Sunday 27 January 2013

Salt on Our Skin -- some pics









The script, from whence these things start... The reason I love writing for theatre because words can mean soooo much and be so powerful!


Our star, Aoife Moore, though not as you'd know her...












And then comes colour... We used early rehearsals to play with colour, light, movement, sensation, memory and touch...












THE PLAY:
Salt on Our Skin/ as part of the Collaborations 13 Festival organised by Jack Burdell Experience Theatre Company. Salt will be followed by two two other shows (High Five, Danny O'C from Risky Proximity Players and A Portrait of the Artist as a Younger Woman by Sarah Kinlan) as part of the package.
Total running time : 1 hour.
Drinkies afterwards might run longer!

THE DATES: Feb 26th and Feb 28th and March 2nd

THE TIME: 6pm

THE VENUE: Smock Alley Theatre, The Boy's School, a gorgeous and unusual venue...
Tickets from www.smockalley.com


Monday 21 January 2013

Roll up, Roll up! Tickets on sale!!

We have the dates for my new one-act play, SALT ON OUR SKIN - Feb 26th, Feb 28th and March 2nd at 6pm. Hope some of you can make it along!

Tickets are 12/10 euro and for that you get Salt and two other shows - High Five, Danny O'C from Risky Proximity Players and A Portrait of the Artist as a Younger Woman by Sarah Kinlan.

An hour of entertainment and talent and all of it new!

The venue is Smock Alley, The Boy's School- a really interesting space for any of you who haven't been there yet - and is part of the Collaborations 13 Festival run by the Jack Burdell Experience theatre company.

Rehearsals are underway in various venues around Dublin, with Aoife Moore diving into the role and director Antoinette Duffy exploring the text with her. I think interesting things are happening... Magic, maybe?!

Booking can be made through the Smock Alley box office at 01 6770014 or at their website www.smockalley.com. Just scan down to the date on which you want to come along and see Salt and the play will be waiting for you, with baited breath, trying not to get too excited until she knows you can come along!

And let's go for drinkies afterwards!

Friday 11 January 2013

In Conversation with Chris Nee on 25th

I've been asked to moderate an interview with the creator/ writer/ producer Chris Nee on the 25th at the Digital Biscuit conference. It's on at 4.30 and I'm really excited!

Nee's most recent credit is as creator of the animated series, Doc McStuffins, the show for 2-7 year-olds that's getting huge acclaim and that was made here by Brown Bag.

Can't wait to meet her.

This is a woman who created a tv show to demystify doctors and medicine for kids because her son, Theo suffered very badly from asthma - I'm over-simpifying, of course. I created Punky to make demystify special needs - again, a massive over-simplification - because of my step-son Darragh whose autistic, among other reasons.

Mind you, she also produced docs such as Deadliest Catch for Discovery (while writing Wonder pets for Nick) and has a fantastic CV going back to Sesame Street (associate producer) which is pretty awesome, while the longest production I've managed so far was a one-act stage play...

So I know she will be a really interesting person to interview. My only worry now is that there won't be enough time to find out everything she no doubt has to say!

Tuesday 8 January 2013

To all in the Creatives in Animation Network...

Happy new year, Creatives.

Let's hope this is a fantastic one for animation and that we are all involved! That whatever traumas happened to us in the writing/ animation fields last year become a funny anecdote in the light of new projects, new opportunities and fantastic new collaborations!

The Process Begins...

We start rehearsals on Saturday for Salt on Our Skin with the fabulous Aoife Moore as Eve. The auditions were humbling - a great group of brilliant and gifted actors who gave their time, talent and energy to us for a whole afternoon.

I'd like to thank them all sincerely - if only there had been six parts!

But now the process begins.... It's so exciting to finally begin to get this play ready for production, with a great director - Antoinette Duffy - and now Aoife. We don't have dates yet for the nights Salt will be on over the Collaborations 13 Festival but you have to come and see the result!!!

If you want more info on the Festival - 31 shows over two weeks - , try either http://www.fundit.ie/project/jb-collaborations-2013 (It's a FundIt scheme for the festival but also has all the background info) or http://thejackburdellexperience.wordpress.com/. (That's the inspiring theatre company who created the Festival.)



Friday 4 January 2013

Get that story down!

Write the cliche first, then recognize you just wrote a cliche and rewrite it.” - Pete Docter.

What a fantastic quote for the start of the new year!

How many times have you sat down to write or ached to create something brilliant but the thought that it might be rubbish, that you weren't feeling very creative or that you wouldn't be able to realise something brilliant enough allowed you to procrastinate?

And then you felt even worse and more frustrated -- and angry at yourself for wasting real writing time.

So there's Pete Doctor of Pixar, the man behind so many great films, saying it's okay to write rubbish first.

Once it's on paper, you can make it better. While it's in your head, unrealised, chased into corners by your own internal critic - and let's face it, that guy is usually the worst - there is nothing to work from and rewrite into something brilliant.

I was told at 16, when I said I wanted to write for the stage, that it was impossible to write the second play until you wrote the first.

So I lay on my belly in my front garden and wrote my first play. The subject was the bitchiness of an all girl convent school. It had a cast of 40, vivid and detailed character biographies such as, "Clare, a bitch" and it runs for about 15 minutes though at the time I thought it was an hour long!

Fortunately, my writing started to get better about four plays later!



Another piece of advice I received not long after -- and try to drum into students -- is that you have to FINISH a script/ story/ book/ screenplay. Even if it is all cliche's.

Abandon it half way and you might never find the confidence to start another one.

Mind you, planning the story out in a rough outline first at least will give you the confidence that it's a story you want to write. But sometimes, if you write fast, the excitement will carry you through to the end while outlining it in too much detail can leave the idea feeling stale.

What I have learnt is that if you get stuck, summarise those scenes and move on. You can go back to those sections once you've finished but the main thing is to get to the end!.

It's a good feeling and one you will want to experience again and again!

Happy New year!