Writers Block, Stage Fright and Performance Anxiety - three sides of the same coin...

Writers Block, Stage Fright and Performance Anxiety

Intro

So I am currently in the throes of a massive bout of writer's block. It's been going on for about five months now, and no matter how often I get a good idea, how many times I slap memos into my phone for things I need to write, no matter how frequently I sit at my laptop with a bunch of jumbled notes by my side, I can't seem to create a play.

It's gotten so bad that I've lost sleep, confidence, and any kind of will to work.

It's gotten so bad I've begun to hate anything to do with drama, writing, or anything even remotely involved in the theatrical process.

It's gotten so bad that I've even stopped using Facebook, because I honestly can't think of anything to say. That's no bad thing of course, Facebook is essentially a demon disguised as a social outlet and I essentially spend my time exploring the depths of negativity while I'm visiting, but that's beside the point.

I sit down at my laptop to write and actively hate what I'm doing. I can't get further than a few sentences before I feel the inevitable backlash inside my mind, followed by the shaking hands, the frustrated anger, the shattered teary sensation of uselessness.

I am living the writer's nightmare, the writer's version of erectile dysfunction, fear and loathing resulting in a complete lack of creativity; a terrible lethargy that is dragging me away from the thing I love doing above all else.

To get me through this block then, I thought I'd attempt to confront it logically – by studying it and writing about it from my own point of view. We achieve by doing, so let's try a little doing for a change.

Below I'm going to try and delve into where (my) writer's block comes from, how it has affected me, and perhaps see if I can come up with some ways to get through it.

So let's achieve by doing.

And let's get dirty.

( Incidentally, if you're here purely for possible ways to avoid or soothe your writer's block, skip to the section entitled “Block block block block block blo...” and the sections beyond!)

Performance Anxiety

I have just completed four days of street performance as a variety of comedy characters at a festival. Working in a small, talented group of Wexfordian performers, alongside several other professional and international circus performers, jugglers, and street artists, when I wasn't performing as an Austrian muscle man, an overbearing in-heat monkey, or a screaming paparazzi in front of hundreds of people, I sat quietly in a corner in the backstage area and watched as everyone else seemed to get along in an almost telepathic way.

Loud, funny, and fun, constantly japing, messing around in costume and always “on,” this gang of extremely pleasant miscreants spent these backstage moments enjoying each others company while I sat to one side with my combat shorts and generically bland tee-shirts, covering my eyes with my prescription sunglasses and hoping that the earth would suck me down soon, feeling like a particularly well- practiced goth glowering at a flower-juggling convention.

For four days I felt horribly out of place. Generally speaking I feel out of place anywhere that doesn't involve me, hidden away in my apartment. And even then I can't escape the nagging voices in my gleefully self-destructive mind.

That's why, incidentally, if you see me in the street, I'll often feign ignorance of your presence, or to avoid annoying you by tripping hurriedly past you with a tiny wave, I'll jump into the nearest shop until I'm sure you've gone away.

So this weekend was particularly difficult for me, as I watched these naturally effervescent people quickly gel with each other while I stood loudly out as “the quiet one.” Why did I feel this way? They weren't doing it, they were warm and welcoming, if a little weirded out by my stand-offish manner.

Why was I unable to open my mouth and speak?

I'm going to suggest performance anxiety. In other words, ladies and gentlemen of the audience : stage fright.

Performance anxiety occurs everywhere, obviously not just in the arts. It can happen to a cashier, to a wholesale banana seller, to new love. It also affects one in five men in their penis areas. Obviously that's never happened to ME you understand. Not whenever I've been dozing on a bus at least, or watching a chaste love-scene in an otherwise bland rom-com starring Drew Barrymore.

Performance anxiety in this instance manifested itself in my inability to speak to perfectly reasonable, if overly-confident, human beings in between bouts of street-performance.

But Dominicispalmerandyourenot, I hear you cry in the manner of someone who is deeply, even passionately involved in me and my life or has caught their trouser hair in their fingernails; how can you get up in front of people on stage and act if this is how you are in real life? How can you dress as a rampaging albeit sweaty monkey in front of hundreds of people at a festival and suddenly have an outpouring of courage? Yet here you are, five foot nine, devastatingly average looking, quite fat, with a moustache, and claiming that you suffer from “stage fright?” That seems, you continue, possibly licking your lips, quite the bold and if I may say so, ironic claim you claim right there!

What? You don't think people suffer from stage fright in real life, just because it's name explicitly references the theatre? You're a giantly smelly spa and I hope your face boils off in lonely misery, aided by fire ants, you idiot. God I hate you.

Sorry.

I'm being defensive.

But it's only because you're being stupid, you moron. God I hate you.

I'm a paradox.

Stage Fright

So a general definition of stage fright would be : focussing on your anxiety, on your fear, to the detriment of your performance. As a rule of course, the term is only really applied theatrically, or in cases where a person must deliver some kind of presentation in front of other people, at college, or some kind of lame-ass board meeting no one wants to be at but is afraid to say it for fear of being fisted.

Stage Fright occurs when a person becomes so aware that they are performing, or about to perform, that they become almost irrationally anxious. They are so aware of the things, people, and expectations around them, that they begin to instantaneously play out every single negative scenario in their heads and it paralyses them. They then start to believe those negative scenarios. At it's worst, it results in that terrible moment we've all experienced at least once in our lives : freezing up.

Heightened self-awareness to the point of paranoia, a complete focus on your anxiety, of a desire not to seem stupid whilst simultaneously projecting idiocy, to the point that one can barely move or speak; this has occurred to me on numerous occasions and these days I try to avoid it happening by only leaving my apartment when I have to and only talking to people when they're pre-recorded on the telly.

In fact, I have spent much of my life practicing the art of avoidance, with the beneficial side-effect of allowing me to develop the skill of observation, both interior and exterior.

Yet I don't suffer from stage fright when I'm performing professionally, not generally at least. Sure, I get nervous, what performer doesn't? And certainly if I fuck up, if I drop a line or say cunt in front of a group of small children ( or as I refer to them, “cunts” ) then of course, I'm self-critical. I want to do the best job I can, whatever I'm doing, and like everyone, I beat myself up when I fuck up, but I see it as a learning curve, a natural way of grading myself for the next round. Next time I won't call the little cunts “cunts,” for example.

On stage I do okay. Partly because I mask myself through character, and partly because I can reveal myself to people without ever having to justify it, other than to say “well I'm on stage now. It's not real...” This is particularly true in the improvisational style of the street theatre I have generally practiced, where I can speak my mind from the veiled mask of a cartoonesque character, but do so in-character, ie with preset limitations.

In what Paul Greengrass would call "real world situations" however, I am naked. I stammer, my mouth dries up, I can't hold eye-contact with people ( and if I do I assume they think I'm coming on to them, or alternatively that they fancy me, which is generally confusing and not true. ) I shuffle, I wear a slap-happy grin that gives me the strangely plastic sheen of a slightly guilty stoner.

