Where Are We Going?
Thoughts for future development
I have so many ideas about the development of this show. Edinburgh Fringe?? Tedtalk?! Awareness!!! Advocacy!!! Fame, acclaim and lots and lots of money!!??
Accessibilty
I would love to make the show more accessible for other groups of disabled people. My show aims to present the disruptive, exclusionary and isolating nature of chronic illness. I’d hate for other disabled people to feel excluded from my work, particularly when they are most likely to resonate with its themes.
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Captioning - Laura Murphy’s show was captioned and the captions were integral to the show itself taking on a life of their own, moving and growing bigger and smaller. Murphy’s voice could be overridden by music and other sounds and you could still know what was being said.
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Making the show more accessible for myself: writing versions of the show I can do depending on my physical energetic capacities. For example, a show with more rests or a show where someone has to come and take over parts of scenes that I’m not up to doing.
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Working with a BSL interpretor
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Relaxed performances
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I’ve booked to attend a drop in session with Unlimited. Unlimited are a charity that offers support and funding to disabled theatre makers. They are running advice and guidance sessions to help people make their work more accessible and inclusive.
Funding
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Arts Council funding; National Lottery Project Grants
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I am planning to apply for funding from the charity Unlimited. I also want to become a part of their network.
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The National Community Fund
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The Keep It Fringe Fund run by Phoebe Waller Bridge
Ambitions for touring the show
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Oxford’s Offbeat festival
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The Camden Fringe
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The Edinburgh Fringe
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Soho Theatre
Collabs / Venues
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Soho Theatre lab – create connections with Soho Theatre
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Fusebox – The theatre company I co-run (Junk Theatre) won the FUSE International award earlier this year for one of our shows and have offered for us to use their space to develop future shows.
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Holland house – I collaborated with Holland House, a free Artspace for London-based creatives. I used Holland House for my rehearsals and Research and Development days and hope to use it for future development sessions and to invite people to come and watch stagger-through versions of the show.
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The Omnibus Theatre offers a free space for theatre makers and has connections with Rose Bruford.
Directors I'd love to work with
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Ursula Martinez (has directed shows I’ve loved, including A Spectacle of herself, Batshit by Leah Shelton and Lucy & Friends by Lucy McCormac)
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Caroline Horton
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James Macdonald
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Jack Reardon
Developing Sound and Lighting design
Sound was a big thing in my IRP Presentation. I’m lucky enough to know a talented producer (Kamran Afshar) and fab podcast producer (Verity De Cala) who helped me create the music and sound for this show and are keen to stay involved as the show develops. I want to keep playing with sound and see how far it can take me. Melanie Wilson designed the sound for The Shape Of The Pain and I adore the way she explains her process. (text on right)
Lighting designers I'd love to work with
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Andy Pervis - He asks the writers and directors of shows to try to write the lighting as the character they are playing.
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Katherine Williams - They play with allowing the lights to be their own characters with their own narrative.
Developing The Story
I want to create more of a throughline throughout the piece. I don’t want it to become a linear story and as I’ve mentioned, creating an ending with a neat resolution would feel inauthentic to my experience and just isn’t what I’m trying to do with the show. but I think it’s a bit too random at the moment and is really lacking any form of storyline / unifying idea.
Ideas for a throughline:
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The whole play is the build up to me attending (or not attending) a party.
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The whole show revolves around romantic relationship - maybe it breaks down or maybe they keep trying to make it work.
I also have some idea of how I want the finished piece to end, I want the end to be a dramatic build up to something that doesn’t happen because my character is too ill to follow through. I’m not sure what this ending will look like yet. Maybe the house lights come up and I will have left the stage and I don’t even make it back for the bow, or maybe I ask someone from the audience to read out a script detailing what should have happened. What if I have to sit in the audience and watch a version of the show that I have no control over? This could be an opportunity for me to write a scene that I would never be able to actually do in terms of budget, something really fantastical and ambitious. It could be interesting to have this read out by a monotone audience member. This also relates to this idea of chronic illness hijacking any sense of control, making me a spectator in my own life.
The Misogynistic &
The Scientific
I wanted to explore medical misogyny and the science behind my condition in my show but I couldn’t fit it in. My final presentation for the Languages and Practice Module was heavily influenced by my experience of medical misogyny, you can find it in the Easter Egg section of this site under ‘Doctors’. I want to re-centre this concern as I develop the show further. I also want to delve into the science behind my illness and see how I can weave facts about pain and bacteria into the piece using medical vocabulary, reports, graphs, animations and graphics.
Image: A cute little cartoon my doctor sent me that shows bad bacteria burrowing into a bladder lining
Character Development
The central character in my show is called Anna but I’m still not quite sure if the character I’ve written is entirely me or a fictionalised version. I spoke about this with Caroline and she suggested that in efforts to make something that reflected my autobiographical experience I’d forgotten that I’m totally within my rights to make shit up and to embellish the story and take it to places beyond my own experience. I need to make the distinction between myself and this character clearer and I want to push non-naturalistic methods of storytelling which may take me further away from the depiction of myself that currently exists in the work.
I guess that's it then
