WRITING IDENTITY & CHARACTER

Welcome to the new spring term! Lydia opened the session with a very important series of questions;

● What is writing for performance?
● How is writing for performance different from written word/books?

The group came up with some thought-provoking responses. Writing for performance involves; showing not telling, active/action/direction, space, movement of the body and voice, eye-contact, whole body experience, emotion, connection with the audience.

Then we had a quick Q + A about what we are currently watching/reading. It’s a varied list;

● Jane Eyre (novel by Charlotte Brontë)

● Maybe Murder (detective fiction)

● To Kill a Mockingbird (novel by Harper Lee)

● Shadow and Bone (Fantasy TV series)

● Aristotle (Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath)

● Dante (Italian poet, writer and philosopher)

● The Catcher in the Rye (novel by J. D. Salinger)

● The New York School Poets (a core group of five poets: John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara)

Our first writing exercise was a 7-minute freewrite on the prompt: ‘I knew it would happen today’... Followed by the opportunity to share. The exercise inspired some interesting and strong pieces.

Next Lydia presented 2 brilliant monologues.

A scene from the film Dead Poets Society - ‘What will your verse be?’ (YouTube clip)

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman. “O me, O life, of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless. Of cities filled with the foolish. What good, amid these, O me, O Life? Answer: That you are here. That life exists… an identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse,” That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

We discussed the character Mr Keating’s motivation for this speech - and how his emotion is conveyed to inspire, motivate and draw in an audience with this great monologue.

2. DANCE NATION (CLARE BARRON) MONOLOGUE- ZUZU

“My Mom asked me to dance for her cancer. She saw a documentary about this woman who did a dance and it cured her cancer and so she asked me if I would do a dance for her and my Mom is not normally like that but she was feeling really emotional at the time and she kept breaking down all the time so I did this solo at the yearend recital for my Mom and her cancer. And I tried to make it the best dance I had ever done. I tried to like feel things with my arms and my legs. I tried to make people feel things with my arms and my legs. But it was just an ordinary dance, really. A lot of people didn't know it was about my Mom's cancer at all. They thought it was about whatever our dances are usually about.”

We reflected on this piece, on why it was included and the effect. The group came up with some brilliant insights; it’s conversational so the audience can identify with the character’s humanity, it’s raw and emotional, it’s funny, it’s informal so it comes across as authentic. It says a lot about the character’s personality, life circumstances and thought processes.

Our blogs

Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

WRITING IDENTITY & CHARACTER