A Play, Wot I Have Wrote
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The folks at Christchurch (just off Queen's Road in lovely Leicester) have been really good to me over the last couple of years. They've been accepting of the bizarre agnostic in their midst asking questions and pointing out the plot holes in Genesis (there's a doozy, but it's a subject for another time).
Becca and I have been kicking around an idea for about a year now, and wanted the opportunity to test it out to see if it was workable. Turns out yes. Here's the skinny:
Most churches hold a carol service. Most churches will build that service around the Christmas story, because it's a good service to take the whole family to. The kids get the story that they're familiar with and the congregation gets to sing songs they know in a register that they can probably manage. Everyone wins. To mess with this otherwise perfect formula, Becca and I wanted to insert something modern, fun and entertaining. Paul, the Minister, let us and so t'other weekend I sat down and fired up Trelby (the rather ace open source screenwriter) and started typing.
The result? Fun. I really enjoyed the process of literally bashing out about an hour's worth of play over the course of a weekend. Of course, I didn't just throw out a perfectly formed piece of drama on the first go. Not a bit of it. I'd been tinkering with the thing for a week or so and scribbling down short scenes -at work, during breaks and occasionally when I should really have been paying attention to other things (like managers). The end result has made me very happy.
I know there are flaws, and rewrites beckon. But the process of starting to work things out like casting, and how many costumes will be needed, and where we might get a film crew from (ambition! I don't lack for it!) and a thousand other concerns, is really fun. I know that in the weeks to come it will turn into a chore, so that's got to be figured in, but right now, just at this moment, a thing that I made for a lot of other people to enjoy is taking shape.
My plan is to fade into the background a bit and let the actors and the director take over. I want to see what happens when they get hold of the script and start to play with it. That's quite an exciting notion.
When it's all over, I'll park the finished script here with an appropriate Creative Commons Licence and some footnotes. Think of it as DVD extras. And if someone films the whole thing, I might put bits of that up too. We'll see. There will be more notes as we go, because I'll be either very grumpy or breathlessly excited about the whole thing.
Becca and I have been kicking around an idea for about a year now, and wanted the opportunity to test it out to see if it was workable. Turns out yes. Here's the skinny:
Most churches hold a carol service. Most churches will build that service around the Christmas story, because it's a good service to take the whole family to. The kids get the story that they're familiar with and the congregation gets to sing songs they know in a register that they can probably manage. Everyone wins. To mess with this otherwise perfect formula, Becca and I wanted to insert something modern, fun and entertaining. Paul, the Minister, let us and so t'other weekend I sat down and fired up Trelby (the rather ace open source screenwriter) and started typing.
The result? Fun. I really enjoyed the process of literally bashing out about an hour's worth of play over the course of a weekend. Of course, I didn't just throw out a perfectly formed piece of drama on the first go. Not a bit of it. I'd been tinkering with the thing for a week or so and scribbling down short scenes -at work, during breaks and occasionally when I should really have been paying attention to other things (like managers). The end result has made me very happy.
I know there are flaws, and rewrites beckon. But the process of starting to work things out like casting, and how many costumes will be needed, and where we might get a film crew from (ambition! I don't lack for it!) and a thousand other concerns, is really fun. I know that in the weeks to come it will turn into a chore, so that's got to be figured in, but right now, just at this moment, a thing that I made for a lot of other people to enjoy is taking shape.
My plan is to fade into the background a bit and let the actors and the director take over. I want to see what happens when they get hold of the script and start to play with it. That's quite an exciting notion.
When it's all over, I'll park the finished script here with an appropriate Creative Commons Licence and some footnotes. Think of it as DVD extras. And if someone films the whole thing, I might put bits of that up too. We'll see. There will be more notes as we go, because I'll be either very grumpy or breathlessly excited about the whole thing.
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