Shiny New Script!!

I have a shiny new script for Shiny New Shoes. After my deliberation on how it was going, I finally gave in; I revamped Angela entirely. Her past got grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged into the written present when it appeared on a night out. I’ve kept the reality of it secret from the majority of my other characters, so I keep the effect on them the way I originally wanted it. Only the audience becomes disillusionned with her, sees past her charisma and through her make-up. I am pleased.

Today I’ve been putting the final touches in; changing the wording here and there, trying to make the whole thing in one cohesive language. I’ll send out the email attachment to all involved soon. They can look it over, see what they think – my drafts got positive feedback, and that’s an understatement. The actor playing David, bless his heart, said some of the nicest things I’ve heard about any of my dramatic work. I was so flattered. It went some to ease my flash of stomach pain at his throwaway remark – “I don’t learn lines, I just go with what I feel.” He admitted to mangling Shakespeare. HOW do you do that?!

I’ve done drama from all sides. I’ve performed, I’ve designed, I’ve organised, and now I’ve written. So I feel my opinion isn’t wholly one-sided here. But if the playwright scripts something, it’s for a reason. In my work there are lexis, sentence structures, styles that are unique to each character. And that is deliberate. I have a concern for these onstage only types who have absolutely no reverence for the written word. I mean, there’s slight changes, sometimes, and that is fine so long as it isn’t drastic. But then there’s a danger of totally abstracting the original meaning from the text.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in interpretation of a text. Some of the best plays I’ve seen performed have upped sticks and ignored the “traditional” presentation of them – and that’s great, as long as it is appropriate to the text. You can’t find a subtext that isn’t there. Don’t try and find feminism in a text that’s only about soldiers. “It’s anti feminist because there are no women, they don’t talk about women at all” – that’s bullshit. It’d be antifeminist if they talked down to women, perhaps, but it’s just not about that. The critic just has a chip on their shoulder. Every text can’t be about every thing.

But when a new viewpoint is presented it can alter the way we see a text, without altering the text itself. That’s why Shakespeare lives on, because we can reimagine his words. But the words themselves shouldn’t change, because that’s alteration, not interpretation.

I feel confident, nonetheless. The script is finished, and I feel a sense of satisfaction about that, because it is finished and because I feel good about what I’ve done. We’ll start filming soon.

Watch this space!