Alison Ripley Cubitt's Blog, page 12

Writing for Stage Part 2 The Audience

The highlight of last weekend’s page-to-stage workshop at The Berry & The Point was the staged performance in front of a paying audience on Tuesday night.  The team putting together the production had just two days rehearsal and in that time they had to find props, costumes, sound recordings and in my case, even a recreated archive recording.  As well as that, the two actors playing the part even did the accents and bearing in mind that they were playing characters from the 1940s, they even managed to get it about right for the time period.  David Pearce’s West Yorkshire accent and Anna Carr’s South Australian performing voices sent chills down my spine for one particular moment as I imagined myself back in the world of the characters.

Each writer had selected one or two scenes to be performed and while the majority of the writers had quite sensibly chosen the first couple of scenes, I had opted for the final scene.  Brave or foolhardy, I’m not sure which, in hindsight, probably the latter but given that a play is only ever a blueprint, like a screenplay and doesn’t come to life until it’s staged, I figured that this might be my only shot at this and I really wanted to see if there was enough here yet to engage an audience.

The three questions I posed to the audience were:

What stood out for you?

Is there anything here that engages you, so that you might want to find out how Vivian and Kingsley got to this point in the story?

How relevant is this dramatic story, set 70 years ago, to a modern audience?

It is the third question that is the most crucial at this point because period drama is a hard sell and it’s crucial to bring something new to a story in order to make it work today.  Our tutor on the course, Simon Eden said I still had some way to go on this aspect, which is a fair comment.  The audience, though, were terrifically supportive and if I do take this project further I shall have their comments sitting on my desktop, reminding me that for one night at least, it was thanks to their support that one part of this story came to life on stage.

The Beach

1. What stood out for you?

�          The arrival or the jeep and getting on the jeep and potentially final journey together.
�          The sound really took you there.
�          The relationship between the two
�          The fear / uncertainceny
�          Fear, pain and how friendship can be formed in dreadful circumstances
�          The underlying tension and their friendship
�          The touching script and inspiring relationship between Patrick & Vivian
�          The extreme situation the characters found themselves in.  2 different accents – why were they together…?
�          The relationship between the two characters was really lovely.
�          Very sad story.  Their journey thus far had obviously connected them
�          A charming relationship developing into a romance
�          Vivian’s devotion and obvious niceness
�          Their resolve and fortitude in dire circumstances; their mutual support and caring
�          The story of their arrival
�          Support for each other
�          Curry – a short[?] symbol of a missed opportunity.
�          The bravery / friendship of the characters in a hopeless situation
�          Turn / development and arrival of the patrol- became quite dark
�          Kingsley assuming he’d die – telling V. to speak to Elsie but then backtracking and implying he’d like to speak to Elsie


2.              Is there anything here that engages you, so that you might want to find out how Vivian and Kingsley got to this point in the story?
�          Some back story – which we have in the synopsis. Flash backs on stage?
�          Oh yes! They are quite different character & class
�          The situation that they were in made me interested
�          How they bond in horrific situation
�          Yes, I’d like to see what had happened and what happens next
�          Yes.  I would like to know how they come to be here
�          I would like to see the back stories of both characters
�          I would have liked to have seen more dialogue in the car and more context to allow me to understand who they are and what’s happened to them
�          Kingsley’s war wound and Vivian’s story makes us want to find out how they got there
�          I’m more interested now in where they end up
�          Yes, I (the audience) care a lot about each character. I would like to know more about the future than the past.  Where do they go from here?
�          Their relationship
�          The “budding” relationship
�          The dialogue hints at interest in events earlier
�          The light /house – perhaps to obvious – a symbol though?
�          I would like to find out more.  Several things engaged me.
�          Yes – I would like to see the development of their relationship from past meeting
�          Didn’t K & V explain how they got here? Or did I misunderstand?


