The (un)Finished Product

“By sophisticated materials, I mean anything too finished.” Nessa

When we found out that we needed to write the script down in order to enter the Fringe it was –and not just for me –a strange realisation. To write down the piece we had performed about eight times and yet not once -apart from the title of each scene- written anything close to resembling a script. It became a process that, for me at least, altered my understanding of the play; what we had done and were still trying to do.

As we developed it we remembered it. We formed characters in our heads. Scenes were written on napkins, scribbled on scraps and then developed and occasionally kept but only in our memory. The need for a script never came up. In the application process we could only apply with ideas. Why write down what we were doing when we were developing short scenes that stuck with us. If we all liked something (which was rare) they were easy to remember in a one word summery -'chase', ladder/moon' etc. We were writing the movements as we made them; each individual wrote their own and they were written into the space. If it didn’t work we told each other. We watched ourselves and then watched each other. Movements were changed, amended and altered until it made sense to all. Having written all the movements (more or less) we began to work on lighting, scenery, stage-management and all the other bits that go into a show. We began to work blindly; reacting, responding, trusting. We forgot ourselves and traced the movements.

About a month before the script needed to be handed in I began to write. I wrote it as it happened. Ian moved downstage-left, Nessa moved upstage and I jumped. It was technical and precise; finished and with little left to the imagination. It took a long time to write; too long. When I emailed it to Nessa and Ian to send off they didn’t like it. It was what happened not what we needed to happen. Without telling me Nessa tore it up, shredded it, cutting, pasting, altering and erasing. By the end it was I’d wrote, what Nessa had fixed and Ian had added to. It was the basic outline; moments, images, lines of narrative and threads of characters mingled with gaps that we would fill as we found the movements.

When Nessa wrote me (the day after she had sent the script in) I asked her what she had found wrong with what I'd written. She said it was too sophisticated. I didn't understand what she meant. When I asked her she wrote: “By sophisticated materials, I mean anything too finished.” We were making a play about imagination; why give them the finished product?