Wednesday 25 February 2015

Opportunities.... 2015 is an interesting year!

Having spent most of Christmas trying to work out how to take better control over my working life, several interesting and unexpected things happened...

I was invited down to UCC's MA in Creative Writing to talk about Writing for the Digital Media (16th Feb)...

I've never done this before - it's still one of my newest and most exciting areas of work. And who was inviting me? Mary Morrissey, a wonderful writer I last met 30 years ago on Arlen House's - remember that women's publisher? - inaugural Women's Writing Workshops. Eavan Boland ran it, we even had a session with Seamus Heaney. He liked four lines in the middle of a 40 line poem; so, as I translated it, he liked 10 percent of my work!

Bonus prize - I got to hear Zadie Smith and Nick Laird (both very witty, funny and unpretentious performers and people!) reading at the Uni and then to join them for a wonderful meal  - there was even chocolate and chilli soup!  

In frustration, in early January, I put out a notice that I had two one woman one-act plays and got a rake of interest from fantastic actors, a couple of producers... Then I remembered I actually had a third - which then got interest as well, while the fourth one that Aoife Moore performed in Smock in 2013 suddenly led me to think "Festival of One-Act One-Woman Plays"! -- while two contacts led to two other plays being dusted off....

In the heel of the hunt, from one little Facebook message, I had six plays that people wanted to produce, one of which has a team around it and is applying for the Fringe Festival.

I also got invited to talk at the KeyFrame Festival run by Colaiste Dhulaigh's animation department and to design a couple of courses for Galway.

And all this came on top of the chaos that is my normal working life -- I'm guessing this is Karma - showing me that I work best when I am furiously juggling a dozen projects.

Now to go work on some dialogue for elves, some gameplay that will help children learn facial expressions, design a few new courses and some audition-workshops and make a very large cafetiere of very strong coffee!