Over the years I've learned how to hide these traits with a sequence of practiced personality tics so that only those who know me, or are tuned into such psychological attributes can spot them. Often it involves nakedly and honestly portraying myself as a self-aware loser so that you both take pity on me, and understand that I am relatively intelligent.

Effectively, I have created a character for myself, a confident yet self-deprecating, self indulgent extension of who I am that I can hide behind in those awkward real world moments I mostly try to avoid.

In-character

Generally speaking, I think whether we admit it or not, we spend much of our life in performance, in-character. Whether we're trying to impress a potential mate ( as I've begun referring to most people these days on the off-chance my partner finally comes to her senses and dumps my lardy hole for someone a little more prodigious, ) a workmate, a pal, someone in authority, or our parents, whether we're trying to talk our way out of a situation, or lie our way into one, it's all performance. We're trying to project something about ourselves and are doing so by acting to a preconceived type, trying to cover who we are with who we want to be.

The alpha male. The in-control supervisor. The regretful child. The stud. Tazer McFictionzap. Etc etc etc.

I find it very easy, if nerve-wracking, to get up on stage and perform, yet I find it inordinately difficult to speak to friends and strangers unless I am working in-character, something which takes a great deal of preparation to achieve. I need to know where I'm going, who I'm seeing, and what I'm doing a day or so in advance in order to get myself into the mindset of that character I hide behind.

I've often been told that I project great confidence when I'm talking to people, to the point where I seem almost obnoxious. This is probably true. I learned how to do it, to hide the bubbling insecurity as best I can by becoming something of a parody, because I understand that to show any sign of weakness is to allow people in. When they know you, they can hurt you. And in my experience, most likely will.

Those who know me know I am cripplingly shy, almost to the point of obnoxiousness, as I avoid contact with even those who would consider me a friend.

Bottom line : I am clearly obnoxious.

I wish I could tell you I'm not, but I am. I suffer from a terrible self-loathing, yet I'm self-aware enough to tell you this so that you can sympathise with me. In fact, did you notice I already started leaning towards a needy desperation for your sympathy a few paragraphs back?

Even when writing what seems like a nakedly honest portrayal of myself, I am in-character, omitting things I don't want you to know in favour of representing myself in a cathartically self-deprecating manner. Something I learned a long time ago when dealing with real world situations is to be the first to put myself down; that way someone else has to work a lot harder to get to me.

I would suggest I am not alone in doing this. And I would suggest that the reason I suffered so painfully during this weekend was because I was beset by performance anxiety whenever I was not performing; when I simply had to interact with other people. The character was not working for me.

So this is all very good and self-obsessed kids, but how does this pertain to writer's block? This has just been a weird deconstruction of yourself by way of justifying how you act around people. What's the point you tool? You pointy pointy tool?

Fuck off, mister and missus instant gratification, this is my blog, not a quick blowjob in the back of a grimy Dallas-themed bi-sexual dungeon-bar.

Though that sounds like the best blowjob you could ever wish for.

Writing and Performance Anxiety

Though I have tried to create this obnoxiously confident character for myself in normal situations, I am not a natural performer. By nature, like many writers, I am introspective, insular. I have not the ability to stand up in front of a group of friends and recite Shakespeare, sing a song from that bit in Bambi when Bambi's mum gets her head blown off ( spoiler alert, ) nor can I twerk or dance in a bar no matter how much I like the song or how many Fischer's I have had to drink. I'm far too self-conscious. I can barely tell a knock-knock joke without turning puce with terrible embarrassment and rushing through the punchline.

And this is where writer's block begins to rear it's ugly head, certainly for me. Performance anxiety often occurs when I realise that someone is going to see what I'm doing, in this case read my play. Despite my obvious bitterness towards those idiots who think they know what they're talking about, I still want to please them. Some of them do know their stuff after all ( someone has to, right? )

As I do when confronted with a person or group of people I need to deal with on any kind of human level, I begin to interact with them in my mind, these “readers” - whoever they may be. I begin to hear them criticise me, I hear them snickering at my attempts at humanising people on page, I hear them whispering that my work is “just too clever for it's own good” ( a common criticism of my work ) or that “all the characters sound the same” ( a somewhat common and generally erroneous criticism of most new writer's works based on the reader's general inability to read something in anything other than THEIR own voice! ) 

Paranoia takes over.

That's where it often starts for me. The thought of someone reading it paralyses me and instead of simply writing what I want to write, I begin to try and mould it in a direction that feels un-natural. If I'm writing a comedy ( which I usually am ) I start to lose faith in the humour. If I'm writing a drama ( which I do, from time to time ) I second guess myself, tie myself in knots, make assumptions about these – at this point, entirely theoretical – readers and the way they'll take my piece. In turn, I start to disbelieve what I am writing. That, too, paralyses me.

In a very real sense, it's that same insecurity I feel in real world situations that creates my own writer's block and which then feeds back into my real world circumstances. I start to question my abilities, I compare myself to other, better, or at least more well-known playwrights. I use it as an excuse not to write. I shut down. The more I worry about these things, the more I start to present myself with these things. It's a self-perpetuated loop.

Which creates another set of frustrations, another reason to beat myself up and play to my insecurities. Like many an artist I am hugely self-destructive. I will go to great lengths to sabotage myself, to hurt myself and even those around me, often just to prove what a fuck up I am and justify my feelings of inadequacy.

I don't think this is only inherent in artists, by the way, I think it's a very human trait. Think of the person whose husband or wife or partner has cheated on them, desperately drilling them on every detail of the infidelity to hurt themselves.

And just as muscle memory often leads to actors learning their lines alongside their movements, I learn to tie my insecurities to my block. So each time I sit down to write, damned if they don't come swimming back like over-eager sperm from a hastily removed condom you're squeezing to make sure it hasn't split.

Block block block block block blo...

There are, of course, many other reasons we encounter the dreaded block, though almost all of them are psychological, and link back in some way to self-doubt.

We may not fully believe we are capable of creating a piece despite the incredible idea it is growing from. We believe that we're not good enough. This leads to great frustrations in trying to realise something to the high standards we are desperate to obtain, with each step forward somehow feeling like a thousand steps back. We look at our epic and we think – why did I EVER think I could do this? It resembles a mountain and you're at the bottom, naked except for knee-pads.

We might run out of inspiration halfway through, lose interest yet still feel we need to finish our piece. It's a horrible sensation, akin I imagine to realising you're drunkenly shagging the wrong person just as they start the deed. Of shagging. You. Wrongly.

Deadlines often create a sense of tension and anxiety for writers. Though it's true that Douglas Adams wittily described himself as never failing to meet a deadline as he loved the sound of it whizzing past, he did in fact suffer from crippling self doubt. Most of his books have the feel of a terribly rushed work, never quite finished satisfyingly, and it's often because he was beset with stress by an impending deadline. The closer they get, the less work you appear to have done. The closer they get, the more you realise you want to write. The closer they get, the more you doubt your abilities. The closer they get, the less polished your work seems.

The closer it gets, the more you realise someone is going to read your piece.

