Tag Archives: challenge

Some thoughts on failure and risk

Posted on by
1

I first started writing down thoughts about risk back when we were doing the workshops on Tajinder Singh Hayer’s North Country. It seems appropriate that I’m finally getting to finish them a week into rehearsal for the full production.

Back then we had committed, no I had committed, to showing a script in hand performance at Mancunicon (the largest SciFi Con in the country no less) and at Upstart’s DARE festival at Shoreditch Town Hall. We had three days to prepare and no time in the Con venue to rehearse; we were just going to have to go in there and do it. When I say we, I mean my amazing actors, Natalie Davies, Philip Duguid-McQuillan and Kamal Kaan. There was a very, very real possibility that it wasn’t going to work at all.

So why do it at all? Why put all of us through the stress? After all, we could have not committed to the showings and just had a couple of stress-free days on the script. Or opted for a much more laid back rehearsed reading instead of attempted to stage the entire play in three days.

The point was to try out my idea for the production, an idea of how the play worked, in front of two very different audiences. To learn from them, in advance of a production, whether the ideas were any good. And (breathing a huge sigh of relief) it did work, the audiences, of widely disparate experience, backgrounds and nationalities, understood and responded to the play. Of course, as a risk it was a calculated one; I had a great cast and a good script.

Still, it could have gone wrong. And even now, with a refined script and thankfully the same great cast, it could still go wrong. We are running the play in The Wild Woods (basement of the old Marks and Spencer on Darley Street, Bradford). It’s a longer run than Freedom Studios has done in Bradford for a while, trying to reach new audiences.

All of which has made me think again about what it means to try and to fail. A lot of times failure is talked about its through the perspective of eventual success (you’ll never succeed if you don’t try), or is somehow glossed over (fail again, fail better). Because failure can be horrible, stomach-churning, palm sweating, skin crawling awful. You put yourself out there, a part of your heart and soul exposed to the world and it wasn’t good enough.

Any creative work, in fact any kind of work in which you are doing something new, you risk failure. In fact, it is pretty certain it will happen at some time. In work, in love, in life. A lot of what I do, as a director, a dramaturg working with artists, is to take that fear off. Yes this could fail, yes that would feel awful, but it will be ok. You will be ok.

You can’t create out of the fear. Deep down you know what it is you want to do, want to try. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not, but it’s what feels right for you. And if you don’t know it yet, you have to listen to yourself until you do know. Sometimes that’s about knowing what is the right thing to do, sometimes it is about knowing when it is right to say no, walk away. That can feel as big a failure as anything. Will I ever get commissioned again, employed again, loved again? Maybe yes, maybe no. There are no guarantees in life. But if you make your decisions from fear not desire, then you have to live with what you know you don’t want. We have to have risk in our lives, have risk-takers in our world, or nothing will change. Just entropy slipping us back further and further.

But, here’s the thing. We can only take those risks, face those fears if we feel the safety net is there. That if we fall we will be helped up. So this is what I think we all need to do for each other, as friends, as artists, as communities, as a society. We need to say that failure is not a shame, it’s a necessity. The welfare state is not just for those who need it but the basis on which we can all rise up. We can be there for each other, hold out our hands, our belief, our love. Say it’s ok.

You will be ok.

Advertisement

Success, failure and the Fraud Squad in your head

Posted on by
1

Hello folks,

apologies yet again for neglecting this blog. It has been, as they say, busy.

I left West Yorkshire Playhouse just over a year ago – this should be an anniversary blog but I am as ever late. I’m not sure what I imagined but I think having more time to contemplate dramaturgical type subjects and write up thoughtful pieces at my leisure was in there somewhere. How wrong can you be…

Looking back over this year what have I done? I directed a one woman show written by Adam Z Robinson and performed by Rachel Ashwanden called Conscientious about bullying. One audience member said it had touched her soul and another said it was more straight forward than the Germans. That was nice.

I was dramaturg on a production of Boi Boi is Dead by Zodwa Nyoni working with the phenomenal Lucian Msamati as director. That was hugely satisfying having started that play off on a young writer on attachment scheme I put Zodwa on in 2011.

I revived the production of Nine Lives also by Zodwa performed by Lladel Bryant about a gay asylum seeker in Leeds and we’re taking that out on a tour around the country.

I wrote a few things for Exeunt – a couple of them were not too bad (though I’ve learned I am definitely NOT cut out to be a critic. Not even Michael Billington’s imaginary friend)

I wrote a some successful funding applications for other people – including for Ramps on the Moon a project that I hope and believe will make much needed change in the employment and visibility of disabled people in the arts.

