London, Paris, Berlin, Dusseldorf… Border Control at Tanzkongress

I’m grateful to Susan Basham and her lovely website of humorous quips and quotations from writers for the above. http://www.susanbasham.com/2012/05/04/humorous-quips-and-quotes-from-writers/

I’m en route to Berlin, travelling via Paris on the train, to continue my Fellowship at Freie Universitat’s International Research Centre: Interweaving Performance Cultures. Apart for continuing to reflect on my work between Deaf culture and hearing culture, disability culture and the mainstream, I’ll also be presenting a paper at Tanzkongress in Dusseldorf next week.

Border control – framing the atypical body. You say radical, I say conservative; you say inclusive, I say subversive…

The talk will explore notions of what I call the director/choreographer’s dramaturgy of impairment. I hope to briefly explore several examples of ‘border control’ in inclusive performance – the politics and cultural meaning involved in framing the atypical body and the radical or problematic [mis]representations which can ensue. Some of the questions I will explore will include:

What are the politics and cultural meaning involved in framing the atypical body?

What is the relationship between ‘mainstream’ culture and notions of normalcy, and politicized disability culture, embracing the wide variety of human difference?

As a dramaturg, a very central question for me: Who controls the frame – or does it not matter?

Information about the talk, and the four day gathering in Dusseldorf between 6-9 June 2013 can be found at:

http://www.tanzkongress.de/en/subjects/interveneparticipate.html#event-76-0

Meanwhile, I will enjoy the journey, the landscape slipping past the train window, the hoard of books to read on my e-reader and the hours of idle thinking as I make my way overland (and through the Channel tunnel) to Berlin.

20 Questions… Alison Lochhead

Continuing my series of questions on process and creativity with a large range of artists and writers from many forms…. 20 Questions….Alison Lochhead.

Alison Lochhead

Alison Lochhead studied art and ceramics at Loughborough College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1971 – 1975.  She studied tapestry weaving in Poland during 1975 – 1976. She has lived and worked in many countries, working with access to justice. Her experiences are reflected in her art work. Alison works with different materials, all integral from the earth and with their own strengths and reaction to heat and to each other; iron, clay, oxides, wood.  In the kiln alchemy takes place as the various materials are drawn together or reject each other, they are transformed.  Some elements get lost and burn away, others fuse and create a different form. She has exhibited widely from 1977 to the present day, with 16 one-person shows and over 50 group exhibitions.  Alison is a member of Sculpture Cymru and 56 Group Wales. Her website is: http://www.alisonlochhead.co.uk

What first drew you to your particular practice (art/acting/writing, etc)?

I have always wanted to work ‘creatively’, messing about with materials, trying things out.  More this than drawing/painting – although I was always doing this as well as I grew up.  Basically making marks in some way.  I have never been academic, and my way of expressing myself was either through histrionics or creating something; usually both. Why specific materials?  This has varied throughout life depending on what I want to express; but something I can get my hands into – materials which have their own statements to be made.

What was your big breakthrough?

My biggest breakthrough in terms of my own practice was when I gave up on the intellectual.  I had been working with putting my political thinking and passions around how women are treated in society; and had come to an almighty full stop as the work was completely horrible; it was dead and ‘said nothing’.  After about 18 months of not doing anything in the workshop I felt so bereft and empty; a missing inside; that I decided to go back to what I loved – colour, textures and a love of rocks and their colours; textures; ancientness etc.  I made casts of my body and decided to make them look like a piece of rock.  I have never looked back and any time ‘the intellect’ tries to intervene – I push it as far away as possible.

What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?

Wanting to work on a much bigger scale but unable to without it involving other people and doing the work elsewhere (in a foundry or whatever) and the huge costs involved – plus ‘what do you then do with it’?

Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you?

I don’t think there is one piece which has changed me.  Turner’s water colours inspired me and freed up something inside me at an early age. There are many books, poems, paintings, plays which inspire, confirm or give me an hint of something different.  I am hopeless at remembering names etc.

What’s more important: form or content?

