Live Theatre residency for Demeter In Winter – day 3

Whoosh! That went by quickly!

So today I read back the whole thing so far to Gez Casey from Live, who was kindly giving me the benefit of his considerable dramaturgical experience, and Matt Cummins, who directed my first show. And then they told me what they thought. Terrifying. The upshot is, it’s worth me continuing with it, and I have a set of very interesting questions to attempt answering when I’m in residence at ARC next month.

Matt thought you might be interested to know what I did each day, so if you have a nerdy kind of desire to neb about in my ‘process’, here’s what my To Do lists looked like…

Day One, 10am – 5pm

1. Set up different writing zones/locations around the room for different scenes/characters I want to explore
2. Physical and vocal warm-up
3. 30 minutes solo improv exercises – I used these ones – filming them
4. Do I know my characters and their back stories? Talk about it to camera
5. Free write Marian and Vic, their stories, bodies, and attitudes to rape – on large paper at the “M’ and ‘V’ writing zones
6. Free write monologue each for M and V, in notebook
7. Read monologues out loud to camera
8. Film myself doing V monologue on-page, but moving, finding her body
9. Film myself improvising V monologue off-page
10. Type up dialogue I had written on the train up from Hartlepool
11. Walk around the room, stopping and free writing on large paper at several different writing zones, for different scenes
12. Create a series of scene cards using old Rolodex lined cards
13. Upload video and write blog

Day Two, 10am – 4pm

1. Physical and vocal warm-ups
2. 30 minutes solo improv exercises
3. Read whole script out loud to camera
4. Type up yesterday’s improvised Vic monologue by watching the video back
5. Transfer large paper free-write notes to notebook, continue to expand on them in a loose way
6. Look into open source field recordings of birdsong
7. Annotate scene cards with sound effects needed
8. Research peonies for a poem in Marian’s voice, do some writing towards it
9. Write blog

Day Three, 10am – 3pm

1. Physical and vocal warm-ups
2. 30 minutes solo improv exercises
3. Re-read script
4. Annotate scene cards with research needed
5. Lay out scene cards in the right order, identify gaps
6. Type up new dialogue created from V and M monologues
7. Tweaking and formatting script
8. Read-back and take notes
9. Write blog