Winning makes you feel…

Alright! I admit it! I haven’t posted in ages; but as per normal I have a series of excuses.

1. My studies have got in the way (I had no idea doing an MSc in a subject I enjoy so much takes up so much of your time).
2. Work has stepped up a gear with loads of projects needing to be completed at the same time.
3. I’ve been acting in one of my plays!

And it’s point 3 that I want to concentrate on today. The Academy Players produced Denim from the 21st to 23rd of April this year. It’s fair to say there were some nerves in this production, as many of the principle actors had never stood on a stage before, there were fears they would never learn their lines – and advanced ticket sales were beyond poor (indeed, days before we opened there were discussions regarding pulling one of the nights).

But we opened on the Monday night and were delighted to have around 20 to 30 people in the audience. We were over the moon when our ‘newbies’ pulled something remarkable out of the hat, in that they played their parts so well, the other members of the cast we doing their best to concentrate on their roles; rather than stand back in shock at how well these newcomers were doing.

For the first time in my playwright career I saw the power of ‘word of mouth’. Sure advanced ticket sales were poor, but the second night saw so many people just pitch up at the door having spoken to someone that saw the play on the Monday. Then on the final night, where we only expected 15 people in the auditorium, we ended up with 60+! Just walking the bazaar’s in between productions all of the cast were hearing people saying “you’ve got to go, it was fantastic!” and one that stopped me dead was from a student attending the Advanced Command and Staff Course (ACSC). In this course there is a large academic element. At this point in the year they are required to submit an 8,000 word MA essay and a 15,000 word Defence Research Project. To say this takes up a lot of their time would be an understatement. I watch these guys daily stressing so much and challenging their time-management to destruction point. One such student explained to me:

“What with all this going on, the last thing I needed was to go and see some
amateur play. But seeing as the boys (two of the cast were ACSC students)
were in it, we reluctantly agreed to go along and support them.

And I’m so glad we did. It was great! I was cracking up from beginning to end. There
was nothing amateur about it – this was real theatre. I would have happily
have paid to see this in a ‘real’ theatre. I’m not joking, this was one of
the highlights of the course for me.”

Moreover for me as a playwright, the final night had greater importance to me. I was our adjudicated performance for the Royal Navy Theatre Festival. We had the great fortune to have Sonia Woolley as our adjudicator who not only made the cast and crew feel at their ease during the production, but gave amazing feedback to enable each of the cast to grow as actors and enable the production crew to make the whole experience of going to the theatre more enjoyable and more exciting.

On Friday night, we had the Awards Night where 19 awards are presented for theatrical endeavours. We walked away victorious! The Academy Players won:

Best Overall Production: Festival Champion
Best Director (Paul Graham)
Best Stage Set
Best Lighting
Best Technical Achivement
Best Actor (Stuart McQuade, playing Pete)

We also collected ‘Highly Commended’ awards for:

Best Supporting Actress (Tamsen Clark, playing April)
Best Female Newcomer (Melanie Wright Cooper, playing Hazel and Charlotte Causton, playing Zoë)
Best Male Newcomer (Brian James, playing Customer 1 and Nick Brittain, playing Customer 2)
Best Actress (Melanie Wright Cooper, playing Hazel and Charlotte Causton, playing Zoë)
Best Actor (Brian James, Customer 1)

My congratulations to all involved! It was a great run that truly entertained our audiences. But don’t just take my word for it… Chris Mills, our producer, has uploaded a 10 minute extract of the play on YouTube... have a look!

But the night didn’t end there. I had entered my new manuscript ‘Error of Comedies: Occupations’ in the Best Original Stage Play category. Winning was great, but the review given by Sonia Woolley took my breath away. Making comments like “A concept worthy of Ayckbourn…”, “Great commercial potential…", "Inspired…” made the process of writing worthwhile.