Ok so enough of that. Thing is even when I put that all together and look at it and can say well yes that has been quite successful, it hasn’t always FELT that way. A lot of the time it has felt more like struggle, more like failure. I think many of us can relate to this – when other people look at what we are doing and say you are doing really well – but inside it just feels very hard.

I read this recently

Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer’s Art of Asking I STRONGLY recommend you read this book. Especially if you have anything to do with making, funding, performing art. It talks about many things but the point I want to pick up on today is: she talks about the Fraud Squad that lives in our head. The one that tells us we are not good enough, don’t deserve this, shouldn’t dare to call ourselves artists. I think if you are any kind of artist you need that voice in your head – questioning yourself is part of making the art. It gets to be a problem when those voices drown out all others.

Those of us whose job it is to support others in the process (*friendly wave to directors, dramaturgs, stage managers and lots of others*), we spend a lot of time, maybe most of the time, enabling others to work with the Fraud Squad in their head. Making the questions and doubts useful ones, moving them aside when they are not useful, eventually letting them go.

It is important that we also get support sometimes ourselves. For all the support that we give to others (and they in turn can pass on) has to come from somewhere. We all need our support structures, be that from friends, family, trusted colleagues or just our dog that never lets us down.

So this is a message to say asking for help and support is as important as giving it. That it is the give and take that forms strong, real relationships in art and in life.

Only don’t ask me to follow my own advice. Because I am utterly rubbish at it.

(And though I doubt she’ll read this very, very best wishes to Amanda about to give birth to her baby – there’s a lot of giving and taking right there)

Braving the blank page – where does inspiration come from?

Posted on by
Reply

Day 4 into my writing challenge and I am really wondering why I started this. Which is pretty much what everyone thinks at some point in a writing project. Why did I start this? What am I doing? Where is inspiration going to come from?

Aaron Sorkin put it best (thanks to the person who pointed me in his direction this morning):

“I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, ‘You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I’m not your agent and I’m not your mommy: I’m a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?’ and I really, really don’t. I’ll go peaceable-like.”

I so know that feeling.

Apparently one of his methods (sorry Aaron if this is nicking your ideas but as you also said “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.”) is to take the piece of paper and write Blah, blah, blah, blah blah kiss. Or Blah, blah, blah, blah bang. Or whatever. It is a similar technique to some visual artists who do a wash or pencil shade over a blank piece of paper just to get over the fear of making the first mark.

Here are a few more techniques – all stolen of course – for getting over that fear of the blank page. If you have any of your own do add them to comments below.

1. Automatic writing – based on The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron the original method involved having paper and pen by your bed and first thing when you wake up write for a set period of time everything and anything that comes into your head. You are putting down on paper whatever words cross your mind, trying to make automatic the flow from your subconscious onto the paper without your self-critical, self-censoring self getting in the way. I’ve known people who have done this and part of their automatic writings to become part of a play. It might just be a useful exercise to unblock and get you writing. It doesn’t have to happen first thing in the morning (especially if like me you wake up to the sound of angry bird video played in your ear by your 4 year old). Anytime you can pick a word, or image and use that as starting point for a minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes automatic writing. It can be a bit like warming up before a run, getting the mental and physical writing muscles working.

2. The Pinter Method. This is taken from his Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth and Politics. It is worth reading or listening to the whole speech but here is a short extract:

“I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’

In each case I had no further information.”

Apparently he would get the idea for the first line, or image, which he would ascribe to character A. He’d then see what character B would say, then what character A would say in return. Through writing the situation, the characters would emerge ‘through shadow into light.’ Again it is letting your subconscious take over from your conscious (self-critical) self.

3. The Chris Thorpe method – or at least a method I have heard Chris employ in a workshop. Type the title at the top of the page, then your name, make sure you are using ‘your’ font. Hit enter a few times, type your characters name, hit tab.

Then ask yourself questions, who are your characters what age are they, gender, how are they dressed, do they have a bag with them, what is in it, where did it come from, where are they, what are they doing there, how long have they been there etc etc. keep asking yourself questions and you’ll find that your subconscious will keep producing the answers. You’ll find you know a whole lot more than you thought you did. Ask yourself what is important for these characters, something momentous that has happened or might happen. Then write a scene between them that doesn’t mention it at all.

4. Similar exercise to the above. This can be particularly useful if you are stuck on writing a scene which is about important issue X. And you keep trying to get them to discuss X but it comes out flat and stilted. Just start writing them doing something very ordinary, making tea, cleaning, making the bed. Make sure they don’t refer to X at all. If X is important to them that it will keep surfacing in the dialogue. This is also a good exercise for subtext.

