Goldfish rehearsals - Week One

And we're off.

The cast and crew of Goldfish gathered at our rehearsal room on Monday for the first readthrough of the script and a look at the final model box. Having only had the text for a few days, the actors were brilliant and it went as well as these things can.

It's always a terrifying moment when you hear the script for the first time. You can never be certain that the words that worked in your head will work in other people's mouths. But the rest of the team laughed and were quiet in all the right places so that's a good start.

The rest of the week has been a refining of the text and design. I've done another four (or is it five) drafts since Monday and on Friday we had the entire the National Theatre of Scotland team in to hear the final (fingers crossed) readthrough before we lock the script next week.

My personal highlight of this first week was going to visit the pupils of St Brides Primary. Attentive and funny and curious, they gave us excellent notes on the first scene. The best question came from an 8 year old boy who looked the director straight in the eye and asked seriously: Have you got a dog?

Short stories to download

The excellent AudioGO have two of my short stories to download. Both were originally written for BBC Radio 4.

Songbirds is read by Robin Laing and is my (rather bizarre) response to the theme of Twitter.

Elvis In Prestwick is read by Laura Fraser and is a story set on the day of Presley's only visit to the UK.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish

So it's official. I am now working on the new National Theatre of Scotland production of 'The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish' by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. I wrote a first draft two weeks ago and this week I am working on the second. It's a(nother) quick turn around as we begin rehearsals at the end of the month. It's just a bit too exciting.

We begin previews at The Beacon in Greenock on 25 April before touring Scotland. I will post more info regarding dates when I have them.

(Pic taken from original picturebook illustrated by Dave McKean)

Spare Room Blog

I wrote a blog for the Scottish Refugee Council about The Spare Room. You can read it here.

The Spare Room on BBC Radio 4

Ach so I've been busy and haven't had time to update this blog. Lots of exciting things to report but firstly and most excitingly is that my new play, The Spare Room, will be broadcast on Friday 22nd February on BBC Radio 4 at 2.15pm.

We have a great cast in Babou Ceesay (as Michael) and Candida Benson (as Stephanie) with my frequent partner in crime Lu Kemp directing. I wrote the play in three weeks in Scotland in January and we recorded the first weekend in February at Broadcasting House in London.

The reason for such haste is that it was a 'rapid response' commission where I was asked to write a play about a current affair or news item. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun to get a piece written (and good!) in such a short space of time. Last year I wrote a 15 minute play in a week, this year a 45 minute play in three. (Yes I'm now fearing the call to write a two hour drama in a month!)

The piece of 'news' I chose as my inspiration for The Spare Room was the Stop Destitution Today campaign by the Scottish Refugee Council. I would obviously love it if you listened to the play but whether you do or not, please check out the petition here and think about signing.

With thanks to Suzi and Jamie at SRC for their time and notes.

In the country (part two)

So the first draft of The Spare Room is complete. I sent it last night to my director, Lu Kemp, and she will give me notes today.

The reason for the swift turn around is that this is a rapid response play. I was commissioned to write this a week before Christmas and we record it on February 2. That's roughly 6 weeks to research, write and redraft. It's the same length as an ordinary Afternoon Play (45m) for Radio 4 but its written in response to a current event.

As I've said before I love writing quickly. It feels the most honest and fun way to write. The tricky bit is to get it right.

I have two days left in the beautiful countryside of Dumfries and Galloway. I will have to make the most of it.

In the country

Retreat (noun) 5. A place of privacy; a place affording peace and quiet.

I have gone into the countryside to finish a play. I’ve had a manic few first weeks of the year (plus Christmas was pretty darn busy) so I decided to take myself off to a cottage on the Dumfries and Galloway coast. It’s quite an intense piece and I felt like I needed to immerse myself in it.

(I would add a picture here but it’s been raining all day so just imagine some wet, bare trees and fields and the sea. It’s pretty gloomy too).

I usually like writing in a noisy place. I write on my sofa in my living room, with a bustling Glasgow street beyond the thin, single-glazed window. I write in cafes. I write in libraries (yes libraries are noisy now. I don’t know when that changed but it has. My local library is insane). I have an office but that is shared so there are always lots of folk to talk to. Plays are about the world and people living in the world. So I like to be surrounded by it when I’m writing.

But sometimes the noise gets too much. I have something like four or five projects on the go at the moment and a very limited time in which to complete them. Above all else I need to think.

In 2006 – before I moved to Glasgow – I lived in a cottage on the Kent-Sussex border, close to where I was born. It was a converted stable that was rented out as holiday cottages. It had a tiny bedroom, a tiny living room, a kitchen and a shower. It was on a small farm and I could hear cows snoring and cocks crowing. Once I woke to find a large deer, looking in through my bedroom window. I loved it.

That was also the year when I became a ‘proper’ playwright. I had my first commission for both theatre and radio. But it wasn’t the commissions that made me ‘proper’.

What I had never realised, what no-one had ever really explained to me, was that being a writer you had to be alone. Nobody could do it for you. There wasn’t someone to sit with you and motivate you or do your research or type. Before I had always written in my spare time. After school or uni, late at night at home, while I was working in KFC or in the Futon Shop. In the cottage – all by myself – I was suddenly confronted by a blank page and nothing else.

The country is a brilliant place to think. The quiet and the landscape and the big skies allow me to actually hear your own thoughts. In the city there is so much to distract your attention – wonderful and brilliant things often but still things – that you never get to hear what you brain is telling you.

I love living in the city. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But I feel like I learnt to be a playwright in the country. In my tiny cottage, I had nowhere else to go except my desk. The silence forced me to think and to put those thoughts down on paper. And, best of all, I learned to enjoy it.

I’m in the country for a week. I'll let you know how it goes.