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Gorgonae, Day 8 – Old Vic Workrooms

| So Sayeth Se Vaughn

Hump day has arrived. 

We dove into two of our five scenes today playing with sound, the mics, movement, and the text to figure out what works best. 

I have a bit of a sense of relief in how we’re approaching this ‘event’ because we are treating and presenting it very much as a work-in-progress R&D to test new material and form in front of an audience. It’s not a finished project or idea. It’s hard to keep my NYC mind out of this process. I keep forgetting how much more sensical people approach work here. Maybe not so much season programming and commissioning but it can’t all be better. 

I’m good with our approach because that’s not what I wanted from this R&D which would have been difficult with only 10 days. But I also selfishly want someone to pick it up and develop it or commission it. 

So we read, deconstruct the text, and, my favourite part, listen to how the actors interpret the meaning. 

Look, sometimes I write and don’t think. I don’t imply any meaning. Sometimes it serendipitously happens and manages to line up. Sometimes I hear it and think: What the hell am I saying? But I get a kick out of hearing how people interpret it. It reminds me that we can never really know what, if anything, an author intends with their work. It’s all supposition based on context and our own cultural and societal values and mores. 

And in those lightning moments, meaning is brought to my text that knocks me over (in a good way) because I think I work subconsciously as I write. I let the muses, as it were, take me where they will. Then I follow up and reshape the logorrhoeaic mess on the page. And when it marries in a way I didn’t expect I love it. 

And sometimes I have to push back and say: Sorry that’s not what it means and you can’t continue down that path because it will mess something up later on. 

I didn’t do that once in a rehearsal process. It fucked up my play and subsequent production. I’ve learned never to stay quiet on those issues. 

The best part of the day for me was when I got up to play with the actors when one of our ladies had to step out for an apppintment and was running late coming back. 

I was there in the trenches working with Rania and Lara, building a musical language with Kareem, and reshaping the text with Ita’s movement acumen and third eye.  

It reminded me how much I miss acting. How much easier I find it. How much more fulfilling it is – likely because it’s not as lonely as a process. It reminds me that I’m making the right decision to fully come out of my 3-year hiatus and get back on stage. That’s my home. It’s immediate. It’s more ephemeral. 

I don’t think I’ll stop writing. Although I don’t know for sure. And if that’s what comes out of this two-week R&D I don’t think I would be disappointed. I would be thankful for the clarity. 

Why waste anyone’s time, let alone mine?

I’m not going to turn this into a self-aggrandising or self-loathing post. Ain’t nobody got time for that. 

I’m excited to see what is unearthed in Day 9.  Maybe I’ll pull a Showgirls on one of the ladies and step into a role. 

    Gorgonae, Day 7 – Old Vic Workrooms

    | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

    I was surprisingly alert and with it given how little sleep I got last night. But, then again, I’m a notorious night owl who has learned to get by on no sleep. It makes me more docile during the day 🙂

    Thankfully, I didn’t have to do much thinking and processing beyond reading through the new scenes and chatting about them and making changes. I was pleased to know that the damned things worked. At least on paper. The piece is a new beast for me, not in terms of story per se, but in form with trying to mix Eastern story telling traditions with Western narratives and a Greek tragedy structure. So the proof of the pudding will be in getting it on its feet and seeing if it really works in action.

    That’s where part of the stumbling block was yesterday with trying to nail down the form and when our Fury World, as we call it, interrupts with our Natural World, and what that means. Or when the internal starts to wreak havoc on the external.  

    Apologies for any redundancy, but I wanted to work in a new way. To see what it would bring out of me or kickstart in me. So far, it’s been really interesting. I can’t say honestly one way or the other whether I like creating work in this way. I probably won’t know for sure until after the sharing.

    I’m digressing.

