Page 164 - Student: dazed And Confused

quickly as possible. Through a writing process of creating the pictures we could not
physically produce. That is how a script is made more suitable for theatre.

'it is what happens within the performing space that actors,
directors and ultimately the audience engage with, not just

the words... meaningless to many people on the page, and

only having life when it's performed.'

(S Gooch, 1988, p17-18)

Having no direct guidance as such it was hard to really know if the piece we had

written was truly a piece of theatre until it was received. Working blind in this way was a

huge problem because we had no way of really knowing if we were writing for theatre or
writing for another medium and internally adapting it. We wrote stage directions and

instructions for the performers which really meant nothing until someone carried them out.

I wanted to add a number of tiny movements in to the script but due to the pace of the

script, those things just would have got lost. Any writer will tell you that their words need

to make something real for the audience and theatre is no difference. But you need to use
physical signs to make them believe and not just ask them to imagine.

As a group, we found the collaborative process hard, long and stressful but it was

ultimately rewarding in spite of the numerous dead ends we followed. We learnt a lot
about give and take along the way. I discovered that I dislike working in a group of this

number because it's just too hard to get unanimous agreement on things. Having to make

decisions on cuts and additions was a task nobody was happy to take on as we were all too

concerned about hurting another's feelings.

'Many of the heated arguments that can occur there are not

as often as they might appear, solely about defending the

dramatic integrity of a particular script detail.
(V Taylor, 2002, p27)