Sometimes you're just overwhelmed by it all. Too much going on in the real world, too little going on, too much to think about or not enough. Our brains are constantly firing off, left, right, right, left, and sometimes there's just no room left amongst the shooty neurons for sitting down and creating a silly little play from your overworked brain-mind.

Our fear of exiting the world we've created is another reason we can suffer block. Strange as it might seem to outsiders, we do become attached to our characters, to the stories they are telling. It's not unreasonable then, to want to stay in their world and not say goodbye. This can result in a terrible, almost schizophrenic block – the desire to finish a piece of work clashing with the desire to continue writing it.

If you have a writing routine you adhere to and find yourself unable to do so, that can affect your ability to concentrate. You begin to become aware of the changes around you, the noises, the little things that suddenly become hugely abnormal. And conversely, there are those occasions where you have become so bored by the everyday routine that you need the stimulus of a massive change.

Sometimes block occurs because you suddenly realise you're re-inventing the wheel. You become terrified that what you're doing is not original, and often seek out confirmation of this very thing.

For me, writer's block generally comes about because of self-doubt and a crippling fear that someone has to read it. My own insecurities scupper my sense of creativity and replace them, ironically, with hugely imaginative reasons why everyone hates me.

We all labour under the illusion that people spend more time thinking about us than they really do. Remember this though – most people spend most of their time in a frozen moment of self-obsession. They are not thinking about you. They are not talking about you. And in the rare occasions that they are it is to make themselves look better, either by association, or by creating negativity to make themselves appear less insecure. In either case, take the compliment for what it is, and move on. They already have.

Affected by effects

What happened to me last weekend was a result of how I have been feeling in the last few months, and is directly related to my writer's block.

When a person can't do the one thing they set out to do, which in some cases feels like the one thing they were put on this earth to do, it has catastrophic repercussions on their emotions and confidence.

I relate it in this instance only to writing but of course it stretches into every walk of life.

I write, therefore I am. I can't write, therefore what am I? This leads to a terrible lack of self-confidence, a draining of self that leaves one questioning one's own worth, and at it's worse – as has been occurring to me – leaves one downbeat, depressed, even despondent. It becomes the thing you can't stop thinking about, becomes the reason why you are a lesser being, it perpetuates itself in ever-grander variants of performance anxiety, and results in the assumption that you are worthless, and worse - everyone knows how worthless you are.

It can lead to self-destruction, a hovering feeling of rain-cloud darkness that simply won't leave, touching everything in your life and leaving you with a consistent, just out of earshot anxiety, something lurking over your shoulder whispering bad bad things you can never quite hear, but know instinctively are about you. It's exhausting and it takes its physical and emotional toll.

I was sitting with some of the most fun people I have ever encountered, performing with a welcoming, and tremendously talented group of people at one of the best gigs of the year, and instead of enjoying that, I drifted into the background and beat myself up for it. I simply didn't have the confidence to step forward, in-character, and dig in. Five months of writer's block have stripped me of my sense of self-worth and left me tearing mental strips from myself at every opportunity.

It doesn't help. Obvious? Ah, it's worth saying anyway.

So how do we break beyond this writer's block, this performance anxiety? What ways can we attempt, to hump us out of the slump?

Fucked if I know.

Ha. That was humour. Self-deprecating humour.

Love me.

Just as you can't just tell a cripplingly shy person to speak up, it's not so easy to tell a writer who is suffering from block to just sit down and write, or alternatively take a step back and do something else for a while. But sometimes that's what it takes; other times, of course, what's required is a protracted set of jigsaw molly-coddles.

Ideas to help with your block

Look, we both know ( I'm assuming it's just you and me who's reading this, right? ) that like curing hiccups, there are plenty of old-wives tales out there about curing writer's block

Nothing cures it. It's not a disease, or a virus, it's simply a form of anxiety that you perpetuate. Knowing that may not help, but knowing that it's not about curing it but salving it, balming it until the anxiety reduces, might.

Here is a truism for you – you're your own worst enemy. You are putting blocks in your own path and you don't even know it. It's not the outside world, dear child, who is causing your block, but you. Unless you live next to fat, loud, obnoxious neighbours whose idea of fun is listening to drill n' bass while hammering their dog and talking loudly about mince.

Call the police and quietly explain to them why your neighbours might be a danger to themselves and those around them.

Other than that possibly made-up scenario, very often when it comes to anxiety ( no matter how justified it might seem ) you are your own worst enemy, especially when it comes to writing and performance.

Let me elucidate by using a large word people don't normally use, in this sentence, and then going on to give you an example.

By sitting in that backstage corner hiding from talking to people, I continued to perpetuate the idea that no one wanted to speak to me. By essentially assuming something about myself and other people, I was creating the circumstance where it felt true even though it wasn't. Guess what? Bit by bit through observation I was able to pinpoint things in each person I could appeal to in conversation. I got chatting. It felt stupid not to.

Did I ever feel comfortable in my own skin? Nah. I died a little inside every time I had to make the leap of faith and open my mouth. But that's not the point here, is it? I was able to project a certain level of humanity and got beyond the blocks I was putting in my own way. I got a few new Facebook friends to ignore, and I enjoyed their company enough to help me feel a little more comfortable about my situation. Did they think I was anything special? Of course not. Why should they? But we had a giggle.

Hooray for me. When I was ready, I presented myself.

A couple of things, then, that you can try, to soothe the aching blue-ball sweat that is writer's block.

Don't panic, don't beat yourself up, don't forget that until it's ready no one has to see it. If you're stuck in that awful loop of sitting down to write, struggling, screaming and swearing ( cunt, fuck, shit, bugger-top, wank valve, helmet slurper, anal ouch, etc ) and then doing it over and over again and again, stop. Stop doing it. It's not helping.

It's driving you nuts. So stop.

You are not performing life-saving surgery here. Leave that and the stress it requires to the people who are. Trust me, they're probably far more calm about saving someone's life than you are about your writing. That should tell you something.

Calm down, don't panic, don't beat yourself up. As best as you can, try not to turn your stress back on yourself. It'll only make it worse. No one ever has to see what you've written if you're not entirely happy with it. There's nothing wrong with you – you're suffering from stress. That's it. The best way to soothe stress is to recognise it, and understand what's causing it. Get to the root of the problem.

If you're not happy with your piece, change it. Mix it up. Cut and paste. Don't delete anything, keep different copies, clearly marked, and learn to chop and change. As an exercise alone, it's worth doing, and as a way of taking your mind off the anxiety about a piece, it's invaluable.

If you have a deadline to complete your piece to, micro-manage it. Break EVERYTHING down. Characters, motivations, structure, everything. Keep breaking it down into smaller pieces. Not only is it soothing to do this ( your brain naturally gravitates towards patterns, repetition, and lists – it likes to structure things so do it ) but it will help you keep yourself and your piece defined. It takes time to do this, but let it. The more you have it broken down the easier it will be to put it back together.

Incidentally, if you do have a deadline remember this – what you're handing in will require changes, editing, restructuring and cosmetic work. You do not need to submit perfection, you simply need to submit a finished piece. Yes, you don't want to hand up shit-water; you want your piece to reach a standard. Reach that standard, and if you can, go beyond it. But remember it will be changed so finish it and perfect it later.

