Blog: Grappling With The Drama

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Over the past few days that FACT that we're not going to Edinburgh for the Fringe this year has slowly started to properly dawn on me. On Sunday myself and The Tourists On My Royal Mile shared a bottle of St Mungo's beer by the West Brewery, which set off VERY happy memories of drinking it in The Guildford Arms, the pub beneath our venue last year. I realised that I wouldn't BE there this yet, nor would I be having chips and cheese for lunch, or curry for tea every day, or pounding up countless steps, or indeed DOING a show. It felt bit sad!

I am CONSOLING myself, however, with the knowledge that NEXT year's show is coming on apace. It is now pretty definitely probably going to be called "Total Hero Team" and I've ALMOST completed the first draft. Last week I had a MILESTONE when I finally managed to connect the START to the END, via a MIDDLE section... or so I thought. For LO! On Sunday I realised that the ending i DID have rather contradicted what the entire rest of the show was ABOUT.

OOPS. I GRAPPLED with this internally, also EXTERNALLY with the aforesaid Characters In My Drama over the aforesaid BEER, and eventually realised that - AHA! - this was PART of the story and, in fact, made sense of the whole thing, brought back a character from earlier on who had been a LOOSE STRAND and gave me the PROPER BIG FINISH that I had so lacked. HOORAH! I bloody love it when things like this happen - it's as if the whole story has ALWAYS been there waiting for me, I just needed to look properly to uncover it all.

Having said that, only about HALF of the songs are even started yet - this time around it seems that I'm writing most of it as DIALOGUE and then going back and thinking "There needs to be a song here - why don't i CUT those words entirely and do some singing instead?" It SEEMS to be working, but as ever I have no way of knowing until I can try it out on people.

I'm hoping to get the first version finished this month, so that me and Steve can spend August CONCENTRATING on the Dinosaur Planet REVIVAL for Green Man and Camden. It also gives me a nice GAP to lay the script down and come back to it AFRESH in September, ready for revisions and - GOLLY - rehearsals, then starting the whole SHEBANG up again in the new year, doing previews and so forth all the way up to NEXT Edinburgh.

I'm sure it'll FLY by, although right now I have an URGE for Chips, a pint of Deuchars, and some student SKETCHES!

posted 3/7/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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