    Today I sat back and watched our three actresses get put through their physical paces by our movement director, Ita. She worked those three like nobody’s business as we tried to find the characters physical languages and then worked on how our Fury World is expressed in movement: A Fury Dabke – of sorts. I struggled to find how the exercise could connect to me or my writing, but Carla, my director, who always gives me aha moments, shared with me the value of what it can do for an actor and thereby for the text they engage with. What it helps brings out of the text which in turn can lead a writer to determine what is too much, what is needed, and what is repetitive. And hearing Ita talk about how it can be freeing makes complete sense to me. 

    But this way of working is somewhat new to me because we don’t work this way in the States. Never as an actor or as writer did I have to partake in these kids of physical exercises to find character. I mean, once a director had us all walking around the room feeling one another’s energies and at the time I just didn’t get why the hell we were doing it. I just wanted to get on with it and open my mouth, say some things, and mean them. And there are times where I still find it strange, And I don’t know if I could ever find it useful as an actor because I innately explore the physical gesture of the character I am playing along with the vocal choices without having to go through that process. Maybe if I did go through it, I might find more? 

    But I can see the light bulbs that turn on for some actors when they go through it. I think it does have value, but I also think it’s a personal choice. I don’ know if I am 100% convinced, but what is great about this process is that it is opening my eyes and ears a little more to the why and how so that I can understand regardless of my perspective on it. The R&D wasn’t just about the writing but about learning new active or passive practices for my work or the way I want to create work. 

    I AM a little terrified that we only have two days left before the sharing, but I’m not scared shitless. If it were a different director I would be more on edge. But I know Carla has a plan and she’s less paranoid precious than I am when it comes to many things in the rehearsal room. She’s the kind of director most writers should be lucky to work with because she knows how to challenge and bring out the best in you. 

    I have a feeling tomorrow I’ll be dealing with Kareem, our musician/composer, a lot more in this blog as we move into the text and looping technology we’re trying to experiment with. 

      Gorgonae, Day 6 – Old Vic Workrooms

      | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

      Three weeks has flown by and now I’m back in the Old Vic Workrooms for the second and final week of working on my new piece Gorgonae. We built in time for me to generate pages from the end of our first week. Which always means procrastination time where I ‘think’ about the play before I start writing. I work best under pressure. Always have. I can’t belabour the writing process. But I am finding that I do need the time to imagine scenes and play them out in my head so I can get a sense of what it is I am writing. 

       And at this point anything would have been better than the pages I delivered on the last day. You could say they were pages and they had words on it…but that’s about it. Although they were a good starting place for – well – anything.

      And then off we went on a break and I turned my attention to something else for a few days to clean out my brain a little. And then back to looking at the script. 

      Staring at the pages more like it. But at least I had a synopsis to work from.

      A few days before our return to the rooms I feverishly generated the scenes that I thought would work for our sharing and help flesh out the story for everyone. And then it was Monday morning. I find I don’t really get nervous on first reads anymore. My reaction always tends to be the same: God that’s shit writing. It’s just the process of hearing it only in my head for so long and then hearing it from the mouths of actors who may or may not say the words as I heard them in my head. It’s an illogical psychological thing. I usually ignore it. 

      It’s reactions after that are telling. These were telling. Not in a good or bad way. But I can tell, generally, when a scene works or when it doesn’t. I’m also an actor; I know the tells. And then we let the actors go before lunch to sit and discuss the dramaturgical arc of the scenes but also to look at the shape of the piece and how the different elements are being used. Trying to make sense of the seemingly disparate worlds of sound, music, movement, and text to make sure a clear story is being told. 

      So Carla, Kareem (our musician) and myself banged our heads against walls and one another trying to make sense of what it is I was doing, what I wanted to do, and the BS I started spouting to try and make sense of it.

      Not gonna lie – it’s frustrating as hell. It’s meant to be. Otherwise everyone would do it. But figure it out we did. Along with what scenes we wanted to work on with the sharing. 

      And off I went to write.

      But not so quickly as I had to co-chair a panel on storytelling diversity that ended around 9.15. I didn’t get home until 10.30. I scarfed down some food super quickly (and starting a Whole30 programme right now was stoopid) and go to rewriting four out of the five scenes. Thankfully (thanks to the muses) I write quickly. Very quickly. It’s better that way because I don’t have time to think and judge. I just react. And react I did. And finally dropped off at 1.20ish in the morning after treating myself to some ASMR videos which I have discovered are one of the only few things that can quiet my hyperactive brain so I can go to sleep without much fuss. 

      And I feel better about the new scenes. Now….what will the tells tell 🙂

        For the Sake of Intriguing Opportunities

        | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

        This post is going to piss some people off.

        I may lose some friends in the process.

        But this has been eating at me for a while, especially today. And I can’t sleep because I’m bothered.

        The latest debacle in the ‘colourblind’ casting carnival rears its head with Edward Albee.

        And I’m annoyed. Very annoyed.

        But here’s the thing – I side with the Albee estate on this.

        BEFOREYOUFREAKOUTSTOPBREATHEANDREAD

        Look, most people who know me know I am the first to blow the race whistle and call some White folk out on their tomfoolery so they get even a little woke.

        But now we’re treading dangerous ground.

        As an actor there are many roles I want to play. I was spoiled early in my career before I moved to New York by playing amazing roles that I would never have been cast in, in NYC (and, in truth, in looking back, my presence as an actor of colour altered the stories in ways I didn’t think of then). My one dream role left (George in Sunday in the Park with George) will probably never be realised and it’s for a very simple reason: George was a white Frenchman and he was a real person. I speak French. And that’s about it. Sure, I could pass. Maybe. But it would be inauthentic.

        And I think I am ok with that. Unless Sondheim and Lapine gave me their blessing then all bets are off. Maybe.

        But if I am not ok with then I betray Sevan the Writer. The writer who creates very specific worlds and characters. Sometimes I don’t care about the race of my characters because it’s not integral to the story; anyone can and should play those roles to reflect our contemporary society. Sometimes I am very specific and I make a note that it should not be cast any other way for any reason because it disrupts the story and world I have created.

        I don’t want my work to turn into a gimmick because of a director’s ‘vision’ to bring some new awareness to support the latest political agenda or grand statement. I’ve seen too many director’s glaucomic visions ruin amazing plays.

        When we cast ‘colour blind’ we’re not just doing it in the name of equality. It comes loaded with several layers of semiotic meaning.

        We blow this whistle hard enough and what is to stop someone from doing an all-white production of The Colour Purple? Would it be fair for us to deny them that ‘colour blind’ casting if it truly doesn’t matter? Careful.

        Sevan, you think, don’t be an idiot. That is clearly a Black show about a Black historical moment. It wouldn’t work with White actors.

        Well, you’re going to have to allow it if you allow all the other things you want, i.e., an all East Asian Cherry Orchard set in Russia or re-set in China.

        Let’s be clear, I don’t advocate any of those because it’s not what the writers created. That is not the world they created. They are not subservient to our political needs to make statements that will prove a point to the industry.

        And more importantly, I’m not on this planet to tell YOUR stories as an actor. If you want to showcase talented actors of colour. If you want to have a diverse season. Then I know 10 playwrights at the top of my head whose work you can produce which could go toe-to-toe with these classics. Plays/musicals written FOR actors of colour. Or even those written with so much casting room that you don’t even have to think about your choices. Swing that cat around and let it hit whomever in the room and cast them.

        But the sad thing is that casting race contrary to a play and it becoming a political symbol is something you cannot avoid. We have not reached a point of enlightenment in our society where none of it matters.

        And even if we WERE in that place, you’re still remaking someone else’s work and world to suit your own.

        Sure, you can say that these subversive moves are to show that actors of any colour are capable of doing anything. You can still make that point with new work.

        And I get it, there are some classic roles that are just so fucking incredible that as an actor you want to get your teeth into them NOW. But why can’t we produce shows that elicit the same feeling for characters of colour?