And before you know it, you’ve started, the page is full of words. And they’re your words, it doesn’t matter if they’re not quite the right ones yet, what matters is that they’re there.

Till tomorrow.

Being not just doing

Posted on by
2

How, HOW, did it get to be 9.30pm again? Massive props to all you writers who make yourself the time to write. Yes I know I have other jobs as well but then so do a lot of you. Huge respect to all working away at your computers and notebooks right now.

I’m re-reading Keith Johnstone’s Impro again. It’s a book I read at least every couple of years because every time it reminds me about what is important. In everything I do, whether that’s directing, talking to a writer, being in rehearsal, especially any form of teaching, I need to be there. Actually really there in the room, part of and responding to what is happening. I’m not there just to impart my knowledge, though some knowledge might come into it too. I’m not there to show people how clever I am. I am there to enable other people to create, to make the space where that creativity can happen, to let them make the space where our creativity can happen. It reminds me again that what I do is not about fixing things so they are ‘right’ or ‘correct’ but making things live, spontaneous and fun. When you are not just reproducing what you ‘know’ but part of genuine creation, and collaboration, in that moment.

That’s all I think I’ve got for the moment. But will return to this idea again at some point.

Till tomorrow.

Writing, parenting and reasons to be grateful

Posted on by
3

So it’s got to 9.20pm and I realise I haven’t fulfilled commitment to write something everyday on just the second day. Nearly fell at first hurdle but no, here we are. Writing.

And the reason I haven’t written anything all day, at all, is because Tuesdays is the day I have ‘off’ with my twin four year old boys.

Update: have just had a long, good and necessary phone conversation but it is now 10.45pm and I’m knackered. Plus I know I’ll be up at around 5.30am with the four year olds.

This is for artists with children – anyone who doesn’t like these kinds of blogs do feel free to stop reading now. Many years ago before I had mine, when I was still trying to get pregnant (TTC in online shorthand) I was addicted in horrible, compulsive way to parenting articles. Then I had three miscarriages and the fascination and compulsion grew. I wanted to shout at all the women (and they were mostly women – now there’s a lot more men) writing funny, lighthearted pieces about sleepless nights and teenage tantrums. I wanted them to know how lucky they were.

Then, just when I’d sort of reconciled myself to the fact that it might not happen for me, it did. I had my daughter, then not even 16 months later, twin boys. Three children in 18 months. Certainly wish fulfillment.

And given my history, it felt, feels, impossible to complain (publicly at least) about any of it. Especially knowing that many, many people were, are, will always be in the place I was meant I was very conscious of always being very grateful for the joy and privilege of being a parent and (trying to be) an artist.

So I am grateful. Truly, really grateful.

Grateful and exhausted by every 4am, 5am, 6am alarm call.

Grateful and hot-flushed cheeked ashamed of dragging two wailing screaming flailing 4 year olds out of the shops (again).

Grateful and heart hurting guilty as I peel small bodies off my legs as I go to work, sounds of ‘don’t leave me here, Mummy’ ringing in my ears.

Grateful and mind numbingly bored by the endless toilet training.

Grateful and wondering how you find anytime to do anything that isn’t ‘work’ or ‘childcare’.

And of course grateful for all the cuddles, kisses, jokes, stories, games, joys of loving, caring for, getting to know three brilliant, emerging characters who are my children.

So to other fellow artists with small children, yes this is hard. Sometimes it is ok to say it is hard. Hard to be an artist, hard to be a parent, hard to juggle both. To say you do BOTH things for love and one love does not exclude the other, it adds to it.

Right that’s all I’ve got for today. Hope it makes sense. Back again tomorrow…

The right writing habit

Posted on by
1

I’ve realised in amongst all the busy stuff I’ve been doing (bit of dramaturgy, bit of directing, a whole lot of fundraising) that I have failed to give this blog some love and attention. And in fact I’ve failed to give writing, and writing about writing, some love and attention.

One of the pieces of advice I give out when working with writers is to write: write often, write everyday, don’t worry about what it is you’re are writing but just get into the habit of doing it regularly. Like anything else you do, the more you do it the better you get.

So I am taking my own advice. For the next week I’m going to write something for here everyday. Even if it is very short. Even if it is not very good. Even if I write pages and delete everything except the words ‘I tried’.

So feel free to drop by to see how I get on. Words on encouragement welcome too. And join in with your own writing challenge and let me know how you get on.

Let’s go.