When it comes to plays, I tend to try and retain control over my pieces as much as possible ( and it isn't always possible, something I have to learn to appreciate without throwing a wobbly in the nearest bystander's face; I've lost count of how often I've alienated myself by doing this ( eleven ) ) so that I can edit as I go. If I am in rehearsals, and something isn't working, I can move towards bettering it. I try and work with the director ( if I am not directing ) so that they understand what I'm going for, and if there are edits to be done, I can do so in such a way as it is not detrimental to the piece.

If you're the type of person who needs to work to a routine, work that routine out and adhere to it. If you prefer to mix that routine up - hey guess what? Go for it. Whatever works. Try both.

Talk to someone about your piece, even let them read it if you're comfortable doing so. Don't ask for opinions on style etc, just ask for ways in which the reader might find the piece difficult to understand. Ask them what didn't work for them, but just as importantly what did. Find positives for every negative. Talking to someone about it will naturally allow you to air your frustrations, and will give you the opportunity to sound things out objectively. Most of the time you'll find you already knew the answer, but didn't know how to describe it. The rest of the time, the person you are talking to will give you the clues you're looking for.

Don't go overboard, most people will indulge you only so far.

Don't do what I do - get frustrated and angry when someone gives you their opinion. It's defensive behaviour because you know they're right; they're right, so thank them and accept it.

And try not to bother other writers, if they're not suffering writer's block they're probably working. If they are they don't want to hear your problems. ( That said, there's something disquietingly pleasant as a writer to hear that other people are suffering block. )

If you have no one who is willing to speak to you, understand that not everyone is as obsessed as you about your writing, so go look online for forums. Air your frustrations there. Just don't whine. No one likes a whiner. Not even your ma. Look for constructive assistance.

If you don't like using forums ( which isn't possible, everyone likes using forums, it's a way of expressing your most extreme opinions from behind a digital mask ) then ask yourself a couple of FAQs. What is my piece about? What am I struggling with? Don't ask yourself why, you know why, be logical, work it through. Wrestle with it for a while.

If you're stuck writing one piece, try working on another. DJ mix between the two ( or however many you can muster ); you'll find that ideas start coming to you that may even end up in the troublesome piece ( which will naturally, even subconsciously, be the guiding light in your mind anyway. ) You might find it easier to tackle two completely different types, or even genres, so that you're naturally relaxing while writing. 

Don't do what I've recently done, which is essentially attempt two pieces approaching the same subject from different angles ( ironically, writer's block ). What you want is a new piece that takes your mind off the difficult one. Try writing just for the sake of writing, you'll be surprised how many ideas will start flowing. If you're struggling with comedy, write a drama. You might find you create absurd situations that, in context, strike you as funny, or you may end up creating something completely new.

I once ended up writing a self-reflexive porno while creating notes for a bank exam I was shortly sitting, and struggling against.

Watch films. Watch Youtube. Watch online critics. Read plays. Research. Study. Immerse yourself in the world in which you are involved. Seek out inspiration, you never know where and when it might come.

As to the originality factor – blah blah blah, only seven stories, blah blah blah, everything's already been done, blah blah blah simpsons did it.

Get over it. Seriously, get over it. Unless you are wilfully plagiarising something, you'll find an original spin on your subject. That's why you were writing it in the first place, right?

Speaking of which – understand why you are writing this piece. You may have lost your way and that's why you're feeling stressed. Go back to the original idea that started it, and make a point of referencing it throughout your piece, even in separated notes. How does each scene, or each moment, relate to that idea. Get it back on track and you'll find your path again.

If you're not feeling it, don't do it. If you don't need to shit, why force it? 

What you want is that little spark of desire that drives you. Remember, however, that like any long-term relationship, you do have to do some of the hard work yourself. You can't always expect the spark. But, just like a good, loving long-term relationship you should still want to spend time writing. If you don't, then maybe it's time to move on for now. Your piece will not cut your balls off and stick them up your bottom and then bend you over and tell you to fart so that you propel your testicles across the room, and then film it and upload it to Dino Tube as some weird form of fetish porn.

Take a step back and try to find a different angle.

The main thing to remember is this – relax. It's so easy to say and so hard to achieve sometimes. All performance anxiety comes down to the thought that other people are going to see what you're doing and judge it.

They are.

So? At least you'll have reached the stage where you have completed you piece. At least then, you'll have done it. And they don't have to see it until you are ready. ( When it comes to deadlines, accept the fact that someone else is going to have an opinion. Listen to this opinion and try not to take it personally, especially if you're not fully happy with the piece yourself. You don't have to agree with it, but maybe you will and maybe it will help to do so. )

Remember this, too – performance anxiety, stage fright, it happens to everyone. They may tell you it doesn't, but it most certainly does.

We live in a world of bravado, of fake courage masking terror. Everyone does it. Recognise this.

Just as all of us experience a lack of morning glory from time to time, especially in times of great anxiety, and just as all of us stress out in these moments because it means they can't “perform” for someone else, all writers experience moments where they simply cannot write, no matter how hard they try.

Rest. Relax. It happens to us all.

Oh, and always wear sunscreen. I can't stress this enough.

20:14 - the wordplay twenty four hour panic ( part two )

20:14

The Wordplay Twenty Four Hour Panic

Part Two – The Show

Prologue – Morning

So I got little to no sleep after submitting my play. I dreamt of a man using an axe to smash my door in, and I dreamt I was holding the door with my shoulder to stop him.

My morning alarm, in all honesty, should have been a heralder of good tidings in comparison to the angry axe man, currently stopping short of shouting “here's Johnny!” as he pounded at my door like a disposable set of porn actors might at Sasha Grey.

“Fuck off phone” I burped from my pillow. I could feel my partner grin from her own, could sense the telepathy crossing between us and stating like a bitch : “it's your own fault.”

At eight-thirty am on the 17^th of May I clambered out of bed into the rays of burning sun beaming jollily through the blinds and thought – well this should be a pretty fucked up day...

Meet the cast / Warm-ups

So, the day was scheduled to play out like this – at ten am we would meet up with the entire cast and crew of “20:14” in the local Irish school ( the only relevance here is the money clearly pumped into this school and the size of same – hard to fault yet still strangely nauseating when participating in the underfunded Arts, especially given my partner's current redundancy situation ) to compare notes, and kick off the day proper.

From then until 12:30 we would rehearse in various rooms around the school, before taking lunch and, one by one in our groups flock down to the Arts Centre – where the show proper would ultimately be presented – for a thirty minute tech rehearsal.

At five pm we would do our dress rehearsal and run our set-ups, get-outs, and bows.

And at 20:14 pm we would gather together in front of an audience and perform our pieces over the course of around eighty minutes. And at 22:14 pm we would after-show all over the place in the lovely “Sky in the Ground!”

Frankly that was the bit we were all looking forward to the most.

