Writing with a Purpose

Ned says ...
Sometimes being a playwright can be the most rewarding thing you could ever do.
Such was the case last week when a project I had been working came to it's conclusion.
I was working with students from Bendigo Senior Secondary College. Local kids and Karen refugees. The project, Finding Your Voice, was a partnership between Bendigo Senior Secondary College, Arts Victoria and the MTC. Chris Mead (MTC) and myself have been travelling to Bendigo every second  Tuesday since April. We have been imparting playwriting skills to 50 kids.
On Wednesday the kids performed their plays. 5 groups of local kids and 2 Karen groups. The locals' plays ranged from the black comedy in the shape of a teen nightmare where Carrie met The Exorcist to a very clever play set in a fridge to a couple of naturalistic pieces dealing with teen issues. The Karen kids pieces were about a prince trying to marry a village girl and the Karen journey from the Thai/Burmese border to Australia.
The whole project was about students using playwriting to tell their own stories. The emphasis was on the story telling rather than the performances.
That said, Wednesdays performance at the Fire Station in Bendigo was electric. The hall was full and you could have cut the air with a knife.
The two Karen pieces brought the house down.
On Friday they travelled to Melbourne to present the pieces at the Lawler Theatre. It was a very different but equally powerful series of performances.
We've all got these "feel good" stories to tell but this one had a different dimension. I've been on this trip for as many years as I can remember. Way back to when I taught in Tenterfield and at the EORA Centre in Redfern. I've been doing it ever since and it continues to blow me away. The level of empowerment that young people get when they are given the tools to tell their stories in their way is quite incredible.
Kids who might feel disengaged in the school are given an opportunity to feel their words and thoughts have value.  Kids for whom English is a second language and who, in this case, have never seen a theatre or a play found a way to tell their stories in a medium they had never encountered.
It was theatre that, forgive the cliche, made a difference.

Untitled

I foolishly offered to write the blog for this week (Verity here), partly because Life has been in the way of me contributing much to the 7s over the past month or so and I wanted to do my share.

But I face the computer this morning once again resource-less. I’ve been reading a book on structure (of novels, not plays). My advice to myself is – when I can’t write, at least I can work on the craft side of things.

The current tome has prompted me to think of the comfort of structure – how sometimes you can just play with the formal shape of things and use that to make some discoveries. For example, a friend and I set ourselves a competition to write ten villanelles each to see what might happen. They didn’t have to be ‘good’ – they just had to be formally ‘correct'.  Out of the ten  – confession, nine – that I wrote, most were bollocks but one was quite good and another I like for myself, though I’d probably not show it to others.

I also read a lot of villanelles to get in the swim. The killer one remains Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, but another that I found that I didn’t like on first reading was the following one by Theodore Roethke. (I don’t think I’m abusing copyright – it’s widely available on the web). 

Despite my first response, I have kept returning to it,  and so on this grey morning in new-washed Adelaide when I just can’t think of what to do with myself, or my current writing projects or even the punishing idiocy of working in this tough old profession, I thought I’d share it with…well, I think the audience for the 7-ON blog is mostly other writers so…while I’ll nod my head to any friends-of-writing who might come across us this week, other writers –  this one’s for you.

The Waking: Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me so take the lively air

And, lovely, learn by going where I have to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Oh Happy Day

I have just had the most rewarding 24 hours in a long time (it's Donna here), one of those very rare days when you see for real that your love and work and faith and bloody-mindedness and dreaming actually amount to something awesome.

Last night, the Griffin Theatre Company announced their 2014 season, and next February, my play Jump For Jordan is the first cab off their rank. It's great to have my play in the mix with others that offer  different takes on this anything but homogenous city of Sydney. Director Iain Sinclair recently led an astute and fun creative development workshop, and if that was anything to go by, I can't wait to start playing in the rehearsal room - after I finish the re-writes, of course. You can check out the full season here Griffin Theatre Company 2014 Season

And today I was part of an audition panel at Powerhouse Youth Theatre in western Sydney, watching committed and hungry young people from Chinese, Iraqi, Sudanese, Turkish and Italian backgrounds dig deep and and wow us with raw talent and courage. I was not the only panelist shedding the odd tear of pride. 26 years after its first workshop, PYT continues to be a creative hothouse like no other, and a cherished home for many creative souls, including me.