The two are inextricably connected.  They cannot be separated.  They both totally work together and inform each other.

How do you know when a project is finished?

I don’t really.  Somehow I find it has shifted into something else and evolved into a different process or being.

Do you read your reviews?

If I had any I would!!!!

What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?

Keep true to your inner instincts. Don’t try and adjust your work to ‘the market’ and if you need to then get another job to pay the bills.

What work of art would you most like to own?

Turner’s paintings, such as Storm at Sea (Can’t remember the exact name) One of the atmospheric elements ones.

What’s the biggest myth about writing/the creative process?

That you get ‘inspiration’ without the constant working at it.

What are you working on now?

Reacting to the Cambrian Mountain Metal Mines; their stories, maps, the pains and rape of the land and the people who worked within it, the scars on the landscape and the stories these tell, the responses of the spoil rocks and the giving up of secrets in the fire of the kiln – a beginning of a journey.

What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created?

No idea!  Probably a collection of rocks with artefacts which relate to them in terms of pieces of work made from them; but small and ‘want to put this in my pocket’.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

How do I know this?  I really can’t think of anything as even if I had known something I probably would not have known what to do with the information as not in a space to ‘take it’.

What’s your greatest ambition?

To be able to do my own work.  I guess to be ‘known’.

How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?

With difficulty. Just try and work through it; think of the positive things people have said and tap deep within and feel that ‘I am OK really’. Also the feeling that if I did not feel any of these things then my work would be crap as arrogant – but wish I did have a bit more confidence in myself.

What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?

The worst thing was someone saying ‘maybe you have no imagination’; when I was confiding in them that I was feeling really stuck in my work.

And the best thing?

That my work makes them cry; shiver; and makes them look deeper into their reactions to my work.

If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?

Tearing and tumbling; floating and diving in muddy clear water.

What is your philosophy or life motto?

Live every minute as life is short and goodness knows what may happen.  I wish I really lived by this!!!

What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?

That it is not a choice and it is essential to trust inner process of what emerges, the materials speak for themselves – trust them.

What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask?

I do it because I cannot do otherwise.

*

For further information about Alison’s current exhibitions and her work:

Alison Lochhead      Mine Memories        

Oriel Fach Queens Hall Gallery, Narberth.

The exhibition runs from 11 May to 15 June 2013

Wednesday–Saturday 10.00–5.00

tel: 01834 869454;    email: lynne-orielq@tiscali.co.uk;                                    website: www.orielqueenshallgallery.org.uk

Mine Memory by Alison Lochhead

Mine Memories is the beginning of a journey exploring the histories, stories and memories, and physical realities about and around the mines in the Cambrian Mountains and hopefully beyond.

What lies under the ground and what gets revealed to us when we dig it up? How do we exploit, use and explore what the earth holds?

The sculptures and prints work with the visual impact mines have on the landscape, the juxtaposition of raw material, construction, exploitation and change. Through working with the rocks and spoil of the mines and by putting these back into the fire, in a kiln, to see what they will transform into: to explode, disintegrate, change into another form, join together, push apart, melt; and what the earth reveals to us, what is gives to us and what in its turn it takes from us – the lives, the health, the pains and traumas.

The mines are a mix of construction and raw material and the work exploits this juxtaposition, linked to the memories of the lives linked to them.

The materials used are mainly cast iron, mine rocks, clay and wood. Each material has its own ‘meaning’ of place. The materials will connect, pull apart, explode, fuse, burn away, fragment, partially remain – the final pieces are unknown, the materials will speak for themselves through the way they form and connect together. The pieces will be representing the differing aspects of the mines, the memories, the pain and anguish, the working constructions, the scaring, the metals and minerals, the transforming of landscape. This exhibition is a small fragment of the work already undertaken and a hint of work yet to be done with exploring the Cambrian Mountain Metal Mines.

www.sculpturecymru.org.uk

Essentials for the character-driven play: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

