Faith Means Something

We meet again. During these very constricting times, we need to remember that even though we may be stuck inside, that it’s all in aid of helping those on the front-lines fighting to save those who are dire need of medical help, so please stay home.

This has been a bit of roller-coaster of emotions during this time. I have been most things from joyously happy to tearfully upset. I don’t like this but I need to do it, I am among those considered vulnerable, so here we are.  But luckily all this has meant I’ve gotten plenty of chances to write. I’ve always had the issue that I can come up with good ideas but then I don’t write them done and suddenly I’ve forgotten what made them so good. So armed with my laptop, I’ve been able to write about a couple of things.

Firstly I think I wrote a monologue, and that was a different experience to things I’ve tried to write before. There’s something to a one sided conversation that kind of really makes me dive into a character’s head and how they would answer their own questions while still talking to another person, that almost forces you to change you understanding of the character. Originally I thought I was writing about someone who was sorry for the heinous crimes they had committed, but as I wrote the words out I soon thought more along the lines that they were blaming others as a way to justify what they had done and that made more sense with the character I had in mind, they wouldn’t be sorry for what they had done but they would try to make it seem like they were. This was actually really fun to write because the way I did it, it was almost like acting out the character and how they would deal with a situation.

I wrote something else this month, but before I start I need to mention something. The way I tend to work, is I start off with a fantastical idea and slowly start to make it more based in reality and grounded to actual things, for example my monologue was originally about a vampire family and in my head I turned it into more of a crime family, and that’s how I love to work, I work best in high fiction but plays and monologues, that being said, I wrote piece all about a very sinful murderous homosexual priest. Now some may say that speaks plenty of me, but it only in part speaks about me. I love faith, it is a powerful thing that guides a lot of people to do good with their lives, to be a better, and I stand by anyone who wants to believe whatever they think is true and it does them and others good. But still that being said, there is unfortunately bad sides to all religions and belief, or at least bad people who take and twist something that’s meant to be beautiful and turn it into an ugly tool used to hate others for either who they are or because believe differently to them and that’s something in my opinion that isn’t talked about enough. I don’t believe in an entirely religious or atheist world, I think we people of all kinds to make society work. I needed to write this piece, I don’t know if I’ll ever share it out but at least with this script I know I can talk out about subjects that mean a lot to me and I think need to be talked about more in the future.

LOST AT SEA 

Other than writing (but still about writing), something else that’s happened since the last blog,  is we had a workshop with playwright Morna Young. She talked to us about language and voice, and how to develop those for writing. One of the first things we did was recite a small portion of our monologues, we already done this previously but that was just with each other and that was more to gauge our own reaction to sharing our working, and this time was more about our own thoughts on how our pieces should be spoken.  This was interesting cause as much as I’ve been in the mindset of the character, I hadn’t fully worked out how they spoke. But then we had to figure out the character’s life and how all those different factors translate into how they speak, this included things like social class, family, where they’re from etc. I hadn’t thought about how all these different factors can affect someone’s speech growing up and I’ll need to take better care when creating things in the future.

Andrew Birch

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