![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's a funny thing, but in all the years I've been blogging, I don't think I've ever talked about one of my most common, most regular leisuretime activities; more weeks than not, I go to the theatre.
I always have been a drama queen; I acted at school, every chance I got, and then am-dram for a while afterwards. If I'd been better, I might have aimed at professional, but minimal talent plus maximal shy spells no career, and I knew that even back when. Besides, I was going to be a novelist. So the theatre was always fun-time, acting or applauding.
It was my dad who took me to the theatre, when I was a kid; there were probably pantos first, but the first I remember was a school production of 'Hamlet' (I grew up in Oxford, where schools do things like that). I must have been eight, give or take; maybe seven. Loved it, still remember it. And then a travelling theatre-in-education troupe did a show in our own school hall, in the round, with a scaffolding lighting-rig and improvised props and their own script and it was a wholly different experience and I loved that too, and have loved theatre of all sorts ever since. Doesn't have to be drama; anything that goes on in that box, the whole performance schtick. Dance, opera, musicals, whatever.
So, I go a lot. Generally for free, these days, hurrah: m'friend Gail gets press tickets, in pairs, and I am her steady walker. Press tickets mean good seats on opening night and complimentary drinks in the interval, often in a separate room, far from the hoi-polloi; which means we get to mingle with other local presspersons and occasional stars, which has its advantages above and beyond the evening. Hey, I met Matthew Bourne...
But ignore the fanboy squeeing. This week, I have been on three consecutive nights, to see Northern Broadsides' production (which means Barrie Rutter's production) of Shakespeare's Henry VI (parts I - III, remade into two plays) and Richard III, under the banner of 'The Wars of the Roses'. There are things to be said about the production, but I don't even want to start; this may be why I don't talk about the theatre here, to save this becoming a review slot that I don't have time for. (I don't tend to talk about the books I'm reading, either - same reason, maybe?)
One of Gail's fellow critics is a man we've come to know over the last few years, in that way that you do when you have maybe five minutes' conversation a week, most weeks: viz not well at all, but the simple timespan builds a sense of friendship. Enough, at least, that he came to my booklaunch a few weeks back, and bought a book, bless him; and he's just asked me to write a play for him.
For his troupe, rather. A one-act play with relatively simple staging, to be part of a double bill with one of his own. For tuppence-ha'penny and a beanbag, naturally. I have explained to him quite carefully that I am in desperate need of money and have no time, and we have discussed these issues in detail during this last week's worth of intervals, and I have of course said yes (see entries passim, on my inability to utter the word 'no').
So, that little interstice between my sending off draft one of 'River' and getting it back for major rewrites, that should have been filled with boldly plunging into the next book, will now be filled with a desperate scramble to produce an actable script. Which I have not done for a quarter of a century, and had never really intended or expected to do again.
At the moment it's called 'Winter Journey', though that may change (thinks: hmm, 'A Cold Coming'? Ooh, that's no bad thought, y'know...), and it's another contribution to that growing collection of pieces Chaz has written about people with Aids and their carers. If I can make it work, if Peter likes it, if if if...
I've been thinking about it for days now. I'm really excited.
I always have been a drama queen; I acted at school, every chance I got, and then am-dram for a while afterwards. If I'd been better, I might have aimed at professional, but minimal talent plus maximal shy spells no career, and I knew that even back when. Besides, I was going to be a novelist. So the theatre was always fun-time, acting or applauding.
It was my dad who took me to the theatre, when I was a kid; there were probably pantos first, but the first I remember was a school production of 'Hamlet' (I grew up in Oxford, where schools do things like that). I must have been eight, give or take; maybe seven. Loved it, still remember it. And then a travelling theatre-in-education troupe did a show in our own school hall, in the round, with a scaffolding lighting-rig and improvised props and their own script and it was a wholly different experience and I loved that too, and have loved theatre of all sorts ever since. Doesn't have to be drama; anything that goes on in that box, the whole performance schtick. Dance, opera, musicals, whatever.
So, I go a lot. Generally for free, these days, hurrah: m'friend Gail gets press tickets, in pairs, and I am her steady walker. Press tickets mean good seats on opening night and complimentary drinks in the interval, often in a separate room, far from the hoi-polloi; which means we get to mingle with other local presspersons and occasional stars, which has its advantages above and beyond the evening. Hey, I met Matthew Bourne...
But ignore the fanboy squeeing. This week, I have been on three consecutive nights, to see Northern Broadsides' production (which means Barrie Rutter's production) of Shakespeare's Henry VI (parts I - III, remade into two plays) and Richard III, under the banner of 'The Wars of the Roses'. There are things to be said about the production, but I don't even want to start; this may be why I don't talk about the theatre here, to save this becoming a review slot that I don't have time for. (I don't tend to talk about the books I'm reading, either - same reason, maybe?)
One of Gail's fellow critics is a man we've come to know over the last few years, in that way that you do when you have maybe five minutes' conversation a week, most weeks: viz not well at all, but the simple timespan builds a sense of friendship. Enough, at least, that he came to my booklaunch a few weeks back, and bought a book, bless him; and he's just asked me to write a play for him.
For his troupe, rather. A one-act play with relatively simple staging, to be part of a double bill with one of his own. For tuppence-ha'penny and a beanbag, naturally. I have explained to him quite carefully that I am in desperate need of money and have no time, and we have discussed these issues in detail during this last week's worth of intervals, and I have of course said yes (see entries passim, on my inability to utter the word 'no').
So, that little interstice between my sending off draft one of 'River' and getting it back for major rewrites, that should have been filled with boldly plunging into the next book, will now be filled with a desperate scramble to produce an actable script. Which I have not done for a quarter of a century, and had never really intended or expected to do again.
At the moment it's called 'Winter Journey', though that may change (thinks: hmm, 'A Cold Coming'? Ooh, that's no bad thought, y'know...), and it's another contribution to that growing collection of pieces Chaz has written about people with Aids and their carers. If I can make it work, if Peter likes it, if if if...
I've been thinking about it for days now. I'm really excited.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-16 01:27 pm (UTC)I knew he would; but - as you know - I decline to recognise it as error. To assert that "hoi-polloi" needs no article because 'hoi' meant 'the' in ancient Greek is as fundamentally wrong-headed as to assert that to say 'an opera' is solecistic in itself because the singular form is 'opus'. We are talking English here, neither Greek nor Latin; these words have been adopted into English, into our usages, and our grammar applies. That one was actually two words in the original and one was a plural is irrelevant.