At risk of leaping on the current Bowie bandwagon, the character-driven play is all about ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. For want of a better phrase, ‘the world of the play’ at the end must be considerably different from the beginning – otherwise why should we expect an audience to commit themselves to seeing the experience through? (And we can’t all be like Brecht, deliberately frustrating the audience so they may take action in real life, driven by his characters’ inability to forge change in their lives in his plays…)

We know in the classical Western theatrical tradition we all go on a journey – the characters as well as the audience. This can be literal, but more often it is symbolic or metaphorical. There is an event, a visitor, a letter – something new, a trigger or inciting incidence which knocks the character off her usual routine and into unknown territory. In Shakespeare these are grand, life-endangering quests – a glimpse of the love object resulting in the pursuit of romance amongst warring clans; a walking phantom prompting investigation into a mysterious death and the seeking of revenge, to outline two. Contemporary plays are often smaller in scope and more contained, but the emotional territory is still as large. Something happens – a death, a change in the pecking order at work, a child entering their teens, a diagnosis, an infidelity, a crushing doubt or suspicion, etc. There is a change in our protagonist’s life and she is pushed off onto a journey of discovery.

This journey may be a physical, but usually it is emotional and psychological, rooted still in the familiar physical world. The newness of the situation she finds herself in is important, for this enables the audience to see the character dealing with challenges and obstacles, acquiring new skills. We can observe her trying and failing and potentially succeeding in the new situation, and this makes her a valid protagonist, worthy of our attention.

She is active, taking decisions, and this live decision making, usually under pressure, reveals her character as well as defining the direction the story will take. Her actions dealing with the new situation further the plot and we can see that character is plot. A different protagonist with their individual foibles and weaknesses, strengths and experiences might react differently, and so create a different outcome. This particular character, with all her wants, objectives, tactics and decision-making drives the story. A character without motivation and concrete wants in each moment is inactive and dull. A changing dynamic and a character responding, growing, learning and therefore changing is central to keep the audience engaged and alert and the plot rolling forward. The play is alive and moving and so is the character, even if this movement is internal: changing opinion, politics, allegiance, belief system; falling in or out of love.

The character at the end of the play has changed owing to the experiences she has had, the decisions she has had to make and act on (and making no decision is still a decision, with consequences). The journey she has gone through has changed not just her, but her interactions and relationships, and ultimately had a transformative effect on her world. An audience emerges at the end of this character-driven play satisfied, and perhaps changed too in their thoughts and opinions about subjects central to what they have just seen.

National Poetry Competition 2013

Deadlines and an intense work schedule have been keeping me from writing for this blog of late, but I hope news of this national competition will more than compensate for my inattention. Since I won the second Ted Hughes Award for New Works in Poetry, the Poetry Society have been sending me information about the other competitions they administer. I’m always happy to promote these opportunities and so post the press release here:

One of the most prestigious competitions of its kind, the National Poetry Competition  attracts around 13,000 entries each year, from around the UK and beyond. Judged anonymously, the competition puts established and emerging writers on a level playing field. The 2013 winners will be announced in March 2014.

Winning the competition has been an important milestone in the careers of some of today’s leading poets such as the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy , Ruth Padel , Philip Gross , Colette Bryce , Tony Harrison  and Jo Shapcott.

Last year’s competition was won by Patricia McCarthy  who acknowledges the competition’s value:

“It is a real honour to win the National Poetry Competition and it seems to open up all sorts of other opportunities for the winning poet, all helped along by the Poetry Society.”

Julia Copus, Matthew Sweeney and Jane Yeh are this year’s judges, and the prizes are £5,000 for the overall winner, £2,000 for the second, £1,000 for the third, with seven commendations of £100. The top three winners are also published in the Poetry Society’s leading international journal, Poetry Review.

The deadline is 31 October and you can enter online now or download an entry form from the Poetry Society website.