        Don’t get me started on Shakespeare either…please.

        Read that Jezebel article carefully before you go right to the race whistle.

        …it is important to note that Mr. Albee wrote Nick as a Caucasian character, whose blonde hair and blue eyes are remarked on frequently in the play, even alluding to Nick’s likeness as that of an Aryan of Nazi racial ideology. Furthermore, Mr. Albee himself said on numerous occasions when approached with requests for non-traditional casting in productions of VIRGINIA WOOLF? that a mixed-race marriage between a Caucasian and an African-American would not have gone unacknowledged in conversations in that time and place and under the circumstances in which the play is expressly set by textual references in the 1960’s.

        I know we want to think this is racism. It’s not. Albee was a picky, controlling bastard on the best of days (although he was totally ok with a Blacktress playing Martha in an Orlando production). The context of this play is very specific. It might be a WPPP (Boring  White People Problems Play), but the man makes it very clear what section of society he is writing about. You change that, and you change the play. Maybe not tremendously, but you change it from what he intended. Even his somewhat hilarious height requirements for Three Tall Women makes sense when you think about the play and what he is doing.

        I fault the director in this, sorry. His need to create a new vision and to make the play more relevant to today angers me. If you want to talk about an issue today why not produce a new play that can do the same thing. He says: I believe casting Nick as black adds depth to the play. But what he ends up doing is changing what Albee what was scrutinising, analysing, and skewering.

        Also, do we REALLY think THAT play needs more depth?

        He goes on to say:

        The Nick I cast is bald. My request from the Albee Estate was going to be to change the term ‘blond’ to ‘bald’ and ‘blondy’ to ‘baldy’ or ‘curly’. This would be a comparable insult. If they would not allow the change, the actors would have had to say ‘blond’ and ‘blondy’ with a touch of irony. But I think it would still work. A minor drawback to an otherwise intriguing opportunity.

        If you don’t seem the problematics in his decision and what he says then please don’t engage me in a conversation about this because it won’t end well. Because if you’re OK with this then you need to be ok with the all-white production of The Colour Purple as a way to talk about the continuing abuse in Appalachian communities; simply change the more black-centric language to make it work. A ‘minor’ drawback indeed. Now if it was an all-Latino production of the same musical would you be ok with it? Why? Because they’re not white? We’re not going to reverse issues or change them by simply displacing them on the perpetrators.

        I’m also not going to entertain the conversations where people say things like: Well, if you’re going to do Macbeth then shouldn’t all the actors be Scottish? Doesn’t that interfere with the playwright’s original choices? Why are people doing The Kite Runner without Afghani actors in it? Huh, Sevan? Huh?

        Just don’t…

        If I write a play about the Middle East with Middle Eastern characters, I don’t want anyone else playing it but Middle Easterners. I don’t want you moving it to New Zealand. I don’t want you messing with my work because you can’t find actors for it (you’re not looking hard enough) or because you can use my text to make a statement about something with just a few tweaks here and there. I am sure my bank account would love the royalties, but please support another fellow playwright who probably has an amazing play that already does what you’re wanting. I appreciate your support but my work is not here to fulfill your soapbox mission that runs counter to my play’s world and to my characters’ lives.

        I don’t want to be your gimmick so an audience can say: Oh my God it’s an all Arab Oklahoma let’s go check that out. What am I? A side show freak? Elicit the same reaction by producing an all-Asian play with all-Asian actors that or may not have anything to do with them being Asian. It’s a stronger political statement.

        I say NONE of the above to mean we should not be diligent and call theatres out when they need to be called out. Because they still stupidly make the same mistakes. We should NOT stop blowing whistles. But we can’t treat every moment as the same screw up.

        You don’t see TV networks reviving old TV shows and simply replacing them with actors of colour. They’re producing new shows for today with actors of colour in lead recurring roles. And, no, I am not saying there aren’t issues in TV land either. That they are doing it better (in some small ways) than the Theatre should be more cause for alarm. This would launch me into a tirade about our obsession with doing classics ad nauseum but that’s for another post.

