Stories without beginnings, middles and ends

(This blog was first published on the Out of Kilter Theatre website) “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order” (Jean-Luc Godard, film director) … yet I wonder whether a beginning, middle and end – in any sequence – is a true reflection of how we …

Conspiracy Theories Theory

I have a theory about conspiracy theories. Every day we read novels and watch films and TV dramas where the ‘bad guys' put together an incredibly complex plot to achieve their plans. One ‘good guy' starts to piece together the clues and sets off on a trail to pursue the ‘bad guys', a trail that …

from ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy

"They were not friends, Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Mathew ... They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiousity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were …

Night in the City

I don’t get out into the city for nights out as much as I’d like, but when I do I could just sit and watch all evening. I love the buzz and the noise and the music and the flow and the constant tumult of it; the bold, sassy sexiness of the women; the jaunty, …

A Writer’s Journey #1

I was around the age of 15 when I decided my vocation was to be a writer. Being young and impressionable I presumed this consisted mainly of sitting in smoke-filled bars and drinking until the early hours of the morning, ideally in Paris, while debating the meaning of life with a like-minded group of earnest …

Shifting Perspectives

Things of Darkness - 13th - 14th July: Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester Have you ever been driving in your car or sitting on a bus and listening to music then suddenly felt as if you are somehow outside of the world, observing it at a distance, and that everything, even the most mundane things, are …

Beginnings

Things of Darkness - Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester: 13th - 14th July 2016 (part of GM Fringe) (www.greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk) How does a story begin? For me, invariably, it starts with a picture in my head. Even if the picture is accompanied by an idea, it is the image, first and foremost, that pesters until I begin …

The Bit Player

There is a point at which the invented narrative we weave around our lives is overtaken by reality and we see, with chilling clarity, that we are not the hero, not even the tragic hero, of these stories, but simply a bit player in someone else's story.

If we lived …

... in a perfect world ..... how would we know it was perfect?

Building an edifice against insignificance

We are all strangers to each other and, if only at a subconscious level, acutely aware of our own isolation as we 'strut and sweat our hour upon the stage'. Now, more than ever in this age of democratised mass media where anyone, often without any notable talent or attribute, can achieve notoriety, if not …