Since its launch in 1978, the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition has marked a milestone in the careers of many of today’s leading poets. Previous winners include Philip Gross, Jo Shapcott, Tony Harrison, and the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

JUDGES

Julia Copus is a poet and radio dramatist. Her latest collection The World’s Two Smallest Humans (Faber) was shortlisted for both the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize and Costa poetry prize. Her previous collections, The Shuttered Eye and In Defence of Adultery, were PBS Recommendations. She won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition (2002) and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2010). In 2011, her sequence of poems about IVF, Ghost, was adapted as a BBC Radio 3 play entitled Ghost Lines. She is a Lector for the Royal Literary Fund, and in 2008 was made an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Matthew Sweeney was born in Donegal in 1952 and is currently based in Cork, having previously been resident in Berlin, Timisoara and, for a long time, London. His collections include Black Moon (2007), Sanctuary (2004) and Selected Poems (2002). A retrospective selection, The Night Post, was published by Salt in 2010. His new collection, Horse Music, was published by Bloodaxe in 2013. A satirical thriller, set in the world of contemporary poetry, co-written with the English poet, John Hartley Williams, was published in November 2012 by the Muswell Press under the title Death Comes for the Poets.

Jane Yeh was born in America and educated at Harvard University. She holds master’s degrees from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Manchester Metropolitan University. Her first collection of poems, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and Aldeburgh Festival poetry prizes. Her latest collection, The Ninjas, was published by Carcanet in 2012, and her poems appear in anthologies including The Best British Poetry 2012. Currently Senior Researcher in Creative Writing at Kingston University, she also teaches courses for the Arvon Foundation, and writes on books, theatre, fashion, and sport for publications such as the TLS and The Village Voice. She lives in London.

THE NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION

The National Poetry Competition was founded in 1978. The judges select ten top winners and the prize money this year totals £8,700 (first prize: £5,000; second prize: £2,000; third prize: £1,000, plus seven commendations, each £100). The top three prize winners’ poems will be published in Poetry Review, Britain’s leading poetry magazine. Previous winning and commended poems can be read on the Poetry Society website, http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk. The Ledbury Poetry Festival features an event with National Poetry Competition winners and judges every year. To enter the National Poetry Competition visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk

THE POETRY SOCIETY

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote a “more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”. Since then, it has grown into one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has nearly 4,000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, Poetry Review. With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. The Poetry Society also runs the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and awards for young people, including SLAMbassadors

20 Questions…. Rabab Ghazoul

Continuing my series of interviews with writers, poets, sculptors, directors, creatives, and now the wonderful visual artist Rabab Ghazoul. I first met Rabab in Cardiff in the early 1990’s, when she was devising and directing experimental live performance. Over the past two decades it has been a delight and education to observe her evolution as an artist.

20 Questions…. Rabab Ghazoul.

Rabab Ghazoul

Rabab Ghazoul is a visual artist whose practice draws upon a range of media and processes to explore our negotiations and constructions of the political. Part social observation, part investigation into the realm of public narrative, her work has seen her referencing or re-staging existing ‘texts’ – from news media footage to an existing art work – by way of exploring the coerced and de-stabilised nature of our affiliations. Born and part raised in the Middle East, her experience of dual cultures informs an ongoing interest in belonging and identity, but often at their point of fragmentation or dissolution. In this sense her chosen ‘text’ is less the culture of home, and more the ever-present effects – or ‘home’ – of late capitalist culture, through which we continue to rehearse our prescribed and ritualistic movements. Born in Mosul, Iraq, she has lived and worked in Cardiff for the last 20 years.

 

What first drew you to your particular practice?

When I graduated I started making experimental devised performance after studying theatre at college…then in my late 20’s I found myself making much more visually-oriented work, using installation, space, objects, and my inspiration was in the main lots of – visual artists! I figured I probably wasn’t a theatre maker any more, I wanted to work in this other way…

What was your big breakthrough?

I’m not sure I’ve had one. There was a point, after I’d moved away from theatre and was showing my work in galleries I liked and respected – that was definitely a kind of breaking through I suppose – from working in one discipline to being taken seriously in another. But ultimately, I think breaking through is always about your own crap as an artist…for years, I wanted to make work like person X or Y, or be this or that kind of artist, but then there came a point where I just accepted: I do. What I do. I make this kind of work. Get with it. 