3.              How relevant is this dramatic story, set 70 years ago, to a modern audience?
�          It’s a timeless story about strength of character. Surviving together.  Human endevour
�          Very.  These things / stories are still happening
�          It was good to show what situations were like in places during war time
�          We are all still at the whim of others – for mercy / life
�          These feelings and emotions will always be relevant it’s just the circumstances that vary
�          Still relevant and engaging
�          I think that people can connect to the relationship between the two characters and the struggles that they face
�          People will always have something to fight for, challenges to face – and we’ll always need someone else to lean on.
�          I think very, especially considering that although a very different one, we are in a war at the moment
�          Loss and friendship is always relevant, the story was more human – the historical background is a good stage for that but history is not interesting
�          It’s the themes that are relevant, so the setting doesn’t alienate a modern audience.  A story of how / why people connect is timeless. The setting works as it intensifies the stakes.
�          Relevant – particularly to anyone who has at least some knowledge of history.
�          This story is timeless.  We can learn from peoples’ way of coping in such a situation
�          Very relevant – relationships, history..
�          I think the core, survival, is always relevant
�          NHS came out of this kind of experience
�          Very relevant – relationships are always relevant
�          It’s still about human relationships and fears – so still relevant

�          I’m not sure – maybe too short a clip to decide relevance

Finally a big thank you to all my writers – Tom Pinnock, Caitlin Sanderson, Anna Haines, Steven Allen, Jonathan Edgington and Matt Beames.  And of course to Director Daniel Hill, Writers’ Workshop Leader Simon David Eden, Page to Stage Assistants, Sean Tyler and Rob Iliffe. And of course to the Theatre Technicians – Ashton Patridge and Marie Castleman.  But the biggest thank you of all must go to Anna Carr as Vivian and David Pearce as Kingsley who have a fine acting future ahead of them.

Publishers Behaving Badly, Part... I've Lost Count

Reblogged from David Gaughran:

There seems to be a view in certain self-congratulatory circles that publishers have finally got to grips with the digital revolution, that they have weathered the fiercest part of the storm, and that they are well-placed now not just to survive, but to thrive.

There are innumerable problems with that view, of course, but today I'd like to focus on one core truth of this brave new world that publishers have failed to grasp.

Read more… 1,877 more words

As I've been discussing copyright issues over the past couple of days I've decided to re-blog this post as a public information bulletin for indie writers. Thanks David Gaughran for keeping us up to date on these lousy publishing contracts. And I am looking forward to reading a download of David's book, A Storm Hits Valparaiso, available free on Amazon today.

Writing for Performance

I’ve spent the weekend at a page-to-stage workshop at The Point & The Berry Theatre, led by professional playwright, TV and film screenwriter, Simon Eden. Seven writers (including two under 18s) had to come prepared to write and share their work with the group.  Sharing your work in a group situation can be challenging for writers new to writing for performance.  All that is so personal to you, namely your writing, suddenly has to be put out there for others to comment upon.  It’s nerve-wracking enough if you’re used to working in this way, which I am, fortunately so that I can’t imagine what it must be like for the younger writers.  But to their credit, both Anna and Caitlin seemed to take the process very much in their stride.

We were very lucky with our team members and facilitators, which included Rob Iliffe, Drama Development Officer at The Point & The Berry Theatre and Sean Tyler (Writers’ Hub Co-ordinator).  On the Saturday of the workshop we writers gave a brief introduction to the script that we’d pitched for the workshop that got us selected.  But after that we were sent away for the rest of the day to write.  And I can tell you, that the time just flew by! Although we had the rest of the evening to write when we got home, we had to submit our scripts by 9am on the Sunday morning.

While some of the group were working into the small hours, polishing and refining their scripts, I, for once, had decided to wait until the next day for the input of the director, Daniel Hill (Drama Development Manager at The Point and Berry Theatre) and the actors, who were going to be playing the parts of Vivian and Kingsley in my play, The Beach.

Although I studied drama at university and go to the theatre on a regular basis, this is the first time I have ever written for the stage.  Even when writing screenplays I do have a tendency to struggle with the geography of a scene.  And it was very apparent to me that the geography of a scene on stage is even more important.  I am still working at writing clearer stage directions, as at one point I have my characters in a clearing in a jungle and the next minute they’re walking down a road.  The only problem, as Simon quite rightly pointed out was that I hadn’t added in any stage directions to get the two characters from one place to another.  Of course, if this was a screenplay, I would simply cut to a new scene.  You can do that in a play, for sure, by the use of house lights fading down and coming up again, but as there’d been no emotional change in the scene I decided to stick with just the once scene.

