illustrating milk wood….
much more to come but if you would like to ‘see’ milkwood (and buy your own little slice of llareggubiness) come along to the Addison rd open day on May 16….or to the Eveleigh Artisans market down at Carriageworks on June 6.
So all 89 pages of Under Milk Wood are sloshing about in my head. In order to make room for them I have pushed out all the American state capitals, your name and my immune system. Now the great challenge of making everyone of those glorious characters lovely, in a three dimensional, ‘gosh, that mean lady is so different to the other mean lady’ way begins. I’m equally excited, terrified and manic.
olafur eliasson…..sensory genius
Check out this video of the water
Vanessa and Nat and I have now been working on UMW in earnest for about four months. We’ve blocked out scenes, we’ve made audio and visual accompaniment. We’ve modified the audio so that it flits from speaker to speaker in motion with girls chasing boys, Vanessa has painted over images of maps and cows and made them move, we have given voice and life to over 30 of the 60 odd characters, Nat has designed a set and is making a bath. I have performed a snippet for a bunch of social workers attending a highly tenuously linked seminar.
Bet we have no venue.
This isn’t a bad thing. It’s not practical that’s for sure. But it’s not bad. It’s kind of fascinating…
Working on a show with no venue, no deadlines, no impending reward is like having a deeply passionate long term affair with a hermit. Or maybe like being a pregnant elephant.
We are working on UMW because we love it and we love playing. Sooner or later someone will pour a bucket of water on our heads and our lustful glazed eyes will crystalise into clarity and pragmatism and we will get down to the other side of the business.
But for now, you can find Nat sketching on the floor and Vanessa digitalising images, both keeping a half eye on me rolling around on the bed talking to myself on any given weekend.
We had the final writing session on Friday. Apart from the tiredness of the group, it went reasonably well, with Zoe and Ashley (another friend from school) reading the script. The new structure worked well, and people were mostly very happy with how the script had developed. There were a few extra things that need to be changed (too much narration now, still can be funnier in sections, subtler in others), but otherwise we felt that we’d done as much as we could at a writing stage, and now it really needs to get up on the rehearsal floor and play around with the playing of it. Chie-Hoon had another suggestion, that there was a scene missing, one were we see Jane in ‘full flight’, highly emotional and fighting for what she wants. I think it was difficult for me to write this scene before the creative development, because I wasn’t convinced I knew what Jane wanted, but I think, now, I do know. At least, I know what the Jane Austen I have created in this show wants, which, I think, in the end, (oh so many qualifications) is that she wants to write. I don’t think its a straightforward desire at all, and shouldn’t be played as a natural, obvious or absolute choice and I think the play shows that she could easily have gone either way, but that, for better or worse, that was the decision she made.
I also got a chance to read the play through myself with Amy (woman who is directing the show in September), which was really exciting, if not a little exhausting (even more grateful for Laura, Ash, Zoe and Missy now I’ve gone through the process of reading it out loud myself!) and the tap gallery is booked and a deposit paid. Its all go, go, go, which is exciting and utterly terrifying! But I’m doing a good job of keeping the terror at bay.
Tomorrow I head to Cairns, and it will be very interesting to see what advice people offer up there at the Interplay script festival, as they have been looking at a much earlier draft. The play could take a completely different turn to how Bambina has taken it, which could be curious… or just bloody confusing! I’m sure I’ll have fun, no matter what happens.
The creative development has, over all, been a fantastic experience. I’ve had the opportunity to play around with a few different people’s ideas on the show, solidified my own aims for the show, as well as my own ideas of what its about, and gotten much more used to having people talk about my work (as well as getting better at talking about it myself!). I’m delighted with how the work has progressed and can’t thank Bambina enough for their help.
Have been finding it difficult to get focused on writing. It was stressful not having much time in between writing sessions, but now I think that maybe that stress was useful because it made me write as opposed to now, when I have heaps of time, but when I sit down to write, I end up watching ‘The Making of Cranford’, instead (I justified it by saying it was also about adapting 19th century novels/writers into a dramatic piece… long straw, considering it was Elizabeth Gaskell, a huge ensemble piece, and TV).
