Being Part Of Something Important

22 02 2010

Communities are important.

They’re the glue that keep us together.

They’re the places we can go to be ourselves and to learn who ourself is.

To make good work that means something,  you need to find your community and be part of it.

You need to sit down and talk to people about who they are and where they are.

You need to listen to what they’ve got to say.

You need to accept that lots of people will know more about things than you can ever hope to and that what they say will help you.

You need to leave your car at home and walk a bit – walking around and bumping into people can give you a better feel for a place than zooming through it in a car will ever do.

You need to understand that this process of discovery and acceptance is likely to be a long but interesting one.

Once you have accepted all this you can sit back and enjoy the ride.





Who Am I? No…Really…Who Am I?

1 02 2010

I am working on a play at the moment. It is called “A Little Voice A Long Way From Here”. I wrote the script but it is loosely based on a story by an American writer called Vendela Vida called “Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name”.

It is the story of a girl called Amber. When she is eleven her mother disappears. Six years later her father dies leading her to the discovery that he is not her father at all. This prompts her to take a journey to try and discover the truth about her family and, in doing so, also discover the truth of herself.

It is a funny thing when you write something. Especially a play. When you are writing you spend a lot of time with the characters so you feel that you know them really well. Then you start rehearsals and you have to hand the play over to other people. They say your lines differently to how you imagined and see your characters from a different perspective. When you see them doing this you realise that you don’t actually know your characters at all. They are strangers to you. You have to go out there and rediscover who they are.

Saturday was the first proper rehearsal for “A Little Voice A Long Way From Here” and the start of a new journey of discovery.