Writing for Performance Workshop

Last week playwright Tony Benge came to Storyslingers HQ to lead a workshop in Writing for Performance.

First of all Tony asked us to think of an important character from childhood that we could identify with or sparked something within us. He asked us to write a short statement about the character from the point of view of the character. This was a great exercise to help us get into the head of a different person, and it was interesting to see which character everyone picked.

To those members and guests who weren’t able to come to the workshop: why not try it now?

We went on to discuss culturally shared characters from classic myths, with Icarus being the central character of our discussion.  Because everyone has an idea of Icarus and his story, it makes characterising him a little easier, which is great for a beginner. We didn’t have to worry about the theme or fictional world because that’s already culturally established.

(picture from here: http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=icarus&order=9&offset=0#/d29j0n9)

We then worked for a 10 minute period in which we wrote out a short monologue from the pov of a famous character from history, fiction or legend, but set in the modern day. Most of us picked up the Icarus character, but there were others as well; such as Medusa, Charon and the BFG.

When writing monologues it’s important that the situation is easy for the audience to visualise and to remember that it will be acted. There will be minimal props, but a few key props could be incorporated.

Your audience will more readily engage with the performance if the characters have empathic qualities. If your audience feels like they can understand the character, having been through a similar experience themselves, you will have a more attentive and receptive audience. But careful not to bore them by giving them too much, don’t spoon feed them; always keep ahead of your audience.

*

We had a great time, and there’s even a chance we might work with some actors to bring our first monologue experiments to the stage.

Keep your specs peeled for further info about this. 

Short Story Published: Intersection

Last month a new short story of mine was published by the most excellent Pygmy Giant. You can read it by going here: http://thepygmygiant.com/2011/09/12/intersection/
It's less of a story and more of an intersection between two narratives that haven't been written, with some philosophy thrown in. I hope you like it!


You can read another story I wrote a few years ago that I also got published at the Pygmy Giant: http://thepygmygiant.com/2008/12/05/elder/

Author Tony Benge Visits Storyslingers

Just a little note to let you know author Tony Benge will be dropping by Storyslingers tomorrow night to give a workshop on Writing for Performance. Tony recently performed his short play "The Miracle Worker" at the SAC Theatre, as part of a production called 15 Minutes of Fame. We're honoured to have him visit us, and we look forward to hearing what he has to say!

His workshop will include:

• Warm up
• Developing a character
• Structuring
• Writing

As always, the meeting will be held from 6:30pm - 8:30pm. £4 for Storyslingers and Dorset Writers Network members, £5 to everyone else. Please let us know asap if you're interested, as places will be limited! (Contact details on our 'About' page.)

SAC Arts Festival - Quick Round-Up

Things have been busy for both of us these past couple of weeks, but we wanted to post about the Arts Festival before we move on to newer news.

The festival was booming on the Saturday and a big success for SAC, and the writing group learned a valuable bundle about promotion and presence—things we plan to take with us to the next event. We had a fantastic turnout of loot in the end, as you can see here:

 

We also got to finally meet our sister group, the poetry writers, and even take part in a poetry workshop. I'm not sure if we're ready to start sharing our poems just yet, but it was fascinating trying out some of the processes of transforming prompts and stream-of-consciousness writing into poems. We didn't realise we had it in us!

Next up, we will be showcasing more of our work at the Mere Literary Festival (October 10^th - 16^th 2011). We hope you'll come along and visit us! There will be even more creative writing available in the form of booklets, flyers, bookmarks, and creative writing games. We'll post more about this closer to the time.

Our loot so far...

Just a quick update to show you our loot (so far!) from last night's meeting:

We were all amazed and thrilled with how much stuff we already have to put on show at the arts festival, and we're still in the process of making more booklets, leaflets, and bookmarks, so there'll be even more by the time the weekend lands.

Part of me is enjoying this way too much, and the other part is looking forward to kicking back and catching up on sleep when the festival is over. :)

SAC Arts Festival 2011 – more creative stuff

After Jenny's awesome post about her flyers and story printouts, I thought I'd post about some of my own creative endeavours for the Arts Centre Festival. There's just under a week left and I'll bet the remaining days zoom by. So far I've been sorting out story flyers and booklets, but there's still a lot to do. It's a good thing we'll have some time to set up beforehand!

I'll be showcasing three separate pieces, two of them printed on large postcards (a bit slimmer than the exquisite 300gsm card Jenny's stories are printed on, but still sturdy enough to be satisfying), and a single page, folded booklet for a slightly longer piece that was actually written for one of our very own writing prompts. Here is a little taster:

I'm also planning to make some bookmarks promoting Storyslingers and possibly samples of micro-fiction (a post highlighting what micro-fiction is can be found at my website here). These will be the standard slim card style bookmarks that slot easily between pages. I've got some nice black card, stickers and gold and silver pens to play with. We'll see how they go!

I've also been making cute origami bookmarks that fit neatly over the top corner of the page. These are much easier to manoeuvre as they're small. They'll make great holiday gifts, too.

There's even the possibility of a collaborative activity, if we can tempt visitors to our table to participate, in the form of a giant round-robin story. This is where the first person writes an opening sentence of a story, then the second person picks it up and writes a sentence, then the third person adds a sentence, and so on until you have a full story. Similarly, a game of Consequences could be fun. Maybe we'll do both!

We'll try to take photos at the Arts Festival and post them here, but if you can make it, please do drop by.

Meticulous

We’re hard at work preparing for the arts centre’s festival next weekend. We’ve been making booklets, postcards and bookmarks to showcase our work; some of which will be on sale. I’ve had two of my stories printed at Meticulous Ink, a fine printing and stationary company in Bath. Meticulous Ink specialise in exquisite traditional printing methods, including letterpress. I only needed digital prints this time around, but I’ve been salivating over their letterpress products for quite some time. Storyslingers will definitely be getting some of our work letterpress printed in the future.

My digital prints came beautifully packaged. I felt like a very spoilt child at a birthday party when I unwrapped these goodies. Amazing!

I designed an invitation style flyer to promote our table at the festival, which I got printed at the same time; all three on lovely posh 300mg. I’m thrilled with them. They look fantastic, very professional and slick.

x

Check out Meticulous Ink’s blog: http://meticulousink.blogspot.com/2011/08/change-of-address-cards-liz-kingston.html

handmade books

We're busy making books and leaflets for the forthcoming Shaftesbury Arts Centre festival. (More news on that later).

Some members are particularly interested in handmade books and printing. So with this is mind I draw your attention to this bookart competition:

http://artistsbookcollective.blogspot.com/2011/08/bookart-competition-december-2011.html

(this is a photo of a booklet I made a long time ago for a friend.)

Sci fi story published on Kasma

A sci fi story of mine has been published by Kasma SF magazine. You can read it by following this link:

http://www.kasmamagazine.com/beached.html

Enjoy!

J. Bell.

Remix lit

I've found a few sites that experiment with remixing. They include stories with a creative commons licence so you can play all you like.

http://markcnewton.com/2010/02/17/remix-project/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/10/fiction.film

http://www.remixmylit.com/

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2009/09/23/remix-my-lit-literature-thats-read-and-write/

And to turn to music, the medium that has been remixing for the longest: here is DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World and a remix of Midnight in a Perfect world from Endroducing. (DJ Shadow's album Endroducing is composed of entirely appropriated remixed and reworked samples and was the first ever album to do so).

First is the original piece of music that DJ Shadow sampled from:

and here is Midnight in a Perfect World:

and a remix of Midnight in a Perfect World: