Last week I had a fantastic intensive development session with the National Theatre of Scotland on my play, MOUNTAIN, as a writer with their current 'Breakthrough' scheme.
Led by the sharp and focused director Amanda Gaughan, working with five outstanding actors - Nicola Roy, Kathryn Howden, Ali Craig, Neil McNulty and Scarlett Mack - across two days we mined an early draft of the story to find it's strengths and weaknesses.
I was really impressed by the limitless support in the room; everyone's passionate commitment to creating what Amanda termed, 'a shared vision'. When you've been working on a piece in solitude for some time, it can be nerve-racking to expose it, especially when ye ken it's raw. But my feelings of anxiety quickly dissipated on sensing the warmth of the creatives present, and their eagerness to contribute. It was incredible to harvest the wealth of experience across the team, the sensitive minds who each brought their own truths to the individual characters they were playing, while working as one to keep the themes that I'm outlining with MOUNTAIN, at the fore.
The safe environment encouraged me to delve right into discussions, and let loose the mad motives and abstract inspirations for why I'd written certain lines of dialogue, for example. Shedding light on my intentions helped the actors to translate content, which wasn't working, into something more accessible for an audience. And at times, witnessing how Amanda improvised with the material was revelatory, as she and the actors freely rearranged sections of dialogue, riffing off each other to create a sound-scape of words. As a non-musician it felt the closest I'll get to jamming. It was drama jamming.
As a writer, if you're doing your job well-enough, at some point the story you're writing will form a pulse, and often then it's fate is set - though it can remain obscure to the very writer. With practice though, you learn that if its pulse is strong enough, the story will take you where it needs to go. If you listen to it, it will reveal itself to you.
And this is exactly what these two days were all about. The story took an epic journey at a speed it just couldn't travel with me driving it alone. The development was all about exploring options and finding solutions that I can take forth for the next draft, and by the finish I felt as though I was gifted keys to a number of intriguing rooms, many of them closeting some really tragic dark skeletons!
I am indebted to the NTS and the creative team who were so generous. Thank you VERY much!
Now to attack Draft 3...
Please beast, be quick and clean.
Please beast, be quick and clean.
