The Chicken Shed Diaries #1: Letting go

Its nine weeks to go before my first play, The Chicken Shed Reunited, will be performed to a paying audience. Last week saw the read-through at the Kelvin Players Studio in Bristol.

It was a very exciting moment for me as it feels like a genuine step toward becoming a professional writer. It was also a very scary moment as all of a sudden I realised that my writing was going to be performed...in front of people. People with money! People with money paying to sit and watch and judge a play that I have written. All of a sudden my work is open for criticism or, potentially even more fearful to the self-deprecating writer....praise!

Adding to my gut-wrenching anxiety, I am not having anything to do with the production apart from being available for consultation from the director (Richard Jones) as and when required, potentially attending the occasional rehearsal. My fear does not discredit the director, far from it, but it is a comment on how a control-freak like me can suddenly feel freakishly out-of-control!

Anyway, the read-through. Sitting at the back, like a boy at school trying to avoid the attention of the class...although it was normally the more attention seeking boys that sat at the back of the class...anyway the point is that I sat at the back and I listened and observed the play coming to life. Fortunately the first scene is quite light and comical and so when I got my first laugh only a few lines in it did settle the nerves, much as it does to an actor performing comedy.

During the read-through the roles were passed around the attendee actors so as to ensure everyone has the chance to read a part. This means there is a wide variety of interpretations of the characters as they are read out; variations included accents, tone of voice, pronunciation etc. As these roles were changed around in relatively quick succession I started to feel more relaxed than the first laugh had made me. In fact generally I was a lot less nervous as I had expected myself to be. Toward the end of the read-through I realised why; I was finally letting go!

All of those interpretations of the characters I had written were different to the voices that I'd given the characters in my head at the time of writing. This is not a criticism of the actors as in fact I felt very positive that the characters could still live on in other voices than the ones I gave them.

When you've written something so close to you, particularly around a subject matter such as childhood bullying, it's often horrifying to even think of someone else reading it. Part of this is because you don't want them to say that the actual writing is crap but also because it's something that belongs to you; something you've decided worthy of creating. But as I sat back hearing the dialogue that I had written I realised that the bulk of my work was in the weeks and months of writing and re-writing that had led up to this read-through. They were my anxious moments and now someone wanted to put on something I'd written so surely that's a positive step forward!

Don't get me wrong, I'm still petrified that one reviewer may reduce me to tears before I lock myself in my flat for a month as I cry over the hundreds of tear soaked copies of the newspaper I ordered containing the review that I bought to give to all of my friends and family, even having bought some gold mounted frames...but for now I can sleep a little easier. I have every faith in the director and cast (of who are in the process of being picked as I write this) and I need to let them get on with the job in hand. As for me, if I really want to be 'a writer', I just need to start getting on with writing my next project.


In my next 'Chicken Shed' post I'll start telling you about how I started writing the play from inception to final draft...without given too much away about the plot.