Whether this was a wise decision or not will be evident at the Tuesday night, 12th March performance in front of the audience at The Berry Theatre.

Another headache I’d created for Daniel, who is having to direct this piece, and for Anna and David who are playing the roles, is that I have my actors walking along a road – which on stage, for this particular performance with minimal technical facilities, is a bit of a challenge! And then there’s another part of the same scene, where Vivian and Kingsley have to climb into a vehicle and be driven along a road.

I had one last opportunity this morning, prior to the actors going into rehearsal, to tweak the script a bit. But after that, my part of the process is over and in a process of true collaboration, I hand my work over to the director and performers.  If my instructions weren’t clear enough that will be my fault and my fault alone.  And this will be abundantly clear on Tuesday night as I watch the performance with the best critics of all, a paying audience.

Why do indie authors have to pay a multi-national for an ISBN?

I don’t know about you, but having to pay for a bar code (ISBN) for an ebook ranks up there with making a special a trip to the shops to buy kitchen roll.  One of the reasons for leaving Amazon’s KDP Select in the first place was that as an indie author, I resented having to be exclusive to a big multi-national.  I suspect that Cara, our feisty champion of the underdog in Revolution Earth would have had something not very complimentary to say about that!

But to give Amazon credit, they have got round the ISBN problem, for ebooks at least, with their own digital version of ISBN – called an ASIN, that they issue you for free when you publish an ebook.  And when you publish a print book through CreateSpace (an Amazon company) they also issue you with a free ISBN.

You don’t need a ISBN to publish on the Kobo Writing Life digital platform either but you really should get one, as this will enable better international distribution. Now in Canada, where Kobo Writing Life is based, ISBNs are free for authors but if you live in the US, Australia or the UK you have to pay for them.

In the UK and Ireland,  ’Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) , an American global information and measurement company with headquarters in New York (USA) and Diemen (Netherlands)‘ (source: Wikipedia) have the exclusive contract (or, to put it another way, monopoly on issuing ISBNs to publishers in these countries).

Given that Cara would, no doubt also have had something to say about indie publishers living where I live, having no choice but to pay another multi-national for a bar code when authors based in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa can get theirs free from their respective governments, I thought I would write to this stock exchange listed company (active in over 100 countries and employing approximately 34,000 people worldwide with total revenues at $5.6 billion in 2012[1].) (Wikipedia) whether or not they would consider giving indie authors publishing ebooks a discount.

Lambert Nagle: I wonder though, now that the ebook

revolution is here to stay and so many of us authors who have to

purchase ISBNs are very small outfits who, (in my case only need at

most 5 ISBN numbers as I am only publishing one ebook) that you might

consider reducing the price for people like us?

Nielsen have the monopoly on IBSN numbers in the UK – we have no

alternative but to go through you – when Canadian and New Zealand

authors can get theirs for free through government agencies.

As you can imagine, Nielsen were thrilled to hear from me and did in fact write back – completely ignoring my argument – that they really hadn’t got to grips with the ebook revolution and that the ISBN system might need tweaking for ebooks.  And instead, gave me the company spiel, how a company listed on the stock exchange justified squeezing money out of us indie authors.

Nielsen: Countries whose ISBN Agencies issue ISBNs for free are issuing them through government agencies, and the cost is covered by the government.  Where the ISBN Agencies are run commercially, the organisation running that Agency needs to cover the cost of not only the fee payable to the International ISBN Agency (which is based on the amount of publishing done in that country, and comes to 40 thousand+ euros annually) but carrying out the mandated tasks that the International Agency requires.

Each year the UK ISBN Agency registers approximately 3,000 new publishers, providing these and many other previously-registered publishers with ISBN prefixes. Creating and maintaining unique and unambiguous publisher records is the key responsibility of the Agency. In addition, the Agency provides advice by telephone and email to a much greater number of enquirers about the ISBN system and the book supply chain for which it is used. The rules of the ISBN system, requirements of Legal Deposit, advice on bar-coding, sources of industry training and statistics and many other queries are all dealt with by the Agency.

