August Wilson Century Cycle

Just finished Piano Lessons (Ordinarily I read like the wind but circumstances dear boy, circumstances) and started Seven Guitars. The forewords by various esteemed bods that precede each play are interesting reads in themselves. Seven Guitars is by Tony Kushner who wrote Angels In America and the references he makes are staggering and makes me curious as to how many were in Wilson’s mind as he wrote, embarked on the piece.
Kushner has a great expression where he talks about characters that “face the abrasions of progress”
Love that.

24 degrees-Mentor

Debbie Tucker Green is going to be my mentor for the 24 Degrees BBC WritersRoom/Royal Court Theatre project. Check out here for a synopsis of her plays. Looking forward to working with her over the next four months.

Check out this review of one Generations, of Debbie’s plays Review. Doesn’t it just make you want to see it now, now now???

24 Degrees- Ideas

Have another idea for the 24 Degrees BBC WritersRoom/Royal Court Theatre scheme I am a part of. See earlier 24 Degrees posts for an idea of the scheme if you wish. Have an idea about Fung Shui and corporate ridiculousness. Working up another idea about natural resources and recycling and the preciousness of these materials. Guardian UK newspaper had an article about essex council making glass and plastic road signs after big numbers of the metal ones being stolen for scrap metal melting down and re-sale as the demand has risen 150% over two years. This and the interest I have in the coming preciousness of water as a resource leads itself to a potentially ‘funny with a serious undertone’ piece. Similar I imagine (existing in my current mental space  of not fully worked out or thought throughness state I exhibit at the moment) in tone to the Feng Shui piece.

August Wilson- Piano Lessons

Reading Piano Lessons at the moment. It’s laugh out loud funny. A big contrast to MA Rainey’s Black Bottom which ended in a note of powerlessness and despair at the lack of change.

Samuel L Jackson played one of the major characters in the original production and you can see today’s actor playing it well. Would have loved to have seen original production. Reading the cast list of the first few plays made me realise both the lack of variety of roles that existed, exist? for black actors, roles of real depth and meat and pain and joy and shade. Complexity in other words. Also made me look at some of these actors in a different light. These people didnt just appear in the cosby show, roc, daytime american soaps.

24 Degrees

Been approached to take part in a BBC Writer’sRoom/Royal Court Theare project called 24 Degrees. It aims to get new voices into writing for stage and screen. Six cities, four writers from each city to take part to produce new work. I missed the launch event as I was in Memphis but reading the blurb the aim is to produce a first draft of script for january. mentoring and workshops take place between now and then. I have an idea which I will present to them when I meet them. It’s a stageplay about corporate society and is a little farcical, ridiculous parody of some of the excesses of corporate speak.

the wives (many) of Fela Anikulapo Kuti

Emailed draft off tuesday. I finished three days early which I was pleased about as I had slogged hard to get it finished as I wanted to take it with me to Memphis to read once before coming back and amending. Now taking few weeks off from it while Fintan and Kully of TWP read it and then get back to it some point in next month or so I imagine. Potentially got another play (see 24 degrees postings) to write so i’ll make a start on this new one some point in mid-august.

Fusion-conference

The seven of us travelling to Memphis for the desire to learn conference came up with a dissemination plan for our reflections on the conference on a bit of tablecloth during a meal one night over there.

One of the many good things to come out of it was the recognition we felt as a team of the many good things we already do as lecturers, practitioners, administrative, technical at NTU. So the transitioning to a new system is all the more easier when we have good ideas and good practices to translate to the new desire to learn system.

We decided we would encourage the NTU team academic, technical, administrative to consider writing papers for presentation at next year’s Fusion conference wherever that may be.