So I clambered out of bed, tried desperately to remember how to dress myself, then grabbed some toast and coffee and tried to set myself up for the day, starting with making damn sure I had my damnable props back in their plastic bag, and that my damn MP3 player was charged damn it.

When my partner realised I hadn't changed my underpants from the day before, she marched me back into the bedroom to dress properly, while she went about making me sandwiches for lunch. She had come full circle too!

I left my apartment at 9.15am, knowing the walk would bring me into contact with a fuck-off Wexford-style hill and a great deal of sweat to fit into my tee-shirt. It turned out only one of my earphones was working so that great big blast of black metal I had wanted to enervate me on my huffle-puffle walk, turned into a tinny little whistle of squeaks blaring from my left earphone.

It was already a beautifully sunny, blastingly warm day so early in the morning, and not only did I take this as a good omen for the chores ahead, but it put me in good spirits despite myself. ( It should be known that I am perpetually grumpy. The reasons behind this are varied and uninteresting, but suffice it to say that it's a lot easier to start grumpy and get happy, than start happy and go grumpy. )

I was extraordinarily nervous to find out what my cast felt about my play, and equally nervous about mounting it in such a short period of time. Even worse was still the lingering knowledge that this piece would be going up in front of an audience – including my writing peers on this project - in less than twelve hours. That was the shit-scardiest aspect of this whole thing ( although personally, I was taking solace in the fact that I wouldn't be up there performing, trying to recall lines I'd only read for the first time a few hours earlier. )

There's also a strange sense of guilt involved in compendiums like this, where other writers and groups are involved because, let's face it, we just want to focus on ourselves, our little nuggets, to the detriment of everyone around us. I wanted to grab my group and get to work and feck everyone else around me, but that's not how it works – one has to be polite, if only on the surface. That guilt was of course compounded when on arrival I realised just how nervous everyone else was too, and it made me feel slightly better.

So we were rehearsing in the nauseatingly well-funded and massive Irish school, in various class-rooms and designer gardens outdoors, but first we had to do the big group warm-up, led by the over-all show director.

Now – I am not a fan of warm-ups, I never have been. Partly down to my grumpy inability to connect with other people ( generally enforced in these things by running around a room flapping your arms with them and doing stupid things at the behest of the facilitator of said warm-ups, blushing with embarrassment and puffing breathlessly because I'm fat ) and partly down to the realisation that nine times out of ten, under these circumstances warm-ups don't work, and can in fact be detrimental – either for the time taken, or for the mistaken belief that a fifteen or twenty minute warm-up is enough to sufficiently work on your body before rehearsal or performance. It's not. I recall in this moment the idiot diva performing in an outdoors Shakespeare show with me last year, spending twenty minutes rolling on the ground variously grunting and shouting “OH!!!” and “AY!!!” four or so hours before performance. Now, of course we all know the reason why she did this was to be seen and heard. But as warm-ups go, one would suggest one does them a little closer to performance time if one believes these things work. Not four hours before you're scheduled to perform. Though I did get to see her knickers while she reinterpreted The Exorcist on the floor during her vocal expulsions, which was obviously awesome.

However, in this instance what the warm-up carefully achieved was a collective mindset, a calming of the nerves and a reminder that everyone in this room was in this together. It introduced a couple of faces to other faces and allowed directors to take part in something with their actors, before taking them away and essentially ordering them around. Irritatingly, it did it's job perfectly and completely discounted the above paragraph even before it was written.

Phase One – Highlighting and Readthroughs

Once warm-ups and final scheduling was sorted, we were shown to our classroom, where the first order of the day was to move all tables and chairs to one side and pretend we knew what position they had started out in so we could replace them at the end of the day. This allowed me to shirk starting the readthrough; I had noticed a startling tremor in my hands and I wanted to hide this for as long as possible or at least make it look like it was the result of some heavy lifting.

I told the actors to highlight their lines ( made easy by using their own names as character names – score one for the long-hair ) and as they did, I discussed with them the frustrations I wanted to work around, namely the fact that I had been unable to work a familial theme into the piece, one befitting of Hamlet's own father issues. As they highlighted their lines, this became the main point of discussion, until my Hamlet performer said, what if we just refer to each other as mum and dad or something?

HA! Awesome. What if the director was the actor's father, and what if the understudies were his parents. It could remain mostly subtext, but with a couple of well-placed “mums” and “dads” within the text, we could create a set of punchlines at the end that opened the piece up for the audience after the fact, and still allowed for my hugely self-centered desire to be “clever-clever” by using the director as “the king” and the actor as “Hamlet” being replaced.

As I said in part one : I lucked out with my actors. Did I fucking ever!

I told them as we moved into our first reading – around 10:30 am - to see if they could find an interesting place to insert references to this familial subtext throughout the day, it would add to the comedy ( I obviously used far-less pretentious language, I could barely form words at this early stage in the proceedings through alcohol abuse the night before, and a genuine fear that I had bitten off more than I could chew by taking part in this challenge ). I shit you not, the first readthrough took fifteen minutes and within that time they had nailed that theme in style. I rubbed my hands with glee : they were going to make me look gooooooood!

At around 11:15 am, we had started moving, blocking, and detailing the play. We were asked if we wouldn't mind moving outdoors, as there were a lot of groups working together in the hall to the detriment of their rehearsals.

Shit yeah! One of the sunniest days of the year and we were going to spend it outdoors rehearsing faux-Shakespeare! Damn right we were happy to jump outside!

Phase Two – A day in the Sun

For the day, we rehearsed our piece in the sun. My own personal directing style – ha, style, like I know what I'm fucking doing out there! Some joke, most of what I do is based on what annoys me about others that I've worked with – is to allow the performers a couple of runs of a scene to see what they bring organically, before honing in on what I like, and what I might like to develop. It's called not having a clue what I want until I see it, but for me, it works.

The most difficult aspect of this whole thing ( aside from panicked and sweaty writing at midnight, obviously ) was the lines. It's easy to present a seven page manuscript to four actors, it's even pretty easy knowing how difficult it is to learn lines over several months, to expect those four actors to learn those lines in half a day. How hard can learning lines be?

It turns out – oddly enough – that it's not so easy for four actors to learn lines in half a day, let alone present them in a naturalistic way for an audience.

It became a source of frustration for the actors ( I think it's safe to say for all the actors taking part in the challenge ( perhaps with the unfair exception of one or two people who seemed to have decided right at the beginning that they couldn't be arsed learning their lines, to the detriment of their performance on the night ) found this element mightily frustrating.

I am a fond believer of holding onto a script throughout rehearsals. I've worked with some real ball-bags in my time, and the unspoken rule particularly in am-dram ball-baggery is usually this : an actor isn't an actor until he learns his lines. It's bullshit. Everyone has their own method for learning lines of course, but generally speaking, an actor learns their lines as they block their moves. In other words, they learn their lines and their movements in tandem. They tie them together organically throughout the rehearsal period, until they feel comfortable to drop their script and relax. It's called muscle memory, and it's vastly different to cramming your studies before your exams.