However, an even greater mandated responsibility of each national ISBN Agency is to operate (or delegate the operation of) a bibliographic database. The charge made for assigning an ISBN prefix reflects not only the cost of recording the publisher name, address and contact details (and reflecting any changes made thereafter) and issuing a set of globally-unique product identifiers, but it also contributes towards the further task of maintaining comprehensive and timely bibliographic information about the several million different products within the English Language book trade.

I hope this explains the reasons why Nielsen has to charge for ISBNs.

Hmm, all it explains to me is that the explosion in the number of ebooks being published must be filling Nielsen’s coffers nicely and that there must be many other authors out there who are being forced to pay for more ISBN numbers than they need.

I think it’s about time the whole ISBN system was shaken up and replaced with a more equitable system. What do you think?

Engrenage/Spiral – Season 4 – State of Terror

I imagine that if you tried to market a TV series called “Cogs,” everyone would think it was the bicycle version of Top Gear.  Instead, the makers of the French cop drama, Engrenage, currently occupying the Scandi drama slot on BBC 4, have opted for the imperfect English translation, Spiral.

Now broadcasting Season 4, State of Terror, this series reveals a side of Paris that most tourists won’t even know exists and a million miles away from the absurdly sentimental world of Amelie and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.  Engrenage pits battle-hardened cop, Captain Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust) and her team against the likes of lawyers Joséphine Karlsson (Audrey Flouret) and Pierre Clément who are so hooked on money and success that they are drawn to defend high paying underworld criminals.

In Engrenage the cops are forced to pursue their suspects in the kind of car that Jeremy Clarkson wouldn’t be seen dead in.  It’s the detailed portrayal of the day to day working lives of police officers that makes this such an engaging series.  I don’t know any other cop drama that has got so close to the reality of the level of trust that team members have for their colleagues.  Laure and her colleague “Gilou” are always at each other and it must drive their colleague “Tintin” up the wall.  But you know that this is just a way of alleviating tension, a release after the stress of the day job. You know that if it came to it, Laure would lay down her life to save Gilou and that he would do the same for her.

Laure and especially Gilou live their professional lives on the edge: when Laure pulled the trigger on a sadistic killer a second too early, it is Gilou and Tintin who are prepared to lie and say that they witnessed the killer aiming his weapon at Laure.  It’s just a shame that Gilou, who has got himself in way too deep with the Sarahoui clan – (by providing them with an illegal weapon), can’t ‘fess up to Laure and tell her what’s going on.

Laure is tenacious and brave on the beat but has a tendency to fall apart back in the office.  Her bête noir is lawyer Joséphine Karlsson, who has tried on more than one occasion to go after Laure for police brutality.  It is Laure’s bad luck to question a suspect and then find out they are being defended by Karlsson.

Josephine reminds me of a female lawyer in Melbourne who made a very good living out of defending one particularly notorious family in the criminal underworld.

These women, with their designer wardrobes and killer heels, seem happy to have made a pact with the devil: they thrive on the power, notoriety and fame that their underworld clients bestow upon them.  Their lives are never dull: there’s the danger   and excitement that goes with defending the most indefensible of dangerous gangland bosses.  It doesn’t seem to occur to them that should they get the wrong result for their clients that their own lives might be in danger.  Joséphine, I suspect, probably does know this – and makes darn sure that she doesn’t lose a case.

But the character who is perhaps the most intriguing in Season 4 is Pierre Clément, who has gone into business with Joséphine, and gone from upstanding prosecutor to gun-for-hire defender of low-life.  But I suspect that like the title – these two are heading for a fall, spiralling their way down, out of control.  It’s compelling stuff.

Engrenage is currently screening on BBC 4 Saturday nights at 9.00pm in double episodes.

Paperback Cover Revolution Earth

Front and back cover design print version Revolution Earth

Non-US Self-Publisher? Tax Issues Don't Need to be Taxing

Reblogged from Catherine, Caffeinated:

OH FOR THE LOVE OF FUDGE.

That's what this whole tax-withholding-for-non-US-residents makes me want to scream. Out loud, and repeatedly. But as I've said before, self-publishing your e-book on the biggest online retailer in the world is so easy, there had to be something like this to balance it out.

If you haven't been keeping up with this ongoing saga, here's a quick recap.

Read more… 2,029 more words

I' re-blogging this as the advice is so good. The options when the IRS finally do answer the phone (my call took 25 minutes on a Thursday night at 22.00 UK time to get through) have recently changed. You now need to Press 1 to get an Employee Identification Number.

