The 10 Brilliant Things

You’ve got your idea now what do you do? You can try to make sense of it or try and make it fit with another idea but how can you make it easier?

We attended our first workshop of the playwrights programme with the playwright Oliver Emanuel, we discussed how we can develop ideas from sources you wouldn’t normally look at for ideas, in pairs we looked at a newspaper report about some young boys who were lost at sea, we had to create a bold image and a big problem from the story which we could potentially show an audience. By doing this we learnt that you could create a rough idea for a play and a message that could potentially be taken from it. We moved on to the 10 brilliant things, something that gave our ideas a type of structure. Writing 10 random ideas in 10 minutes and yet making them work. Doing this helped me a lot as I really like to have structure and with this concept it allowed me to put my ideas into multiple orders until o found one that I thought best. The 10 brilliant things have been helping me to develop some new ideas, by using this concept it allows me to experiment with them before I’ve decided what I want to do.

For the month of January, I’ve had prelims which has meant I’ve been stuck at my desk with my head in textbooks and stuck writing essays. With the breaks I had taken I found myself reaching for the plays we were given, my personal favourite was ‘Going Dark’ by Hattie Naylor, it tells the story of a father and son. The father - Max is struggling to come to terms with his sight degeneration which leads to him experiencing terrifying hallucinations and to fear for his independence as a single dad to his six-year old son- Leo as well as the inevitable day he ‘officially goes blind’ and will struggle with his job at the planetarium. We see the relationship between father and son shine brightly like a beacon in the inevitable darkness creeping up on them. Max has to come to terms with his own loss in order to find the light in the world that goes beyond the limits of sight. I found this play gripping and I didn’t want it to end as it was so easy to get into.

This month I have been busy applying to university and college courses which has meant that I’ve been running around looking for references, target grades and course codes. I’ve found myself stuck on the UCAS website and panicking about deadlines, with the play ‘Going Dark’ it has taught me that even if I’m stuck and confused about what comes next it will always change and that feeling might never fully leave me but at least I’ll know it will eventually ease.

Rachel Anderson

Rachel is part of the Bunbury Banter Young Playwrights Programme 2019-2020