It’s been great when I do come up with new material, though, and I think I’ve been lucky in that I had space to add stuff, rather than having to cut things out. Its much more fun, coming up with new material, instead of deciding what is really not needed/not very good. I’m hoping this weekend to print out all the sections and have a play around with the structure, following some advice from Harry and Chie-Hoon last session. I’d also really like to see if I can add in a section dealing with Cassandra’s fiancee, Tom Fowle, who died overseas. Because she never married after Tom’s death, it seems a really great contrast to the situation Jane faces in the play (a great love as opposed to an opportunistic marriage). Then again, if the relationship between her and Tom Lefroy is strong enough, maybe its not necessary.
I’m also going to look over some of the flashbacks and really clarify why they are there, as last session, Chie-Hoon asked some tough questions (as he is want to do – very beneficial for making sure you really know what you are doing and why you are doing it, instead of just putting in things because you like them) regarding some of the juvenilia that I had added.
On another note, found this encouraging Tommy Murphy opinion piece on the smh.com website this morning,
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/why-the-145offbroadway146-run-is-the-playwright146sfriend/2009/07/27/1248546675525.html
Its all about how getting a play up in a variety of different Sydney spaces can be beneficial, and allow a new piece of writing to develop. Its made me feel even more strongly that I should use the Newtown Theatre’s October booking as more of a ‘see-how-it-goes’ run, rather than looking at it as the final product. I’ve been talking it over with Missy, and we both thought submitting it for the Old Fitz late sessions for next year would be a good idea, and I’ve been in contact with the Jane Austen Festivals in both Canberra and Bath (!!!), and they both seem enthusiastic about possibly having the show run during their festivals. So, that’s all incredibly exciting!
I’m a bit behind the times. We had a second session last Wednesday, which went really well. Laura (a friend of mine from school) read the whole play, and, with additions, and no time for music, movement etc. it came in at 45 mins, which is pretty darn good, I reckon! It was so fantastic to have the play read by someone else and get some distance from it. There were some wonderful discoveries with some of the ideas that were thrown at me in the first writing section. In particular, it was suggested that a section in which Austen was describing a previous conversation with her potential fiancee Harris Bigg-Wither (most fabulous real name ever) should be written as if it were a novel. When I was writing it, I thought it couldn’t possibly work, but after having Laura read through it, its become one of my (and the group’s) favourite sections. I’ve got another week and a half before the next writing section, but haven’t yet had a chance to write anything new (nor add to this blog), and unfortuantely, I have to run off now, but will write more when there is more to report!
Phew.
Feel utterly exhausted.
Have just come back from 2 and a half hours of looking at the scrip with 6 kind and helpful people: Katy, Zoe, Harry, Chie Hoon, Missy and Laura. Am feeling a little overwhelmed by it all, as well as excited, anxious, delighted, apprehensive, amused, terrified… you get the picture.
The session was fantastic and has given me a lot to work on, though, I think I’m going to have to give it a day or two to let everything that’s been said settle in my brain before I can sit down and do any serious work on it.
Luckily, tomorrow is full of lovely things with friends, such as pancakes and cocktails and movies at Dendy Opera Quays. So, I can rest my head a bit and not worry about it. Then I have a free Sunday to get out all my notes and attack the script.
What is really encouraging is that everyone feels more can be added in. I was such a Nazi with my cut and paste at the beginning of the year, that I can afford to be a little more lenient with myself now.
Talking the script over with people has also given me a chance to clarify what issues I’m really trying to address. People were very quick to pick up on the fact that I hadn’t quite made up my mind on certain topics yet, which is good, because its going to force me to be totally honest and actually clarify my own opinion. Up until this point I feel I was tip-toeing round the opinions of various academics, wary of offering anything too personal, or different, or controversial because I didn’t have a PhD in English Lit.
I’m feeling optimistic about where its heading, but am beginning to think that rushing it on in October may not be the best idea…. We’ll just have to see what I come up with in the next 5 days and how the next session (or two, if we get another) goes.