The theory is, and it can certainly be borne out by practice, that an actor is restricted by glancing down at their script every few seconds. That's true. But that's also what rehearsals are for. The only time an actor should be without a script, as far as I am concerned, is when they are comfortable doing so, and on-stage.

Because you know what? An actor constantly fluffing their lines, forgetting where they are, and stopping halfway through a sentence because they crammed their lines and now can't remember them, is twice as restricting for everyone involved than simply glancing down at their script, not least of all for the actor's ego.

We can mock an actor's sensitivity all we want but we're talking about putting on a play here, and we are relying on an actor to achieve something beyond ego on-stage. And to do this, we have to appeal to their sensitivity, certainly as a director.

Unless their spread-eagling on the ground alternatively shouting “AH!!!” and “AY!!!” whilst flashing their underpants. Then they're probably fair game.

Lines, lines, linety lines

Where I lucked out in my actors was in their desire to serve the text and the challenge at large. This meant, for them, learning the lines and presenting them onstage without a script to hand.

The problem I had created, as a writer, was to overload my dialogue in favour of the “director” character, giving him the longest sets of lines and even a speech toward the end. I had done this in the – mostly correct – assumption that he he would be able to learn and remember them. Where I therefore sold the play and the other actors short was in giving most of the others short interspersed lines throughout the piece as a whole, tying into the directors speeches without giving them moments with each other. It meant that more often than not, they had to cue off the director, or cue back to him.

Though I had willfully created a sequence of three landmark moments to keep the actors on-track throughout the piece I had neglected to do so with the lines, leaving in particular the two understudy characters with a couple of piecemeal moments where not only did they have to remember their lines after spending a few moments silent on-stage, but cue other actors.

The male “understudy” in particular, I had given a short sequence of lines on his entrance that although in my mind was contextually funny, sort of came from nowhere. He struggled, throughout the day, to remember the lines as a result.

The female “understudy” had a more prosaic problem – I had made a point of bringing her onstage with a line, but then left her standing there for half a page before her next line. We had established that the two understudies were mummy and daddy to the director, which led the two actors to stand together for much of their time. This then led to the problem that they were relying on cues and cuing from actors who were across the stage from them, which meant they had to concentrate not on what was happening around them as part of the play, but on where their next line was.

Throughout the day it became apparent to us all that we would most likely have to rely on a level of improv to get us through these moments, as the understudies were finding it difficult to remember the right places to repeat their lines. As often as we went over the piece, the lack of soft-cues in the piece had become apparent.

This was a very definite failing in my writing and was difficult to make up for while directing. Had I more time, then perhaps we could have workshopped the piece. But hell, the whole point of the challenge was to mount a play in a day, not a masterpiece. I'm sure all participants that day would concur that, if only we'd had a little more time, etc etc. Tough titties folks, this was the nature of the challenge!

How did we deal with this situation? We kept running the play. The benefit of having a ten minute piece is that you can run it at least four times within one hour, and so for that beautifully blue-skied day – until we had to head down to the art centre for our run-through – this is what we did, my hope being that the more we ran it, the more familiar they would become, if not with the exact lines, then with the general piece. To a degree, it worked, and certainly by the time the actors performed the piece in front of an audience they had a good idea of the sequence of events within the play, if not the exact wording.

Tech-Through

With the exception of our Hamlet, who had rather brilliantly succeeded in memorising his lines through rehearsal-osmosis by lunchtime, the actors were still very concerned about their lines. They knew them separately, but were finding it difficult to place them into the piece. That's fair enough, they had little time in which to learn them, and we were edging ever-closer to the tech run in the Arts Centre.

I repeatedly stressed to them that as long as they knew where they were in the piece, and as long as they weren't throwing the others off or extending the play by half an hour, I had no problem with them jiggling the lines around or ad-libbing, rather than saying them exactly as written. And although they were all for learning the piece as-was, I think it helped them to know they had a little lee-way.

I think that's a benefit of directing your own piece – there's less guilt involved in editing, cutting, or desecrating a play if it's your own. And it's also a lot easier to come up with lines and ideas that fit in with your original tone. I'd be interested to find out from the directors how difficult or easy they found it to edit their pieces, knowing that the writers were literally in a room nearby.

As we rehearsed we were able to add or subtract within the script. I was still aware that the ending didn't quite work, that we had no way of leaving the stage. Over the day, we tried different things out until finally, we came up with a simple solution – the director would turn to his mother and ask her what was for lunch. She would tell him sandwiches. This would give them reason enough to walk offstage. We had an ending.

We drove to the Arts centre from the Irish school together, which allowed us to discuss other things than the play and the night ahead. It was a nice moment of levity given what we were about to do.

Forgive me this – but when we arrived at the Arts centre, I snuck in to watch the group who were currently teching. I was desperately pleased to see that they were still holding their scripts! And although I had no malice towards that group, and wanted it to come off perfectly on the night for them, it heartened me just a little despite my guilt over same, that we were off-script, even if not word perfect, while other groups were still struggling with dropping the book.

When it came time to tech, I did what I always do in these situations – completely forgot that teching is a slow, painful process of aiming lights, placing props, and explaining to people who haven't seen your play why you're doing something. It's agonising and it's why I very rarely use lights, props or even set in my plays. It's a limitation and a failing on my behalf as both a writer and a director – but they do say play to your strengths.

However, it gave the actors the opportunity to perform the piece fully on-stage and to their credit, with the exception of a couple of line-drops and one sweaty onstage panic attack, not only did they get through it but they got a couple of hearty laughs from the few others in the room. Toward the end, and his speeches, the actor playing the “director” achieved a complete flobbing of lines while still nattering confidently as though he knew what he was saying. I wouldn't go so far as to say we were audience-ready – but hell, I was beginning to suspect these guys were gonna pull it off.

Plus we finally nailed the ending – at the last second I asked my actress not just to say sandwiches, but “ham” sandwiches. I reckoned it was a perfect, cheeky last line and if nothing else, would get a laugh.

I was getting confident. And terrified.

Time – Ticky ticky time

We finished our tech and returned to the school, a couple of hours still to go before the full run. I was excited about seeing other people's plays, seeing them come to life. I was interested too in talking to the other writers, to see how they were feeling, and what their overall experiences were. Of the eight writers, only three of us were directing our own pieces, and I wanted to know how they felt now that we were so close to running them.

The nature of the beast was, unfortunately, that we were all still very entrenched in what we were doing. Some groups were still panicking over losing their scripts, some had yet to run their piece solo. Each group were head to head, working, and as my own actors had split off to run their lines separately, all I could do was wander around the school ruminating, hoping for the best and happy that I had personally lucked out with the performers I had been given.

They had spent an entire day running a ten minute piece over and over again, yet had shown no signs of boredom or irritation. Better still, for me both as a writer and director, they were exhibiting strong enough signs of both confidence, and excitement, as well as fear, that they were keeping me from flat-lining.

So they ran their lines, and I wandered around trying to take in the other groups as they worked, without getting in their way.

I had a moment's pause to think : this is what I love. This is what I want to do. And this is why I do it. I was truly enjoying myself. I had gotten to spend a day rehearsing a play I had written. I had gotten to do so on a beautifully sunny day with people I liked.