What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?

Self doubt…procrastination…too many ideas…not enough ideas…fear of starting ideas…life being too short to realise all one’s ideas…chaos of the mind…melancholy of the heart…being utterly inefficient…being control-freakishly efficient…working alone…working with others… 

Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you?

Well there are memorable moments. Probably the first time I saw Pina Bausch’s work…it was a video of one of her shows, I must have been around nineteen, and I couldn’t believe this is what theatre could look like. Later on, the work of people like Santiago Sierra shifted my head and thinking. And I remember a rare intake of breath seeing Alfredo Jaar’s “The Eyes of Gutete Emerita” because – with both a precision of means and an excess of means – he managed to say something about the unsayable – about the most monstrous humanity has to offer…I think that’s extraordinary in art.

What’s more important: form or content?

They’re interchangeable.

How do you know when a project is finished?

Deadlines for showing take care of that: time’s run out, you gotta share ready or not. 

What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?

I’m really not sure, but above my desk I’ve got this pinned up, which is what Jeremy Deller said when he was asked what advice he’d give to artists:

“Don’t listen to everybody, actually don’t listen to many people, just do what interests you and what you like. And if you do that within your work people will understand that maybe… And don’t look and see what other people are doing too much and get upset by what they’re doing. It’s important to just think about yourself really, so be selfish really. And be open. Be selfish and open, and be willing to change your plans but not necessarily compromise…”

What work of art would you most like to own?

A Cy Twombly…Magritte’s Day and Night…One of Michael Landy’s beautiful pencil drawings of weeds…anything by Caravaggio…

What’s the biggest myth about the creative process?

“Suffering artist in garret”, “Creativity being unique to artists”, “It happens when you’ve got plenty of time to concentrate and focus.” As to the last, that never happens. Creative stuff just falls out when it wants to, it tumbles, it trips over itself, in between bouts of Abso-Lutely-Nothing…So I’m not obsessively beavering away in a studio for hours on end…My physical studio is the place where I store old bits and pieces. But the real studio is in my head, and wherever that’s at – and the setting is usually pen, notebook, laptop, camera, conversations.

What are you working on now?

I’m researching a project based on Blair’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, it’s ambitious and I suppose if it ever goes ahead it’ll be a project inviting communities to reframe that shameful moment. I’m also starting a new video work about the culture of benefit gigs and fundraisers. And I’m making applications for future projects that may or may not happen and in the meantime this is frying my brain.

What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created?

Jeremy Deller’s ‘The Battle of Orgreave’.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

Nothing other than what I did and didn’t know really. Though I got there eventually in my 30’s, maybe knowing when I was younger that I could’ve gone to art college would have helped? But I think I’d still rather have gone my own circuitous route, if I hadn’t I’d be someone else making different work.

What’s your greatest ambition?

Fulfil my potential as a member of the human race.

Fulfil my potential as an artist.

Earn enough money to hire a permanent PA.

How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?

Buddhism. I chant. To deal with that stuff.

What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?

The worst things have probably been things I’ve thought and said about my own work. ‘That was humiliatingly bad’; ‘your attempts to be an artist are doomed’, ‘you lack courage to make what’s in your heart.’ Progress is that I don’t think these things anymore. I’m sure others have hated and loved things I’ve done in equal measure but I’ve not been privy to their thoughts…

And the best thing?

Can’t remember, but some nice things happily…I recently created a sung artwork in a gallery that involved 43 singers to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the second Gulf War. People said lovely things after, but mainly that they’d felt moved. For me that’s one of the best things people can say about your work, that their heart was involved in their experience of it.

If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?

You start climbing a mountain. You think it’s going to take X amount of time to get to the top. It takes way longer. The views are great. It can get really cloudy. You feel exhausted. At a certain point you wish two men with a stretcher would appear to carry you down. You get to the top. It feels incredible for about two minutes. The climb down flies by. You’re at the bottom of a mountain.

What is your philosophy or life motto?