There has been a slight attitude within the Royal Navy Theatre Association that I play at being a playwright. I saw a fundamental shift on Friday evening. People spent the evening coming up to me and asking about my plays as they were thinking about what they had to produce to win the festival (seeing as this production brings my tally of winning the RN Theatre Festival to 3 times) and asking for copies of Error of Comedies: Occupations.

This has reinvigorated my interest in writing for the stage. I now know more than ever that I want to be a full time playwright. I have a few years left in the service, and now my goal is to find a means of making play writing my full time career when I leave.

Winning doesn’t just make you feel good for a few minutes, it can make you think about where your life is going… And what you are going to do to change it.

Panto and Publications

The last couple of days have been hectic – which appears to par for the course for me. Sometimes I wish for a quiet life, but I know that I would go mad if that were ever to happen!

Last night we held the preview night of our pantomime, Cinderella. Over 100 OAPs attended and turned out to be a wild, engaging and appreciative audience. They understood the minimal set, loved the characterisation and went mad for the dames!

All in all, it was a great night – we’ve just got the four real performances to get through and obviously I will keep you updated.

But I also managed to publish Error of Comedies: Occupations. So that’s book number 5 available at the storefront.

If you’ve been worried about staging a JaysPlay before (what with me being a relative unknown), this could well be the play that will give you the confidence to stage something then stage another. As this play is a collection of ten interconnected comic shorts, you could stage just one or two shorts to a small audience and then see the reaction my writing gets.

To prove the point, I had a number of the audience who attended the panto preview last night that remembered me for staging Prime Directive and Mark of a Gentleman at our theatre. The repeated question was ‘when are you putting another of your plays on here again? They were so funny!’

More on the panto tomorrow

Ding Dong Merrily On High

Okay, I admit it! I’ve been silent for too long now. But here’s why:

- I’ve been made the Entertainments Officer in the Mess that I live in. As you can probably imagine, the Christmas Season means that I’ve organised loads of socials – some formal and some informal. We’ve had Christmas dinners, Senior Non-Commissioned Officers Christmas drinks in our Mess (and after that event, you realise why we call it a Mess) and today we have the Officers serving drinks to our staff. You’d never believe how much organising that takes.

- Panto is now only a month away. We’ve just had our new lighting rig put in place and we’re in the process of hanging curtains and trying to put the lights in the right places. We’ve still got to build the set (as the materials we ordered are still not here!) and we’ve still to get all of the company in the theatre at the same time.

- Steven has given me the most impressive edit of the Error of Comedies: Occupations script I have ever received. I have now reviewed the script after his input and now have to reformat it so that I can publish it at Lulu.

- I start a Masters degree in January – with the first residential element starting Saturday 6 January 2008. When I saw the reading list, I nearly fainted! But thankfully I have been reading for just under a month and am taking extensive notes.

- My wife and I still haven’t finished our Christmas Shopping. Indeed, we were out yesterday and realised that we haven’t bought anything for each other!

So, not exactly the calmest of times. But who would expect anything less at this time of year. I can’t wait for the Christmas Holidays to come, just to have the chance to sit down with my wife and children and be a family. There isn’t the slightest chance of me getting any writing done over that period, but hell… It’s Christmas.

It just means that I have to get Error of Comedies: Occupations reformatted during the evening this week. If things go to plan (and if all the socials I have planned turn out well) it should be available by the end of the week.

That. That? That! THAT!

Sometimes things happen to a writer which makes them stop dead and look at what they are doing. Sometimes this reflection leaves you cold and wondering if you are as good as you think you are.

That happened to me last night.

One of my readers, Steve, sent me his very detailed comments regarding Error of Comedies: Occupations. He picked up unintentional spelling mistakes, made excellent comments regarding voice… and then highlighted the word ‘that’.

A wet fish hit me in the face. It was everywhere. So much of my dialogue was passive. So little of my dialogue had any passion. Nearly every instance of the word ‘that’ was redundant.

