Dick Curran's PlayDay
On October 4th 2009, as part of our New Writing Partnership with The Customs House, director Anne Orwin workshopped plays by Dick Curran and Louise Taylor, getting them on their feet for a public script-in-hand performance to a packed audience at the Customs House the same evening. Here Dick Curran tells us about how the experience worked for him.
This article was originally published in Cloud Nine's Newsletter no. 30 (February 2010).
There are few opportunities locally for writers to get their work in front of an audience, so Cloud Nine's PlayDays provide an invaluable service. There's no substitute for working with professional actors and directors with the mind-concentrating stress of a real live audience at the end of it. The fact that everybody gets paid is important as well, not just for funding the much-needed post show drinks, but in helping bridge the gap between amateur and professional.
This was my second Playday, and I realised how the intervening four years has made me much more cautious. Last time, I had no worries even though the director (Neil Armstrong) had three pieces to get on their feet in a day.
And I wasn't concerned by the fact that my 'play' was really the edited highlights of a full length work in progress with a large cast, complex storyline and lots of flaws. And in the end I was right not to worry, thanks to his efforts.
This time there were only two pieces and mine was a continuous, self-contained three-hander which had been edited a dozen times - yet I was seriously alarmed at the idea of getting any further than a rehearsed reading in the available time.
I kept my mouth shut though, and I'm glad that I did; and that Anne (Orwin) and the cast got the play on its feet for a proper script-in-hand performance. Theatre is a collaborative exercise, and for a writer it's also an exercise in letting go. In this case, Company was paced very differently to how I would have done it; and some of the characterisation was diametrically opposite to what I envisaged - which is just what a writer needs to see. Especially when it works. As it did. There is nothing like hearing laughter in the right places, and the almost audible sense of an audience understanding what is going on in front of them, and being drawn into it.
This PlayDay was another great experience for me, and it's important that Cloud Nine keeps on with these events. And more.
That's the problem: theatre is an addictive experience, and PlayDays feeds the addiction.
Dick Curran
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