Tagged: playwriting
Have You Paid For Intimacy?
My next theatre project is all about sex worker’s and their stories from the street.
Paying for sexual services is commonplace (in brothels or on the street), dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. So why is prostitution legal in some countries, and a death sentence in others?
“The Prostitution Reform Bill passed parliament on 25 June 2003. The parts decriminalising soliciting, brothel keeping, procuring and living on the earnings, came into effect on 28 June 2003.”
I am working with the NZPC (NZ Prostitute Collective) to gain understanding and insight into some of the lives of (local) sex workers, who choose to share their stories, warts and all.
‘Whore’ is performing in May 2014, more details to come on the blog.
Project ‘salt’
Writing is my passion, and to hear my (new) play, being read aloud for the first time, is pure elation.
‘salt’ is about unrequited love, and mental health.
A few months ago I emailed/interviewed 10 people about their experience with love, in their lives.
What is love? Do you believe in love? When did you first feel butterflies in your tummy? Who was you childhood sweetheart? And so on.
Everyone found love (from the questionaire) from 5-7 years old, and they all remembered their sweetheart’s full name, including me.
What happens when love is one-sided? Or is it always, one-sided? Can two people love each other the same?
Do you believe in love?
Playwriting
“You are one of those girls, that arrives from nowhere and departs the same way. You seem present but removed?” Will, ‘pURe’
Love that line. I am drafting my next work, which is again different, to my last 5 plays. I enjoy the intimacy of the stage with my characters, however I like to mix it up with film. Thinking about their interests, and back stories, and their secrets. We all have them. Looking forward to a play reading, in a month or two, nothing like seeing the work take shape.
Language is like oxygen – but so is silence. Sitting in an empty room, brings a wild imagination, and thoughts that wonder on for miles.
I am not one of those people, who write everyday. I write when I want to. This brings depth and colour to my work, when writing from the heart.
What is your experience with writing plays?
Stage
There is no like-for-like, when it comes to theatre. I prefer the old fashioned writing style, pen and paper. My shelves are bulging with notebooks, full of thoughts, poetry, extracts and potential material for the stage and screen. Presently, penning my new play, potentially a ‘playreading’ of my script will occur next month, informally. Two people, that meet by chance and explore their existence in seven hours. Incubated love. It is a true adventure, discovering the essence, of these characters through the platform of writing. Consumed with how they think and what they feel, whether it is an (action) stage direction, or text. I see them in my imagination, becoming more real, as the dialogue deepens. Solitude is heaven, when you are lost in language.
melissafergusson 