My experience: Warren Laker
Well… What an intense experience.
9.30 till 1 and then it is no longer. The 100 word play is left in the hands of the exceptional directors. Thank god.
We began the day by working towards the play we were going to write. First 10 words. Then 20 with two scenes. As you might imagine this was tricky tricky business.
After staring blankly at a blank sheet of paper for 5 minutes I began to scribble. Two minutes later my plain white sheet had now formed into lined paper and I saw before me a possible career path in paper making. I was getting no where until I remembered stories of my brothers friend and his mutilation of insects when he was a teen.
It went a little something like this:
A: Pluck‘em.
B: His legs?
A: Yeah.
B: Ok.
(B pulls off daddy long legs, legs)
A: Eat‘em.
B: His Legs?
A: Yeah.
B: Ok.
(B eats daddy long legs, legs)
Obviously I cheated a little by combining two words into one. Not terribly clever but character ‘A’ being from Essex allowed this to happen.
Anyway, I thought blimey you can say a lot in 10 words and express so much about Character/s and their relationships and It also tied into the youth theme and peer pressure.
So after many workshops such as this and writing 100 words, many being animals, we began working on our scripts for an intense 45mins.
Jesus wept it was hard. I’m not sure if you’ve had the kind of pressure that writing for performance emanates but this was something different. Not writer’s block, something more concrete than that. Once again I was blank. For a moment all I could think about was a cheque book and pen.
I proceeded and the animal theme continued. I wrote a piece about bullying in a surreal light with a bee, a wasp and two talking guns. Oh and 1 Boy.
This was such a fantastic opportunity for me and I relished every moment. I think this is a brilliant project and many thanks has to go to the directors Oliver and Natasha, the NYT (amazing actors) and much of the stage management such as the lovely Rachel.
Cheers, and keep up the good work.