“Wordplay” had given this to me and once again I can only stress this – it is so unusual for a drama group, not only to be working with an original writer's piece, but to be actively pursuing it.

There is a great deal of bitterness in drama; I suppose it's a necessary evil when one is dealing with ego. The writer often dislikes how the director has approached their baby. The director is often frustrated that the actors are not instantly on the same page. The actors might not appreciate how the director is approaching them. There may be infighting and clashing egos. Backlashes, as one person learns their lines faster than the others and seems to be showing the rest of them up. Actors don't like it when another actor tries something new, or different, especially when they're actually good at it. Fear permeates throughout, fear of dropping lines, fear of looking bad, simple fear of performing in front of an audience, and often, simple fear that we're not as good as we think we are. Am-dram is home to many cliques, and there's a reason for it – fear.

I often find that the simple joy of putting on a play is replaced by the joy-destroying egos of those cliques involved. Very often what you're contending with – especially as an actor or a director – is someone who believes they know better than you. Here's my advice to you - they don't. They just think they do and would rather put you down for fear of you realising it.

In professional drama they like to pretend they are professionals and are above the pettiness of ego. Obviously they're lying to themselves but it sometimes creates a strangely cold atmosphere in a production, where each person is pretending to treat it as a job while outwardly telling everyone around them how wonderful everything and everyone is. In amature drama of course, there can be the same ambience – but more often than not in am-dram, performers are escaping themselves for a little while, their jobs, their families, perhaps the awful stuff that's going on in their lives. As a result, they often play the “role” of the performer. It can be terribly irritating to the outsider ( or the grump ) but taking a step back, one has to understand why we do it.

Ego, yes of course. But also this - for the love.

And as far as I could tell as I wandered around the school in the last hour before we moved back down to the Arts Centre to fully run eight ten minute plays, we were all in love with what we were doing in that moment.

Full-run

The show had been separated into two halves, with four plays on each side. Ours was to be last, which was a great benefit to us in timing ( it meant we had longer to run and rehearse than other, earlier groups, ) but left us a hell of a lot time during both runs to procrastinate. A mixed blessing then. I was personally happy that we had the final slot – it meant that the audience would remember us, being the last piece they saw.

At around five pm the entire group gathered together in the Arts Centre auditorium to start our run.

It was probably a mess for most people. That's just a fact. All groups gathered to watch the run-through, hoping I imagine that all the shows were good, but their's was the best. That's natural.

And it was an eye-opener and reality check for all of us all rolled up into one scooby-fuck of an evening.

The first group on had the unfortunate difficulty of being first on, which meant that everyone was gathered there watching and they had probably had the least time to rehearse. Nerves perhaps got the better of them, lines were thrown, a couple of panic-attacks occurred and it became an uncomfortable performance for all. As an audience we willed them on, we were behind them, but that was no help in that small auditorium each time a cue was called out by the director during the increasing silences. As we sat there, writers, directors and actors, I can only assume that the same thought went through our minds – that's going to be us up there too.

Those groups who were in the second half soon realised that they had time for one more run-through. We slowly slipped away to do so, which meant that slowly but surely, each succeeding group had less of an audience to cheer them on. Detrimentally, they therefore had little idea of what might work for an audience, and spent more time fulminating over their few failures than their many successes as they waited for the show proper.

The evening ran on, edging ever closer to official opening time, while we waited to get our chance for rehearsal. I finally got round to eating my cheese sandwiches, and as they gurgled unpleasantly in my empty stomach I realised how nervous I actually was.

I hoped I wouldn't need to poo. It might take a while. They might begin to wonder if I had done a runner, little realising they'd be half right.

Finally, my actors got up onstage and performed. It was sweet relief after the waiting. Was it perfect? God no. We had several moments of panicky sweat up there! Did it make people laugh? Fuck yeah. Did it make me laugh? You're damn right.

They got through it. They dropped lines. They made shit up. Sometimes it was better than my writing, and sometimes it was worse. I didn't need to say anything to them as they stepped off the stage, they knew it themselves and pledged to perfect it before going onstage.

SHOW TIME!

There was more waiting. A hell of a lot more waiting. One by one I got the chance to chat to the increasingly nervous writers. I had little to say, I was happy with how my play was turning out, and although I was as nervous as the others I at least had the benefit of having been through this before. It's hard to explain to someone that the reason I seemed confident was because I wasn't going on stage for a change! For me, the work had been done and of course I wanted the best for my play and my actors, but it was now in their hands. I was going to enjoy the night with the knowledge that I was not getting up in front of people with the responsibility of speaking words, remembering moves, and cueing cues. Believe me, that was a weight off my shoulders and it meant I was extremely relaxed.

The other writers did not have that lack of burden, for them the terror now was that a large audience would see their writing onstage. Not one piece was bad, and with the exception of only one glaringly obvious actor, everyone had taken to the challenge of learning their lines with a mix of terror and determination. But how can you know what to expect from an audience if you've never been through this before?

And so we waited. And we fretted.

Before we knew it, the first half actors were waiting in the wings of the stage and the rest of us were clumped together trying not to breath in the green room, lest the audience hear us and have the illusion ruined!

I had yet to see anyone else's piece, and I had intended to watch the first half from the side. It's nice to get a sense of what the audience is responding to, and it's always lovely to see once-nervous performers hit their stride as they relax on-stage, and likewise writers lurking in the darkness at the sides.

As it happens, the first half was spent standing outside the theatre with one of my actors, going over a page of lines he was terrified of dropping. We spent a good half hour going over and over those lines, and though my teeth were gritted by the end I must admit it cheered me to know how dedicated my performer was in getting it right.

The first half came and went in a terrifyingly swift blur, and as I sent my actors around to their places in the wings I truly began to feel the nerves snapping at my heels. That tremor had returned, along with the adrenaline that accompanies fear. I found myself unable to form proper sentences again.

For all my fancy talk about other writers never having experienced their work in front of a live audience, my own experience smug etc arrogant etc yaw etc, fact is when it came down to it, I was very nervous that the audience would simply discount my piece.

Maybe they would all know about my Facebook argument with the other group. Maybe they would boo the actors purely down to their association with me. Paranoia about hate permeated my body and I began to plan my apology speech to the actors in my head. What if the entire audience had paid their money and sat through the show purely to boo me and my piece? What the fuck had I done taking part in this ridiculous challenge? What was I thinking? I mentioned suicide on the first fucking page for fuck sake, what was I thinking?

I was reminded of a moment in secondary school, my first attempt at satire. A mocking of a teacher who had willfully robbed me of marks to put me down. I had sledgehammered a piece into an essay about this person, questioning someone who would do that to a pupil, to a fourteen year old boy.

It had the right result. It pissed her off. It got back to my parents. It pissed them off. It snowballed. It wasn't a good outcome.

It never is for me when it comes to my consistent foot in mouth syndrome. The only justification I have for it is, it appears to be in my DNA. I can do nothing about it. Other than act upon it and cause righteous amounts of trouble.

