General notes
So, my first attempt at writing a play. It's an adaptation
of the first novel in the cycle, The
House on Schellberg Street.
It has a very big cast with a lot of small parts. Even the
main parts – Renate, Hani and the Nazi Officer are not all that onerous.
I wrote it with the stages of the Octagon and the Whitefield
Garrick in mind. In particular I think of the Octagon's production of Jane Eyre.
It was all staged within a cage, with two forms and two small tables the only
set furniture. I can see my play using this
plus one more small ordinary height table and three chairs.
Writing or conversion process
I decided which scenes to include. There is still a balance
of the three story strands: Renate's
story, the story of the school in the cellar and the story of Renate's class
mates. One scene exists in the play that is not in the book – a reunion between
Renate and her former classmates. This
is the final scene.
After a couple of edits I decided I really must include the
scene where Renate befriends a small cat, difficult as that might be to stage.
I did a little playwriting and screenwriting as part of my Masters
degree. Working at a university I have access to the very best of craft books
and several experts. This prompted me to conducting about twenty edits
including one where I reduced every scene to fifty words. The latter was really
useful. The scenes were later expanded again but they remained considerably tighter
than they had been in the first place.
Read through and walk through 8 July 2018
Many thanks to the Whitefield Garrick for providing the space and some of the
actors. We also had Drama students from the University
of Salford and some of my "dramatic" pals from Ordsall A Cappella Singers .
I provided cake.
The read through identified some problems but it also made
the play come alive. The partial walk-through afterwards made it even more dynamic.
The actors enjoyed it.
Problems identified
There are three different settings and several different places
within these settings. We need to make these clear. Some suggestions included specific
areas of the stage being used for specific settings, some colour coding in costumes
and some audio signalling, Brecht-style, of what is happening.
Yes, there is an off-stage rape scene. There needs to be a
little more clarity when Trudi and Gisela come back on stage about what has
happened.
The cast is huge and / or some people can take several of
the small parts. That and the passage of time can make things confusing. Three
of us identified separately that we need another narrator, perhaps to play
opposite the Nazi Officer. One suggestion was to let Clara, Renate's grandmother,
do some of the narration.
What I'm now doing
I'm rewriting it as radio play but I'm also continuing to
develop it as a stage play.
I've also divided it into episodes – six in total, though it
may need more after I've finished adding the extra passages of narration.
I've actually created Clara, as suggested, as a narrator but
also Mrs Cohen, Renate's teacher and mentor in England and Anika, the most
prominent of the German girls.
I'm now working through to see if there is any dialogue / action
or scenes I can cut to keep the play to a reasonable length.
I'm trying to keep "chorus" down to six. This will
involve adults playing young people – with the possible exception of one young
girl - and chorus members being relatively androgynous. This may be more of a
casting issue than a writing one.
I'll also make sure there are time and place markers in
every scene.
Some of the stage direction also needs tidying up.
There's much work to be done, as usual but I do feel that
it's getting somewhere.
