parTy
What to say about this play… it’s very slutty. When I enrolled to do a Masters in Creative Writing, I’d initially set out to broaden my horizons, maybe write some prose. However, as the first term rolled on, this story picked at my brain and wouldn’t let me go.
The story of a sexually liberated gay man in his early 20s terrified of moving back to the country with his ‘normal’ parents seemed to speak to me… for some reason. The resulting script is a little trite, but it’s not a complete shambles. The structure is tight, the archetypes are clear, and the motif of Alex’s slutty statues work pretty well.
parTy was my attempt of tying together pieces from previous projects into something I could relate to in the moment. After a trip to the National Theatre introduced me to the play ‘chemsex’, I’d become somewhat obsessed with the practice (academically). What is it like to deviate from the deviants? What happens when, after experiencing such extremes, you’re forced into a more mundane way of living? Folding that into my own fear at the time of potentially leaving Cardiff, this play was borne.
And subsequently died.
As I say, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this script. Another draft or two and it could be pretty good, but subsequent stories and scripts have borrowed elements of this play and used them in far more interesting ways.
Writing this play was one of my favourite writing experiences. Weekly feedback sessions, constant mentorship, and a strict deadline were all welcome after years of drifting. It also taught me, above all my previous stories, that the ‘normal world’ of the protagonist can be as extreme as it needs to be. It’s normal to the protagonist, not the audience. If being a pass-around-bottom is what’s normal to Alex, then so-be-it.
The Local
If I could, I’d include this story twice. However, that would make this a list of 11 projects and that makes no sense for this series. The draft I’m going to include here will be the draft I submitted for my final project on my Masters degree.
At the point of writing the script, I’d been out of hospitality for nearly two years. Ample time, as I thought at the time, to put my experiences into a narrative context. The result is a narratively tight pilot episode of a comedy series set in a pub after acquisition from a fictional London pub chain. The mixture of local expectations and brand compliance is a great source of conflict and comedy, but upon reflection this was not the way to do it.
Life working behind a bar, especially one such as I was writing, is extreme. Telling this story through a straight single-cam scripted set-up is not commissionable. The language alone would pale even the most amenable of Channel 4 commissioners. However, at the time of writing the script for my degree, that’s exactly what I did. The result is a script that is fine. Just fine. People who haven’t worked in hospitality that have read it have enjoyed it, but upon reflection it’s not a fully honest depiction of the kind of life bar staff lead.
This is a story I have returned to and will return to again, but for now here’s an extract of The Local.
Comentários