Sainsbury’s Launches EBook Site

As those of you, trying to reach out to new readers will know, they’re never going to find your books if they don’t know they exist in the first place.  Before the ebook revolution, readers relied upon professional reviews and bookshop in-store promotions.

In the digital age, it’s got a whole lot harder for authors to make their work stand out from the crowd, as so many more books are being published.  If you sell books on Amazon you have to put your faith in machines to attract attention, such as the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought’ algorithm.  Now, I know enough about technology to realise that a human had to design the recommendation algorithm in the first place, but even so, when I get emails from Amazon suggesting different books to me, I’m often puzzled by the selections.

According to the Codex Group, which tracks book-buying, ‘only 7% of books sold online were discovered online.’ (Source: James Bridle writing in The Observer, 3 February 2013 -We’re all talk when it comes to buying online).

If I had the choice, I would far rather have advice from a fellow reader whose opinion I respected.  So it can only be good news to hear that Sainsbury’s, which took over the reading social networking site, Anobii, last year, has launched eBooks by Sainsbury’s.  Not another social networking site, I hear you say. Won’t it just be yet another distraction to keep me from writing?

It’s early days yet for the site so it’s too soon to judge how effective it will be as a way to attract new readers.  But, on a positive note, when I wrote to Sainsbury’s, asking what their policy was on promoting the work of indie published authors, this is what they had to say:

“We are only able to sell ebooks via publishers or aggregators at this time; however, we are currently looking into establishing partnerships with aggregators that distribute self-published writers (SmashWords, Author Solutions etc.).  If you are signed up with such an aggregator, it will be our pleasure to offer your books for sale on Ebooks by Sainsbury’s once we have the partnerships in place.”

From the website:

“If you would like to display and sell your ebooks through our site we will require the following: country you are based in (for the moment we can only sell in the UK, but we welcome publishers from all over the world)extent of your digital catalogue file formats available (we accept epub/ pdf) metadata format (onix 2.1 is mandatory) any aggregator you use (we are implementing a number of them and so might be distributing your titles soon anyway).”

Whether or not eBooks by Sainsbury’s is going to attract a big enough readership to make it worthwhile for authors to come out of Amazon KDP Select and distribute their work through an aggregator, like SmashWords, remains to be seen.  But let’s hope so.

Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins

Rupert Everett’s international film career was launched with Another Country, back in 1984, when he was both young and beautiful.  Although never able to make the grade as a romantic lead – Hollywood was notoriously conservative back then and couldn’t risk the wrath of a potential right wing backlash if they cast an openly gay actor.  Nevertheless he went on to have his fifteen minutes of fame in Hollywood, where he briefly held court in Camelot.

Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins describes in detail, hanging out with his famous gal pals – from Madonna to Sharon Stone.  So far, so celebrity memoir, you would think. Whatever you think of Rupert’s acting abilities (and he is endearingly self-deprecating on that topic), this man can surely write.

On his privileged upbringing:

‘After ten years of prep and public school you were part of the gang; and if you weren’t, you were a freak or a fairy. Luckily for me I was both.’

On the movie business:

‘The movie business is a strange affair, demanding total dedication from its lovers, although it gives none in return.

Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins manages to be both witty and sad, sweet and endearing as well as achingly funny.  It doesn’t sound like his younger, self-absorbed self would have been much fun to hang around with but all that changed when his beloved Mo, a black Labrador, came into his life.

Although it’s fascinating to read about his early Hollywood career, hanging out with legends of another era, like Orson Welles, I just loved, that in that crazy mixed up world in La La Land, a black Labrador (a signifier of a British rural upbringing – if ever there was one), got to fly on Concorde and hang out in A Listers pools. 

Zero Dark Thirty: she finds her man but at what cost?

Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty is challenging, as it lays out, in an unflinching way, the sort of personal characteristics you would have to have to carry out the CIA’s dirty business of torturing detainees.  And by telling the story for the ten year hunt for Osama Bin Laden through her female protagonist Maya, Bigelow challenges her audience to confront an unpleasant truth: that women are as capable of acts of torture as their male counterparts.

