaning towards subjects about old age and the difficulties faced. I based the story mainly on my grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and the effect it has on the whole family. Much of the script I took from actual conversations I have heard and been a part of with my Nan. I put off the writing for as long as I could and then eventually got a finished script by January. I was constantly battling with the ending. Obviously, 20 minutes isn’t a huge amount of time to tell a story that you want to contain moments of a mixture of different emotions. I was still not 100% convinced when I handed in the final draft but unfortunately, deadlines had to be met and there was nothing much I could do about that. I think In future I would make the best possible use of my time when writing and wouldn’t just settle for things. It may be frustrating but it’s so much more rewarding when at the end you have something you are actually proud of, rather than a feeling of “bah, that’ll do.” In the end it was done and I called it "There's No Tomorrow."

Me and Ashley as Alan and Mark in Bromance.

The next step was also learning lines. As it was a festival type set-up with there being multiple performances each night, I had been chosen to also act in Micheal Gavas’ play Bromance. This was the most challenging step for me as not only was I terrified for my own work being brought to life but now also had to worry about lines. Bromance was a great process and it was only a two-man play. We got a good audience response and the only thing I would like to chance is the length. We had great rehearsals and really worked hard making the characters the best we could. It’s just a shame the play was a bit longer. If it had been an hour I think we would have been able to add even more of these layers and really build their relationship. The only thing I would like to really change about this element of “Emerging Writers” would be my ability to do quick set changes. I imagine I looked like some kind of sluggish monstrosity lugging those blocks around each night. One show I did actually make a conscious effort to be a little more graceful. This I found was an opinion shared by Donald Schon. The whole thing of not only reflecting on your work after but also during. I think this is one of the most important elements of reflection and can be used to much better a performance.

The performance of the piece I wrote was a little different however. It was not really up to me to change as people had begun rehearsing. I read about David Kolb’s reflective cycle and tried to create my own to show this writing process but I found there were too many spin off ideas and I ended up with lines all over a page and no real rhyme or reason. Sometimes I think cycles can be applied if it is a specific pattern that can be followed but with writing there are so many changes that you would be going back over and making stuff you have already done completely irrelevant. I don’t know cycles and diagrams annoy me in general and so I suppose I have a bit of a vendetta against poor old Kolb now.

After watching the performance I was very proud of those who played various members of my family. We had two of Chickenshed’s artistic staff and also someone who was once there and left to pursue a career in film-making. Barbara who played the part of my Grandmother was fantastic and she had previously attended the adult theatre workshops in September of  2011. I was very happy to be able to get a cast of people from all over the company to play the parts in this and it really has helped with my understanding of the writing and performance process. I think In future I would allow myself more time. I wouldn’t be so lenient with deadlines and would try and actually use them to help me. I am planning on writing something for next years emerging writers week and hopefully I will be able to stick to my guns and use what I’ve reflected on to better enrich my work and the quality and which I should settle for.

Paul