>I forgot that my radio play was on. I only remembered when a couple of people rang up to say that they’d heard it. It’s the first first night (afternoon) that I’ve ever missed. Apparently everyone remembered their lines.
I’ve remembered where I saw the screenwriting site referred to in the previous post. It’s John August’s jaWiki site and people are invited to contribute. I found it via the Writers’ Guild blog, which is regularly updated with articles from around the world.
Enough unpaid advertising – did you see Imagine… on BBC 1 last night? What a great programme. It drew together the stories of the people who guard great works of art (from a leaf sweeper at Anghor Wat to gallery attendants in the Louvre, Uffizi and Hermitage to the custodian of a Stanley Spencer decorated chapel. All the time it was drawing together the individual stories and the works of art. So many themes of death, resurrection and redemption. The only ‘odd one out’ seemed to be the custodian – all of the others seemed to have been touched by death. And then, in one of the last lines, she said something like “Yes, I suppose they are like children. But better than children. They’ll never change”. But she said it better than that. I’ve made it sound morbid (I do that), but it wasn’t. It was full of joy and triumph and it linked great art to real life lived now.
City Slicker has been to see Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? and didn’t like it (see my note below). She has a lot more experience of critiquing these events and I suppose she’s on to something. I may be guilty of seeing the play that I thought Churchill was trying to write rather than the production in front of me (something I lambast critics for doing – hypocritical or what?). I do think the play moves from a kind of stylised, crude Agit Prop (almost like a student piece) towards something more complicated. I like that it is ahistorical – there’s no consistent time line, so you’re always struggling to find your feet. I like the truncated speeches for the same reason – you have to work to make sense. For all of this, I was never truly surprised or carried away – it’s a play dominated by the head rather than the heart. Which is okay for a short play. This was a first for me – a London premiere. Maybe when I’ve been to a few more I’ll discover some objectivity (and set the bar higher).
Today I must write (and deliver). I’m meeting a Literary Manager to discuss material on Saturday.
Lance Woodman 
>Nice post. Re: Drunk Enough… Being a playwright myself I think I may have engaged with the play in the way you did. (The free-floating, isolated, nothing-else-matters nature of the relationship depicted excited the hell out of me.) I only say that because the three friends I saw it with, and whose tastes I would normally trust, left with absolutely sour faces.
>Thanks Ben. The reviews should be in any day now. It will be interesting…