It was whilst on completing the writing this of this book that drew more to the writing of plays. It was not the fact that there are so many books written and so few published neither the fact that plays takes as larger piece of ones life. No it was the simple fact that in the writing of a book the plot changes in ones mind in so many occasions. Whereas it is within the nature of a plays plot to be simplistic, in retrospect the plot for most plays can be summed up in a few hundred words. Inconclusiom, I shall leave it for you to peruse the book at your leisure.
LATEST PLAYS
These are exerts from my three latest plays.
THEIR PATHS CROSSED IN ROME:
Their Paths crossed in Rome is by far the play that up to know I have by far researched the most.
The play is set in the 1700�s and is when Angelica Kauffmann and Lousie Vegee Le Brun had there one and only meeting in 1789 Rome. The play flashes back over both of their lives in various places in Europe up until that point when they meet in Rome.
The play like Louise Finley last nearly two hours and was written with television in mind but would make a bodice ripping movie.
It�s not difficult to imagine oneself in a play set in the present day or the near past but it becomes an entirely a different exercise when ones goes back several hundred years or more, hence the research. Enjoy the first fifteen pages.
SHELLEY:
The play is concerned with the build up of Mary Shelley beginning to sit down and write her first book Frankenstein. The play is set at the Villa Diodoti on the shores of Lake Geneva, where John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, had visited in the sixteen hundreds. Rousseau and Voltaire had also resided on these shores. Yes normally idyllic; one may say as one looks across and down Lake Geneva. But alas no, far from it not in the summer of eighteen sixteen, in the previous year a volcano Tambora in Indonesia, had erupted, the largest volcanic recorded eruption ever recorded.
Over a number of days Mary Shelley (Seventeen), Percy Shelley (Twenty two), George Byron (Twenty six), Claire Claremont (Nineteen),
Edward John Trelawny (Twenty four) he arrives the following day and Dr John Polidori (Twenty).
The friends have various happenings during their stay at the villa which on reflection course Mary to have nightmares
which among other incidents provide her with the fruit to put pen to paper and write Frankenstein.
MADONNA:
It is very difficult to select a character to write about, especially if the character is still alive. I wrote the Madonna play in 2007 and having sent it to my agent whom promptly emailed me back asking if I was sure that I wanted him to �hock� the script. At hesitated before answering as I knew his next question, that namely been �are you sure that you want Madonna�s lawyers chasing you?�
Having met and indeed with the aforementioned lady in the nineteen eighties, I knew that I most possibly would hear from her lawyers especially if the play received air time. So hence it is on my computers memory and here on my website for your enjoyment.
Here are a few of the plays that I have written over the past few years, I hope that you enjoy them.
I tend to write historical drama which obviously I am interested in,
especially the late 1700 and early 1800 as you can probably gather from the titles on this page with titles such as
�Their paths crossed in Rome�, �The birth of Frankenstein� there are others (many) which are not posted on this website.
The reality been that one cannot get sued by a dead person! But there again I have my doubts about the Wordsworth Society!
LOUISE FINLEY:
The play last nearly two hours and was intended for television but could be easily adapted for the silver screen. It is certainly the play that as taken me the least time of time to write.
The play covers events leading up to the suicide bombing in London 2005.
One may say that it is wrong to write about such subject matter, maybe it is but these events do dare I say need recording for prosperity.
When the play landed on my agents desk, that was within ten days of the bombs going off I might add. He emailed me immediately saying that it was too controversial and too soon after the event. Hence the play has never been put to tender.
If you read through the play you will see that it is written for television and looks beyond what one sees in everyday people.
30 AUGUST 1997:
Set in Paris on the 30th August 1997. (That�s the day Lady Diana Spencer died)
Anyway the play follows various peoples day whom had no connection with any of the events with we all know so well.
The 30th August again was on my agents desk within days of the Lady Diana Spencer�s death but with the public
opinion at the time my agent was unable to sell the play. That does not mean to say that I might invite him to try and sell it again.
Monologues
My early works which did get air play were monologues which are listed below. A monologue is not easy to write as in so far as to the placement of the protagonist into a setting and giving just enough description of the surroundings (please note that monologues are in general for radio or the theatre) but one has to let the listener have a picture in their mind.
The Landing:
Set in World War to a short play in the form of a monologue which originated as a short story. The play is set on a landing craft approaching the Normandy beaches.
To go one further on putting oneself in the protagonists place in the �The Landing� left me with what I had read and what I had seen on television and at the cinema to draw upon. Having said that any, but anyone who indulges in any form of writing is almost certainly (like myself) a �people watcher�. To take this a step further there is listening to how people phrase sentences and how they put sentences together. On that note one has to be very careful of English, English and American English as certain words have very different meanings. I shall let you find them out for yourself as finding them out (helps if you have an American close by!) for yourself as in can be both amusing and embarrassing to both parties!
Working Man Not:
Half an hour monologue written for radio. Working Man (Not) is a parody of Thatcher�s Britain.
I have set it in Liverpool as a lived in Liverpool for a couple of years and I thought the monologue was a dark but powerful reflection of the eighties.
But then I ask myself as Britain (notice that I leave out the Great!) changed that much since then? And if it has as it been for the better?
I have not added any direction as I wish for you to ad that at your leisure.
Wendy and the Wild, wild west:
A simple short story set in the present day which I think the anyone can relate to .
Gita:
Twenty five minute monologue on Islam in the UK. I wrote this before 9/11 just after there were riots in Hyde Park in Leeds.
I do hope that it makes the point that I intended.
People often ask me how do you write the part of a female character? My usual answer is (tongue in cheek) with the greatest of easy.
And to be frank I do have no difficulty in the slightest. Gita, start with the protagonist as a teenage Muslim girl is probably as far away as I
can get from myself.
What I am working on at the moment.
I was working on a play on Saint Wilfred but I put that on the Bunsen burner whilst I went to the Lake District (six months living in a tent!) and was so taken by the lives of the Romantic Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and De Quincey. Being able to visit places where they lived, places that they visited (the documented ones). The first thing that struck me was with Grasmere and Dove Cottage where both Wordsworth and De Quincy at a later date lived. Dove Cottage is at a tangent to the main road and with a little bit of thought and some leg work it is not difficult to trace the path of the old inverted comers road. Which then would have been more of a rough track than a road. Try it sometime for yourself I had fun doing it and I hope that you do too. Oh yes do not get mislead as I did by the Coffin path, it is what its name says it was a coffin path not a road, the road was further down the fell.
With other lesser know places that they knew my interest grew and decided to start my research. My research is now complete apart from reading through De Quincey�s numerous volumes. Obviously they are written in �Old English� which as I am sure that you can imagine is quite hard work!