Steve had highlighted every redundant ‘that’ in green, so that the manuscript looked like an alien version of measles. I opened the original manuscript and did a global search for, what I now call, the word that shall not be named.

The strange part for me was the way it changed my mood. At first I was disappointed I was so reliant on the word. Then I became angry that I was so lazy to employ it so frequently. Then I saw my dialogue anew.

This was damned good stuff. When I read it aloud with all the words that shall not be named, it came over well and sounded real. When I re-read it losing the offending word, suddenly it came alive, had energy and pace.

But worst, was when I realised I had gone through this about 2 years ago. I recalled how I had opened all of my manuscripts and did a global search for the word that shall not be named. And again, I removed nearly every instance. So why had I forgotten that I over used it? Why hadn’t I searched for it before I sent it out to my readers?

But then again, what does it matter? Steve has put me back to where I need to be to develop my work. Gill didn’t spot it, but Steve did.

And thank goodness, as it means that Error of Comedies: Occupations is going to be better than I first thought.

But I don’t think that I’ll have it published by Christmas now… But who knows?

Finished?

Last Wednesday night I managed to finish the last of my ten shorts that make up ‘Error of Comedies: Occupations’. On a roll, I sat down and tried to work out what order they should be presented in.

Then something weird happened. If this were to be presented as a full-length two-act play, there were subtle links between each of the individual plays in each act. It was almost as though I had planned it.

I wish that I was that clever – but it must have been something sub-conscious that led them in that direction.

I posted on my Facebook group that I was looking for new pre-readers (a term that I created to indicate that you don’t need experience as a proof-reader, but basically just tell me if it works and point out any errors you see) printed a copy off for my committee of taste (my wife) and one of my finest proof-reader (my Mother-in-Law – with some degree of fear as she is a scary character and I had named one of the characters after her).

I received the manuscript back from my Mother-in-Law this morning and felt sick when I read her comments.

Not that she slammed any of the contents, but it was the fact that she picked up so many little errors that I should have spotted ages ago in my proofing stage. Stupid stuff like putting ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’.

I’ve even been contacted by one of the actors from the last production of ‘Denim’ who has quite a lot of experience in proof-reading saying that he was willing to have a stab.

I wanted to have this published before Christmas, but after a couple of comments I realise that I am asking far too much of my pre-readers for that to happen. After all, they are volunteers and they have other things to do.

But it made me wonder when a play is ever finished. When is it ready to push out to the public?

I realise that I am often too close to the script as I have poured so much time into it, that I read what I think is there, not what is really there (otherwise I would never have made the ‘your’ mistake). So how long do I have to plan for a pre-reading stage before saying enough is enough and publish the thing?

I guess I will work that out in time – or I may end up with an agent and they will employ experts to help me through this stage.

Until then, if you are interested in pre-reading my new work, get in contact… And I’ll await the responses from those that have the play at the moment.

Danger Close

It’s an expression that the US military use to describe when friendly troops are very close to an artillery target. But that’s how I feel about my current play.

I am now roughly 10 pages from completing it. So in 10 pages time, I can print it out and send it to my pre-readers. Once I have their opinions and make the revisions for the typographical errors, the script could well be published by the end of next week.

So what is the play? I believe that I have mentioned it before, but I’m that excited about this work that I’ll cover old ground:

The play is entitled ‘Error of Comedies: Occupations’. It is a collection of 10 short plays associated with people’s job, perceptions of certain occupations and attempts to move up the professional ladder. As you might have guessed with my style of writing, they are all comic plays and each has its own little twist.

It is also a very flexible play as you can use it in many forms dependant on the requirements of your group or theatre. If you are putting on a review, you could use on or two scenes as sketches. If you’re entering a one act festival, you could use 3 or 4 of them. If you want to present a full-length two-act play, you simply stage all 10.

If going for all 10, you’ll find that there is a subtle link between the individual scenes, which is explained in the authors note at the rear of the script.

I can’t wait to get down to some serious writing tonight.