I am digging about. I don’t want to disappoint Ness and Tim who are excited by the prospect of authentic, tangible, personal Welsh things. My dad has a red suitcase under his bed. It sits next to the axe handle which is his weapon of choice for intruders – only slightly less threatening since he ‘shabby chicked’ it along with the walls. Now it is ‘rustic’ white, with uneven, mottled country style appeal. The red suitcase contains everything my dad took home from Wales when his mother died. I don’t think he has looked at it much, I think it gives him the heebie jeebies. There is certainly nothing of value in there, but there may be some interesting trinkets we can play with. I am fascinated by dad’s report cards from the early 1950s. Not sure if we can use them, maybe they can be No Good Boyo’s… At any rate, I intend to make this show as difficult for my dad to watch as possible.
From our preliminary research, Ness and I have been struck by one thing in particular. It seems as though Dylan’s lyricism and fancy much closer to the Ibsen ‘mirror to the audience’ than I thought. I have always been aware of the sense of allegory to every small Welsh town, the allusions to the Welsh Methodist sermon and preacher, the lilt of the language reflected in the metre and various other tropes, gleaned from a literary and cultural analysis. But it wasn’t until Ness began to read books and I began to reflect on some of the stories from my own family that I began to consider Under Milk Wood as an anthropological report.
My grandfather who worked in a foundry, rode a motorcycle and had epileptic fits on the highway, who was gentle as cotton and loving as a mug of leek soup had a medal. In WW2 he kissed my grandmother goodbye and boarded a cargo ship, bearing potatoes across trade-lines. When the ship was attacked, many cold Welsh sailors ducked and weaved and struggled and were killed. By potatoes. When shells hit the ship they burst open the hundreds of wooden crates, and potatoes flew like bullets in every direction. My grandfather was thrown overboard. Flailing about he managed to find one side of a wooden crate, which he used as a raft. Alone, on this rotting piece of wood he floated away to a magical place called Jamaica.
Now what happens next did not pass the ethics committee. Grampy Joe arrived in Jamaica and stayed there. For months. No letters home. He just…. partied. In all likelihood there are a smattering of Lodges terrorising the Caribbean somewhere. When he went back, he found his own house, his wife’s house blown up. At this point my Grampy Joe and Nanna Margery think each other are dead. Eventually they find one another and live in anxiety and poverty for the rest of their natural lives. But for his services, he was given a medal. As far as I know it’s the greatest contribution a Lodge has ever made to a war effort. Not dying.
At the advice of Zoe, who has just read the script, I’ve been looking over some more of Austen’s letters, which will hopefully provide inspiration for some alternative endings. Problem is that they’re so delightful and entertaining I’m not quite sure where to start trimming! Here’s an excerpt from one of my favourites, to her niece Fanny:
‘You are inimitable, irresistable. You are the delight of my Life. Such Letters, such entertaining Letters as you have lately sent! – Such a description of your queer little heart! Such a lovely display of what Imagination does. – You are worth your weight in Gold, or even in new Silver Coinage. – I cannot express to you what I have felt in reading your history of yourself, how full of Pity & Concern & Adminration & Amusement I have been. You are the Paragon of all that is Silly & Sensible , common-place & eccentric, Sad & Lively, Provoking & Interesting. ‘
I’ve also been looking over some of her juvenilia (things she wrote as a child) to try and bulk out some of the flashbacks that I’ve already written into the script. I’ve mainly being looking at her History of England, but there are a variety of other stories to look over. The History of England was written at 16, and is full of Austen sass:
‘Henry the 8th: It would be an affront to my Readers were I to suppose that they were not as well acquainted with the particulars of this King’s reign as I am myself. It will therefore be saving them the task of reading again what they have read before, & myself the trouble of writing what I do not perfectly recollect, by giving only a slight sketch of the principal Events which marked his reign.’
I hope to start cutting some of these things together over the next few days and put into place a few of the other suggestions I have received before we have the first session this Friday.
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