Trying Something New

I wasn’t sure of what to do for my blog this month. So I’m trying something to go along with what I have been learning about verbatim theatre, so instead of writing this blog I am using word dictate which is basically me talking and it writes for me. 

So here we go...

"We have had an amazing workshop with Mariem Omari all about verbatim theatre as well as how to gather the voices needed to create something which has helped me to develop my interview skills as well as learn how to create a transcript. She asked us to make a list of things that we're interested in and would like to explore so the topic I chose for my interview was what society thinks of us as individuals and how it makes us feel and then some of the tips that she gave us was to never over research, don't try to push experience onto others and to ask ourselves what do you want to get from their story. You have to be open to know what their answers will be.

We were put into pairs on zoom and we just had a go at interviewing each other and not trying to influence the conversation but instead asking the question and when nothing else could be said move on and try to take notes of their answers and their body language and how they reacted to questions which would help us to create something we had about like 5 minutes each to interview the other. I think it was really interesting to get to know other people closer than you think with some of the questions that were asked and obviously we had the discussion about why you have to protect the identity of someone who shared their story because you have to keep them secret for their protection if they want to out themselves then that's fine but you have to keep anonymous unless the decide to claim the story.

We also did some work on a duologue and basically a few weeks ago we'd been given a mentor and we had to write an I love you scene without using the words I love you which was quite interesting I found quite difficult to get started and it took a while to get a first draft done. I'm not I'm not completely happy with the outcome because I've never had to write anything like that before so I think now that we all have our feedback anonymously I would go back and I'd like to update add some more and get the story somewhere, just to get it somewhere where I'm happy with it because at the moment I still see it as a first draft even though I was on the third so I think in the next few weeks I'll be going back to that and look at the feedback I've been given and just see what I can take the story which I'm not going to share at the moment because I want to make sure that something that other people can enjoy not just me.

I have also had a zoom meeting what Ali discussing possible ideas for final piece. I'm going to take one of my topics and research different kinds of addictions how they affect people ,so like for my research I'll be looking at films and I'll be reading some stories in the news, reading some plays that I've been sent over um just looking what comes up on like social media and stuff and just see if I like the topic that goes with my idea and then I'll see if I'll be able to create some stories that I think is worth writing about.

Recently I was just thinking about before the playwright programme and looking now I would say I'm more confident I'm more likely to share my ideas with the group and trying new ways  of writing so like now I'm actually speaking this instead of typing which I think it helps I’m not great at writing my ideas I find it much easier to hear them out loud. I was thinking about what I have learned like the structure of plays,  how to develop characters,  how to develop character goals, um how to create settings for a play and also having ago interviewing some of my friends and transcribing their answers exactly as they save them which was surprisingly hard and like transcribing it was painfully long.

I'm not sure or what my final piece is going to be, what it's going to look like. I don't really know anything at the moment, all I know is that I've got some topics that I'm interested in and I'm going to go research and just see what happens."

Rachel Anderson

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