My Big Fat Playwriting Adventure
In which I take you behind the scenes of rehearsals for my one-woman show.
Some of you may know me as an author. Many years ago, I published a novel called The Pink Cage. But in recent years, I've embraced my inner diva and turned my attention to spoken word writing. And now I've woven all my spoken word pieces together to make a play.
The play is called People Wipe Me and it's about seafood chowder, woolly jumpers – and the price you pay for being yourself. I'll talk more about what it's about in future blog posts, because I've decided to bring you along for the ride in this blog as the play evolves.
Getting A Grant
Last December, I was lucky enough to get a grant from Arts and Disability Ireland for my play. Arts and Disability Ireland supports artists with disabilities to develop their practiae, and as I have wonky eyes, a fact I talk about in my play, I decided to apply.
The grant funded me to work with a marvellous mentor, Angela Keogh, who's a writer, director and actor. Without her, I would not be writing this blog post. Without her, I wouldn't have a play that I now feel ready to launch into the world. I could write an entire blog post about her alone!
This is the logo for Arts and Disability Connect, the grant I received from ARts and Disability Ireland. It’s in black and white, with two half-squares on the left-hand side at opposite angles to each other, and says the words Arts + Disability Connect.
We've now done five rehearsals together, and our schedule has withstood the challenges of COVID, bad weather and bank holidays. We've done our rehearsals at Garter Lane Arts Centre in Waterford and VISUAL Carlow Arts Centre. Turns out theatres are magical places to be, even when they're empty. You can almost taste the creative energy. We've one more rehearsal to go, so watch this space.
Behind the Scenes At Rehearsal
In our first rehearsal, we did a read-through; then spent a happy day improvising scenes from the play, adding movement to make them come alive. The added bonus of that is that it's much easier to learn chunks of script when you have a movement to go with it.
In our second and third rehearsals, we refined the script even further. We perfected scenes that we had already practised and we added movements to more scenes in the script. By now I was beginning to apply to venues to stage the play, so we evaluated my progress and the best approach to take with the venues we approached.
This is me rehearsing in a colourful room filled with sunlight. I am in the right of the picture, wearing a brown jumper, reading from a script.
I have applied to stage the play at the Dublin Fringe Festival, and part of our third rehearsal was taken up with discussing a lighting plan for the show if it's staged. I sourced a potential lighting designer, and she, Angela and I explored my options. Our final rehearsal will now be taken up with putting together the lighting plan.
Creating A Professional Video
As I approached venues, I realised the crucial importance of a professional video in helping me make a good impression on those venues. I had stated in my grant application that I would arrange for a professional video to be shot so I could document my progress. We had originally thought we would do this a the end of our rehearsal process, but we brought it forward, and our fourth rehearsal became a day-long video shoot.
This is a scene from my video shoot at VISUAL Carlow. I’m on the VISUAL stage under bright lights. I’m to the right of the screen, sitting on a chair, wearing a purple top and jeans. You can see a camera on a tall tripod in front of me.
Being filmed was an interesting process. It's true that the camera adds ten pounds, but we won't dwell on that. Patrick Bramley of ULab Studios filmed the video with patience, skill and care. The result is a video that captures both the joy of rehearsal and the spirit of my play. It includes three extracts from the play and a short interview with my good self.
So, what have these rehearsals brought me? They've been serious, but they've also been serious fun. We've had laughs; we've shared true confessions, and I have learned valuable stagecraft skills. Most valuable of all, I learned how to pitch to theatre companies so they'd take my play seriously, and I learned how to plan a theatre tour.
And that's where I ultimately want these rehearsals to take me – to wild and wonderful places, in Ireland and beyond.
My mentoring process with Angela Keogh is supported by the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect Scheme managed by Arts & Disability Ireland.
And if you like what you read…