Was that what was going to happen here?

I entered the auditorium with my fellow writers to watch the second half from the side of the stage, mentally steeling myself for the cavalcade of boos.

I was aware that the other writers standing near me were going through their own personal hell. That made me feel better if I'm being honest.

The audience, warmed up and receptive to the plays, seemed to enjoy each piece preceding mine. Forgive if now, with hindsight, I can't really remember those plays myself. You'll understand. In fact if you were there with me, watching your own play, I know you'll understand. You went through it too.

At last, after a night of writing, and a day of rehearsal, it was show time.

To be or not to be

It went well. It went really well. The actor playing the “director” was brilliant; tall, wrapped in a suit, shades and scarf, and deadpan to an intense degree, whether saying my lines or panickdly ad-libbing nonsense, he was hilarious. Each time he raised the squeaking toys in frustration, he got a ripple of laughter ( which I have to say he milked with half a dozen extra squeaks – note to himself, remember there are other actors onstage, and they have shit to say and do too! ) As it had been he who had suggested using them in this manner the night before, I couldn't help but feel pleased for him. “Hamlet” was a joy. Naturalistic, gently funny, and consistently in-character, whether happily reciting Shakespeare or slumping into the background to text, he was the heart of the piece.

The half hour of extra line runs outside helped relax the actor playing the understudy and he pretty much would have stolen the show had it not been for his understudy. She was a delight. They both endeared themselves to the audience but better, they made us laugh. Consistently. Even better, it was obvious they were enjoying themselves and the audience were enjoying them.

It went really well. The director made half his shit up towards the end, there was a nail-biting moment of dead silence as all four actors wrestled on-stage with where they were in the piece, and if truth be told it was obvious that I had spent far too long working on a subtext no audience were going to get in ten minutes.

But they liked it. They laughed, they got the jokes, the suicide punchline “you're committing it professionally” got a great ripple of slightly shocked laughter, and as I relaxed, I too began to giggle.

It was over before it started. Before any of us knew it, we were standing onstage bowing. The audience seemed genuinely warm towards the massive cast and the incredible undertaking and happy to indulge the many overlong speeches various people were giving.

And then we went to the pub to deconstruct the last two days. I was tired. I went outside and stayed outside and to my regret, didn't get to speak to any of the participants before we left the pub.

I went home that night with taco-fries, tired eyes, and a desire for nothing more than to sleep.

Conclusion to part two

So was it worth it? What could we have done differently, and as per part one, what truly worked.

I can only speak for myself and perhaps the actors under my charge, but I think it was a worthwhile exercise overall. It was certainly a learning curve for all involved.

The tough elements were rehearsing and directing a piece practically on-spec, in one day. But then that was the challenge and I think most of the actors involved in the pieces acquitted themselves extraordinarily well to learning their lines, remembering their cues, and staying onside with the other actors and their directors.

I don't mind repeating myself here a little bit – I lucked out with my actors. They each brought something to the table, ideas and idiosyncrasies, and a willingness to commit to the piece entirely. They made the day a hell of a lot easier for me.

I remain convinced that this is not necessarily an exercise for volunteers. As with the writing aspect, the day we put in was long, and extraordinarily tiring. There was a lot of stress involved by the end of the day and a lot of fragile egos ( and perhaps one or two egos who could have done with being broken a little more. ) It's not an easy day and again, I think it's a bit of a muscle-flexing exercise for people who have been doing this for a while and are looking for something different. 

However, I would add this – we're all adults. We all knew what we were letting ourselves in for. We have no reason to complain, and I think almost everyone would admit they got something out of it, and that there was very little negativity involved along the way. Most of us are happy to have achieved what we achieved, and most of us know we walked away from this challenge with more than we went in with.

I know of only one actor who would perhaps think they brought more to this piece than they took; they're wrong. Luckily that actor was not in my group. You know who I'm talking about but PM if you want a full and unexpurgated opinion. I'll be happy to unleash the fury.

The few drawbacks I feel about the day were down to the limitations caused by the flurry of activity. Personally, I would like to have to had the opportunity to see the other shows, and to have peers see mine. We were all so entrenched in our own pieces it would have been lovely to take part in other's successes, and even be part of the audience and enjoy their vibe.

As it was, most of the writers were slunk at the side of the audience, barely able to see the stage as the shows bounced along without us.

That was a lot of work to put in, not to be truly able to enjoy the fruits of our labour.

I think the audience liked what they saw. It's not a challenge really designed to take an audience into account, and I would worry that we – the writers in particular – might have been given a bit of a soft ride because the audience were made up of friends, and family members. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with having an audience who are friendly to you – just ask the disgracefully awful Ross O'Carroll Kelly plays! Fucking travesty pissing on art, and this is what people like? At least with our show they got something different!

It was mooted to me that an audience member walking in off the street would enjoy this show for what it was but I think there was a context to the show and it was within this context that it worked. Our audience knew we had written our pieces in one night, and rehearsed it in one day. They were generally friends ( not mine, I don't have any because I'm objectionable, just ask my partner, who was there ) or family ( or both? Can we ever truly consider our family friends? Probably not, I hate my family and you should hate yours ) and that means they understood, fully understood the nature of the challenge.

They were with us. They were more willing than the average audience to accept a slipped line, an on-stage strop, or script-pages obviously taped to a newspaper.

I think this challenge is a writer's and actor's challenge. A general audience don't care about the circumstances behind a performance ( unless it stars famous people who are licking each other on Twitter or something ), and as it turns out don't care about my suicide satire. They like men with squeaky toys apparently.

As a result, I don't know what audience – other than, like a school play, family and friends – it's actually aimed at. Certainly, as it stood, I feel we didn't properly interact with our audience to allow them to enjoy the challenge aspect fully – they didn't get a chance to own the show or the night with us, and as such were simply presented with plays and a justification that to some, felt like an apology. That meant that in the end, although they may have enjoyed the show as a whole, they were waiting for the pieces involving their own peeps, and that makes for a quite disjointed experience.

Maybe that's inescapable given there were eight plays on show. I think everyone did a good job of individually presenting their pieces, and it feels churlish to complain beyond that. It worked. But already there are mumblings that we need to do another show, and therefore I think it's good to be able to look objectively at what we've achieved and say, maybe next time we'll get it even stronger!

Concludy Conclusion

It was worth it.

Initially, I had put myself down to act as well as write and direct. I'm a narcissist. I chose not to act and for that I'm glad, because I enjoyed the performance night without stress.

I think it would be worth doing again, worth following up on, now that we've done it once. I would question whether it needs to go on in a theatre space but it was nice to get the opportunity to so all the same.

I think the writing challenge needs work, and I think the rehearsal and performance challenge needs consideration.

I think next time, writers should be given seats in the auditorium, especially those who did not deign to direct their own pieces.

I also believe that the presentation to the audience can be improved, now that we have done this one and they are clearly receptive to it.

With that one exception, everyone acquitted themselves professionally and seemed to have a blast, and I hope the writers in particular got the praise they deserved for their pieces.

They and this challenge were worth it.

Bring on the next one!