‘Late starters of the world unite’

What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?

Don’t try and make anything other than the thing you can make.

What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask?

All the sadness in the world, in the same boat, as all the happiness…

*

Some further links and information about Rabab and her work:

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=14080

http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=19470

http://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/html/newsite/avdetails/rabab_ghazoul_lecture.html

Lightship International Literary Prizes 2013

I’m always excited to come upon new opportunities and competitions for writers of many disciplines, so here, with an approaching deadline of 30th June 2013 are the Lightship International Literary Prizes. I’m not familiar with the competitions, but am impressed by the patron, Hilary Mantel, and some of the judges, who include Tessa Hadley and M.J. Hyland, two personal favourites. The competitions are across a wide spectrum of form, from the first act of a theatre script, to poetry, flash fiction, memoir and short story, amongst others.

Lightship International Short Story Prize

Prize: £1,000
10 short-listed stories will be published in Lightship Anthology 3 (Nov 2013)

Judge: Tessa Hadley

Word limit: 5000

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £12

Lightship International First Chapter Prize

Prize: Professional Mentoring / Possible Publication

Judges: M.J. Hyland, David Miller (RCW), Alessandro Gallenzi (Alma Books)

Word limit: 5400 (including one page synopsis)

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £16

Lightship International Flash Fiction Prize

Prize: £500
10 short-listed flash fictions will be published in Lightship Anthology 3 (Nov 2013)

Judge: Etgar Keret

Word limit: 1500

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £10

Lightship International Poetry Prize

Prize: £1000
10 short-listed poems will be published in Lightship Anthology 3 (Nov 2013)

Judge: David Wheatley

Word limit: 200

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £8

Lightship International One Page Story Prize

Prize: £250
10 short-listed flash fictions will be published in Lightship Anthology 3 (Nov 2013)

Judge: Calum Kerr

Word limit: 300

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £8

Lightship International Short Memoir Prize

Prize: £1000
10 short-listed short memoirs will be published in Lightship Anthology 3 (Nov 2013)

Judge: Rachel Cusk

Word limit: 5000

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/6/13

Entry Fee: £12

Lightship International First Act Prize

Prize: Professional Mentoring / Possible Production of Full Length Play at The Cockpit Theatre, London

Judges: Anthony McCarten, Micheline Steinberg, David Whybrow (Cockpit
 Theatre Director)

Word limit: 6000 (including one page synopsis)

Deadline: Midnight GMT 30/9/13

Entry Fee: £18

For full details of all competitions please go to: www.lightshippublishing.co.uk

If you have any queries please email Lightship Publishing at: admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk

Insight, process, opportunities, competitions, TanzKongress

I originally started this blog to write about process from the inside, making three projects and bringing them to production in 2012. Since those furiously creative days, I’m relieved to say my work has been different (I would easily have burned out otherwise!) and I’ve been engaged in several other writing projects, all at different stages in development, more of which, below.

This blog initially was about documenting various processes for a playwright/dramaturg/co-creator, working towards production  (these posts are still available in this blog’s archive). This is still a focus, for I’m interested in exploring the breadth and diversity of the skills a writer may need within any creative process – and it is something I will document again, when in production.

I think there is a myth that we do just one thing – write – (as though that weren’t demanding and challenging enough!). I’m curious about the other elements required for a writing life – the other tools we may need to survive, which include everything from accountancy skills and being able to write outstanding grant applications, to the social skills required for collaboration in the rehearsal room. This is an area I intend to blog about in the future. But I am even more curious with how other artists do it – how do we survive a bad review, little success, disappointing sales, and that doubting dark night of the soul..? This is one reason why I started ’20 Questions…’ to learn from other artists, writers, actors, sculptors and those engaged professionally with creativity how and why we continue to do this. And to be reminded of the inherent value – even necessity – of this compulsion.

And so this blog has continued to evolve, bringing in other voices and opinions rather than being focused solely on my own process when in the doing (although I will for sure do this again, when the opportunity arises). I also have been using it to highlight certain political debates (‘cripping up’, the use of black face in German theatres, ageism and sexism within the profession, etc), and also highlighting certain opportunities and competitions for writers within the UK as well as internationally. When I began this blog, I always wanted to create something that would be useful – and hope this will be the experience for those who trouble to read it.

In the spirit of this, I want to draw attention to the approaching deadline on 31st May 2013 of The Bridport Prize, whose mission is ‘to encourage emerging writers and promote literary excellence through its competition structure.’ Well established, it offers £15,000 in prizes for poetry, short stories, and flash fiction, with judges including Wendy Cope and Michele Roberts. For details of the competitions, please go to: http://www.bridportprize.org.uk

As to me…. so far 2013 has been primarily about completing one large long-standing prose project, delivering the first draft of a theatre commission and initiating new projects in media drama and live performance. Some are my own projects as a solo writer, but others are international collaborations with the Llanarth Group: an Irish/Welsh/Singapore-Chinese/American/South Korean co-creation in the Summer and the other a cultural exchange in Japan late in the year. Meanwhile I will be continuing my fellowship at Freie Universitat’s international research centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ in Berlin, reflecting on the relationship between ‘mainstream’ and disability cultures.

As part of this, I will be presenting at dance conference  TanzKongress in Dusseldorf on Saturday 8th June: ‘Border Control: Framing the Atypical Body. “You say radical, I say conservative, you say inclusive, I say subversive.”’

The schedule is overwhelming and looks incredibly exciting. For further details go to:

http://www.tanzkongress.de/en/programme/congress-programme.html?date=2013-06-08#event-76-0

20 Questions… Gabriel Gbadamosi

Continuing my 20 Questions… series, this time with poet, playwright and debut novelist Gabriel Gbadamosi. Gabriel and I first met in Belfast many years ago, and walked the city at night, endlessly talking. Since then. we have collaborated with Jonathan Meth, Peter Arnott, and Sarah Dickenson with writernet and The Fence, an international network of playwrights and dramaturgs we co-founded. Gabriel’s first novel, Vauxhall, has recently been published and is proving to be one of the must-reads of 2013.

Gabriel Gbadamosi

Gabriel Gbadamosi is a poet, playwright and essayist.  His London novel, Vauxhall, won the 2011 Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize.  He was AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow in European and African performance at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, and a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University.  Book collaborations with visual artists include Coffee Incognito with Rod Hill, Sun-Shine, Moonshine with Conroy/Sanderson, and The Second Life of Shells with Mandy Bonnell.  Plays include Shango (DNA, Amsterdam), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubühne, Berlin) and for radio The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 (BBC Radio 3) which won the first Richard Imison Award.  A sample essay on African art, An Informal History of the Male Nude, can be found online at BBC Radio 3.

What first drew you to your particular practice (art/acting/writing, etc)?

I became a writer in primary school.  My ‘daily diary’ became a way to speak out to my parents and be heard among my brothers and sisters.  They often spoke of it.  But I became a poet as a teenager.  And a playwright in my twenties.  An essayist in my thirties.  And yes, a novelist in my forties.  Now I’m in my fifties, I no longer keep a diary.

What was your big breakthrough?

 That hasn’t happened.  But I once wrote a poem at the speed in which I could speak it.  That felt like a breakthrough.

 What is the most challenging aspect of your work/process?

 Loneliness.  Self-censorship.  Loss of confidence.  The un-hinging of my social self.

 Is there a piece of art, or a book, or a play, which changed you?

 No.  Love has changed me; death on the road (it took me 10 years to recover from that).  But Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra changed the way I feel, and King Lear the way I think.

 What’s more important: form or content?

 I was always told they were the same thing.

 How do you know when a project is finished?

 When it won’t let you back in.

Do you read your reviews?

 I had a friend who started with writing a review, and then wrote the play, and then directed it, and then published the review (under another pseudonym). How good is that?

 What advice would you give a young writer/practitioner?

 Do something else.  And if you can’t, do your best.

 What work of art would you most like to own?

