Playwriting, directing and competitions
I had a short play in the local "Short+Sweet" competition this week. Short+Sweet is an international competition that sees multiple short (under 10 minute) plays performed in competition against each other - only requirement is that they must be done in under 10 minutes (including any set changes). There are sessions all round Australia and around the world in India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.
It's a piece I'd written before for "The Logues" (another short play competition which was more anonymous, with a gentle heats-and-finals process and therefore, a safer place to start working). It didn't win anything, but we got an invite to Short + Sweet out of it. The guy who'd directed it for the logues wasn't interested in moving it, nor was one of the actors, but the other actor was keen. And, as writer, I was keen enough to do the re-direction and re-casting.
It is freaking weird to direct your own stuff, particularly something as personal as this particular short play (it's about an internet connection that goes wrong as a person becomes engrossed in all the web-data available about the person they're interested in and becomes slightly obsessed - Live Journal gets a shout-out!) In directing it, it became a much darker play - what I'd originally intended as a light-ish comedy about the old adage "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" shifted intentions so that I was able to describe it, quite accurately, as "one man rapes his conscience".
So, we didn't get in the finals.
I am proud of the work that I did, although I found it weird to take compliments about it (in some ways a lot of the good stuff is due to the replacement actor, who is both a friend and an extraordinary talent). This may be to do with the "never having done anything artistic worthy of praise before 30" disease... I was doing other stuff, committees, paying off a house...
And I am disappointed that I didn't go further (having seen some of the work that got through to the finals .. yes, I can agree with a lot of it, though there's one performance piece about a guy in his bathtub that is everything I loathe about self-indulgent claptrap - to add to the offence, they borrowed the stool that is our set without asking and I have to go back and get it tomorrow after the finals). I had those errant dreams of invites to other festivals in other cities - maybe even being asked to write for Neighbours or Home and Away (or, you know, my own very good TV series that is nothing like either - but I'm realistic, there's more jobs for the first two options). But nup.
But I did get to spend a lot of good time with one of the actors who's a friend. And I did get a lot of compliments. And Ben thinks I'm talented.
I kinda wish that side of my head that spots all the "you didn't write that sentance properly, it doesn't quite do what you want to do" bits was a bit quieter. And I kinda wish that I was able to accept that people did say they liked the piece, quite a range of people. But at the same time ... there's an awful lot of people who want to be writers, and throwing myself on the bus with the rest of them is probably going to lead to a lot of "not getting published/performed/commissioned" misery. So maybe this is a dream that is best left constrained a bit.
It's a piece I'd written before for "The Logues" (another short play competition which was more anonymous, with a gentle heats-and-finals process and therefore, a safer place to start working). It didn't win anything, but we got an invite to Short + Sweet out of it. The guy who'd directed it for the logues wasn't interested in moving it, nor was one of the actors, but the other actor was keen. And, as writer, I was keen enough to do the re-direction and re-casting.
It is freaking weird to direct your own stuff, particularly something as personal as this particular short play (it's about an internet connection that goes wrong as a person becomes engrossed in all the web-data available about the person they're interested in and becomes slightly obsessed - Live Journal gets a shout-out!) In directing it, it became a much darker play - what I'd originally intended as a light-ish comedy about the old adage "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" shifted intentions so that I was able to describe it, quite accurately, as "one man rapes his conscience".
So, we didn't get in the finals.
I am proud of the work that I did, although I found it weird to take compliments about it (in some ways a lot of the good stuff is due to the replacement actor, who is both a friend and an extraordinary talent). This may be to do with the "never having done anything artistic worthy of praise before 30" disease... I was doing other stuff, committees, paying off a house...
And I am disappointed that I didn't go further (having seen some of the work that got through to the finals .. yes, I can agree with a lot of it, though there's one performance piece about a guy in his bathtub that is everything I loathe about self-indulgent claptrap - to add to the offence, they borrowed the stool that is our set without asking and I have to go back and get it tomorrow after the finals). I had those errant dreams of invites to other festivals in other cities - maybe even being asked to write for Neighbours or Home and Away (or, you know, my own very good TV series that is nothing like either - but I'm realistic, there's more jobs for the first two options). But nup.
But I did get to spend a lot of good time with one of the actors who's a friend. And I did get a lot of compliments. And Ben thinks I'm talented.
I kinda wish that side of my head that spots all the "you didn't write that sentance properly, it doesn't quite do what you want to do" bits was a bit quieter. And I kinda wish that I was able to accept that people did say they liked the piece, quite a range of people. But at the same time ... there's an awful lot of people who want to be writers, and throwing myself on the bus with the rest of them is probably going to lead to a lot of "not getting published/performed/commissioned" misery. So maybe this is a dream that is best left constrained a bit.