Gorgeous Avatar by Jules Horne

Countdown

The tour dates have been finalised, the cast cast, the set designed, the music composed and the posters printed. Seven weeks to go till opening night. Meanwhile, I'm still editing the play... Nervous? Hmm. Let me just think about that one.

Gorgeous Avatar grew out of writing workshops run by the Traverse Theatre back in 2002. Scottish playwrights Louise Ironside and Isabel Wright came with director Philip Howard to a freezing former church in Galashiels that Borders winter. We drained them dry of all the energy and inspiration they could throw at us, and sent them back up the road in tatters. To their credit, they came back, bearing yet more inspiration, and actors to help develop our fledgling scripts.

Fastforward to 2006, umpteen drafts later, and a last chance to rework the script before Monday's publication deadline. It's to be printed by Nick Hern, the theatre publishers, as a script-programme, so needs to be ready for launch night. Rehearsals don't start for a fortnight. If changes are made during rehearsal - tough. Feels a bit like a drawbridge going up. Someone's going to have to wrestle the script from me.

This is a first professional commission, but I'm not a total rookie playwright with the flying feathers still damp. I started young, with hair-raising melodramas for Pollock's toy theatre aged 10. Later, I wrote for the amateur stage. Most recently, I've written for BBC radio. But this is a different matter. A huge team of as many as 30 dedicated theatre professionals are backing this play. It's a massive responsibility. Nothing has prepared me for the sheer goddamn ulpness of this step.

Sometimes, I use Eno's Oblique Strategies to help dislodge a creative logjam (aka procrastinate). Today, he came up with 'Simply a matter of work'. Cheers, Brian. Tell it like it is.

Anyway, that's what this blog is about: a theatre diary of all the work that goes into bringing a new play to production and on tour, from the Traverse team and one L-plated playwright. Anything could happen, and hell, it probably will...

posted by Jules Horne @ 3/23/2006 01:44:00 PM