Mark Boal’s screenplay puts two female characters centre-stage of this action thriller. Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) is the older of the two, a veteran CIA analyst who although devoted to her job and despite her gung-ho choice of occupation, is depicted as the only one who doesn’t seem unduly damaged by her experiences.  That is one aspect of this challenging film that has so far been overlooked.  Jessica is able to do other things besides work. Although we don’t find out this until later, Jessica had three kids waiting for her at home.

And it is perhaps in the character of Jessica that we have to confront the realisation that even women who come across as warm and personable, with functioning relationships and home lives, were complicit in the torture of detainees.  Although the camera shows Maya, rather than Jessica taking part in the torture scenes, Jessica knows exactly what’s going on there in the backroom where the CIA carries out its dirty business.  The very act of being there means she is complicit.

There is one particularly telling point in the film when Barack Obama comes on television to boast that in his new regime, ‘America doesn’t do torture.’  As Jessica and Maya react, in an exchange of incredulous glances, body language challenging the hypocrisy of the Commander-in-Chief’s statement, they seem to be saying, ‘perhaps you’d better come out here and take a look yourself.’

Amongst the other criticism of  Zero Dark Thirty I have read recently, one came from fellow colleagues of the woman CIA officer whom Jennifer Ehle’s character is supposedly modelled upon.  Jennifer Matthews was CIA Station Chief at Chapman Base in Afghanistan and like Jessica, she had a family, but was killed by a suicide bomber at the base.  She was a serious-minded and formidable agent and her former colleagues, it has been widely reported in the press, found the portrayal of her as a lightweight in Zero Dark Thirty to be disrespectful.

However much a character may appear to be modelled upon a real person, a character in a dramatic screenplay can only ever be a composite.  Jessica and Maya, for dramatic reasons have to be polar opposites.  Jessica is old school, one of the guys, and even though she’s a CIA agent, she comes across as human – an older colleague trying to make a younger one feel at ease.  In contrast, Maya is withdrawn and monosyllabic.

In the office Jessica turns to her new colleague and asks in a benevolent way, “you got any friends at all?” You can almost see Maya’s thought processes, clicking and whirring, until she concedes that she is in fact, friendless. At a later point Maya joins Jessica for a meal in a hotel and, as Maya launches into a discussion about work, Jessica stops her in her tracks and asks if they can’t talk about something else. Jessica is curious to know whether or not her new protégé has a boyfriend and asks Maya whether she’s “hooked up” yet with any of her colleagues. “A little fooling around wouldn’t hurt you,” she says. Maya replies, “I’m not that girl…. it’s unbecoming”.

This is pared back characterisation and storytelling, and one that makes demands of its audience.  Mark Boal shows writers that contrary to the “rules”, you don’t have to show a character’s backstory.  We meet Maya in the present – we don’t know where she’s from.  She has no personal life, no family and is a free agent, able to travel for work at a moment’s notice.  Work is what drives her and what self-belief she has is framed through her determination to find the world’s most dangerous man.  Maya’s character is defined by what she does, not by who she is. All that we do know about Maya was recruited straight from high school into the CIA.

Mark Boal’s taut and fast-paced screenplay doesn’t patronise its audience: its up to you to fill in the gaps. You get the impression that Maya’s knowledge of world affairs is a one-sided, narrow one, based on working in a hermetically sealed bubble in Washington.  Maya, like George W. Bush, before he came to power, probably didn’t even have a passport, before she went to work at Langley.

When Jessica puts her trust in an unknown source and is killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, Maya is even more determined to find Osama bin Laden.  We see Maya lead an ever more lonely existence: she sleeps in her office, she eats standing up in the kitchen eating white toast, licking food off a knife.  For Maya food is fuel, to be eaten on the run.  In what passes for downtime we see her slumped on her shabby sofa, eating junk food and drinking from a can while watching the TV news.  Hers is a joyless existence.

The most powerful scene comes at the end when Maya’s assignment is over and she has an enormous transport plane all to herself to take her home.  But just where is home? When the pilot asks her where she wants to go that we finally see that Maya is a human being, capable of empathy, after all. As the tears stream down her face we know that now the mission is over, that the only answer that Maya can give the pilot is: nowhere.  She knows no other life. And although she got her man, at what cost?