 Apart from one I could sell for a lot of money, something from my son or daughter.

 What’s the biggest myth about writing/the creative process?

 That only talented or specialized or professional people can do it.

 What are you working on now?

 An online walking tour of Vauxhall, where I grew up, where my novel is set, where the pleasure gardens were from the 17^th to the 19^th century and the security state is now (MI6, etc).

 What is the piece of art/novel/collection/ you wish you’d created?

 Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater.

 What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

 That life is short and love is mortal.

 What’s your greatest ambition?

 To write a great poem.

 How do you tackle lack of confidence, doubt, or insecurity?

 I don’t so much tackle these things as sustain myself despite them.

 What is the worst thing anyone said/wrote about your work?

 Stop writing.

And the best thing?

 Carry on writing, but you’ll never write anything which could be better than this.

 If you were to create a conceit or metaphor about the creative process, what would it be?

 Banging a nail in the tooth of death.

 What is your philosophy or life motto?

 I don’t have one.

 What is the single most important thing you’ve learned about the creative life?

You can hand it on.

 What is the answer to the question I should have – but didn’t – ask?

Mine’s a pint of cider.

Vauxhall by Gabriel Gbadamosi. Published by Telegram

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Only a poet could have written Vauxhall … clean, swift yet with flashes of lightning 
– Bonnie Greer

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Gabriel Gbadamosi reads an extract from, and talks about his novel Vauxhall

http://vimeo.com/63403887

Further information on Gabriel and his novel can be found at:

http://gabrielgbadamosi.com/about-vauxhall/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vauxhall-Gabriel-Gbadamosi/dp/1846591465/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368027668&sr=1-1

Reviews for the book:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2325487/DEBUT-FICTION.html

Playwright vs performance writer

There’s an interesting discussion going on National Theatre Wales’s on-line community in the writers’ group re- the difference between ‘plays’ and ‘live performance’, ‘playwrights’ and ‘artists/performance writers’, and the opportunities available to each. This has prompted me to engage on that site, and now here, with what is a very old chestnut indeed…

For years I’ve been contesting the separation of ‘playwrights’ and plays from ‘performance writers/makers/artists’ and texts. At various gatherings and symposia I’ve attended over the past decade and more (usually around that other unnecessarily loaded term ‘dramaturgy’), I’ve  almost come to blows when denying and descrying what I see as an odd and artificial schism. On one memorable occasion about eight years ago, I was denied kinship with the cool crowd of live performance makers because I’d written a three act play for the Birmingham Rep’ in 2000 and was therefore a ‘playwright’ and into realism and naturalism and the fourth wall and other forms of conservatism… When I challenged this with reference to my other work deemed by critics and academics as ‘experimental’ and ‘post-dramatic’, they didn’t know where I should belong, for it seemed never the two should meet….

It seems to me definitions have generally been:

Playwright = one often working alone, primary or solo voice/vision, usually (but not always) in more established classical Western theatrical forms (naturalism/ three act structure)

Performance writer = one working perhaps collaboratively, usually in more ‘experimental’ or less conventional forms (ie, not our three act structure with the 4th wall, etc).

It seems to have been useful for some in the past to create this division, and going by the NTW site, it still is causing disruption and discord, as well as engaging and interesting debate.

It reminds me again of the debates I was involved with last year at West Yorkshire Playhouse over ‘the end of new writing’ with Lyn Gardner, David Eldridge, Suzanne Bell, Dawn Watson and Fin Kennedy. Worth having a look again, if you’re interested, and Alex Chisholm’s original essay (links, below).

As to me… I just reiterate what I wrote on the NTW site: a writer is a writer is a writer and if we can be flexible in our approach and the forms we write in, so (in my experience, at least) can the funders and commissioners….

I’m sure I’ll come back again to this subject, but meanwhile leave you with those links past and present:

http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/group/writers  (but you need to join the community before you can comment)

https://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/the-end-of-new-writing/

http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/the-end-of-new-writing/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/may/18/new-writing-all-black-play