PAINTING IN SHADES OF GREY
Hi everyone; it’s Livia, back with another blog!
In June we had our third workshop, with the amazing Nicola McCartney! This was my favourite so far. The focus of the workshop was on characters and we talked a lot about how to create complex, memorable and interesting characters, and how to connect with them deeply. Nicola was so knowledgeable and fun to listen to, and the workshop had a great mixture of different elements, with lots of practical activities, as well as theoretical learning. I found this workshop super fun and useful, because character work is really important to the kind of plays I want to write. She showed us one technique she uses, where she writes each character a list of Angels (positive things which motivate them to succeed), Demons (all the negative things in your character’s world), Myths (things they believe to be true that their worldview is based on) and Rituals (their specific way of doing things, how they structure their lives). She showed us how to use this to create a character and to shape the plot around them. This is definitely something I am looking forward to putting into practice to help with my own work!
In June, we also watched Yerma, directed by Simon Stone, which is an amazing play. It centres around the story of a young woman and her husband trying to conceive a child over a number of years. I really enjoyed the play because it takes a very real and grounded storyline which happens to many people, and plays around with it by taking it to the absolute extreme of the situation. I also really liked the way that the play played around with our sympathies, as sometimes we sided more with the wife, and sometimes more with the husband. This promoted a lot of discussion between us when we got together to talk about the play, and raised a lot of questions about the relationship and how we felt about the characters. This is something I would love to do with my writing: asking the audience questions about who is at fault, and what they could have done differently; not giving them the answers, but leaving it up to them to decide.
When I watched Yerma, I was reminded of an episode of the TV show Black Mirror, called ‘The Entire History of You’. The episode follows the breakdown of a couple’s relationship, and the fallout of this, and I remember having long discussions with my flatmates after we watched it about if the man or the woman in the relationship were more at fault. I think this is the kind of reaction I would love to provoke with my own writing. By not having strict black and white, good or bad, characters but painting everyone in shades of grey, you can promote these kinds of conversations, and shine a light on the complexities of everyone in the real world. I think this is something we could all learn from. It can be so easy to focus on what makes us different from other people: where we grew up, our political beliefs, our stance on issues, what we do for a living… We are all guilty of judging people whom we perceive to be different from us. But we should try to remember, especially now, with the world as polarised as it is, that there is light and shade in everyone. This is important to me, and I would love to convey it in own my writing.
Thanks for reading, and see you next month!
Livia Nicholson
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