        We’ve got bigger fish to fry than this play, folks. Hold producers and organisations accountable. Make them produce the new work. Make them find the relevant plays and the actors of colour. Make them change the landscape and shift the paradigm. But let’s not resort to using Classics as the panacea. It’s not enough. Let’s create the new classics. The new roles actors are dying to play.

        Let’s not resort to minor drawbacks for the sake of intriguing opportunities.

          Gorgonae, Day 5 – The Old Vic Lab Workrooms

          | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

          And so week 1 came to an end and my time with the intrepid trio, and Carla, and Kareem (our musician/sound dude). Things were just starting to rev up and we found ourselves with no more time. It’s the nature of the R&D, I suppose. You start from zero and explore and talk and question and then when you finally get your head wrapped around things the time is up.

          But I have a suspicion that it was better to get out while the getting was good before things started setting too concretely. The synopsis seemed to go over well and elicited the right kinds of gasps and reactions. It feels properly Greek and Middle Eastern while being relevant and timely.

          The trick is going to be taking a traditional narrative synopsis and finding a way to mess with the form to match what I have in my head with the marriage of movement, music, and text. It’s about trying to blend the inner thoughts, the omniscient ones, and the naturalistic moments without it seeming like a gimmick or just for the sake of being ‘cool’. Though, come on, live looping is cool as hell.

          But I get it – it has to make dramatic sense. Even if other productions haven’t played by that role….

          #shade

          I sadly had to leave early for a work obligation but we covered a lot in the 4 hours we had together, playing around with moments from the synopsis and trying to blend some movement and music with the results of another round of Hot Seating.

          But I’ve finished out this final week with a strong sense of these characters and the story. And now it’s about writing a bunch of scenes and bringing them back in a months’ time to see what speaks to everyone and what seems like the logical material to be presented for the sharing.

          And then…who knows…who knows.

            Gorgonae, Day 4 – The Old Vic Lab Work Rooms

            | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

            I thought this image was very appropriate for how I feel today about the work in the room. Pulled, twisted, constricted, and dramatic (complete with fabulous outturned elbow) with people caught up in my twisted threads.

            I should point out that it’s not the people in the room who made me feel this way, but the process which is becoming overloaded with information and provocations. I have to take this moment to give shout outs and props to my director, Carla Kingham, and my actresses Rania Kurdi, Lara Sawalha, and Taghrid Choucair-Visozo.

            Carla knows how to handle a room, provoke in all the right ways, interrogate a piece, and challenge and push me. It’s not easy to find strong actresses who were born and/or raised in the Middle East and know this culture like I do, so having Lara, Rania and Taghrid in the room is invaluable as is their willingness to play, explore, and ask me difficult questions.

            The first half of the day yielded the most results for me this week. I am not a fan of acting exercises or games. Only because it’s not the methodology I grew up with working in the NYC. For me, it’s all about get up there, say the words, investigate the text, mean the words, and get home. Sometimes, I do think the exercises take the piss. But when Carla does them she sure as hell does them for a reason. Today was about Hot Seating and it was incredible to see what the three actresses were able to come up with based on only 4 days of very complex and wide-ranging discussions. It sparked three different scene ideas in my head.

            The second half was a little more difficult as we read through the pages I wrote yesterday. Full disclosure: They were crap. I knew they were crap. Some of it was, I thought, good. But I knew I was floundering. The reaction was expected and at some point I found myself defending myself when there was really nothing to defend when I haven’t even formulated the whole piece yet! But what the friendly interrogation DID help me do was hear the gaps and needs and potentiality of the piece. It helped me think about a structure that might work as well as the answers to why I want to use movement, music, and looping with the text.

            So when Carla suggested I do a bulleted potential story for our last day tomorrow I was game for it. It was time to pull together all the random ideas I was having during the week to see if there was indeed a story. So on the tube tonight from my writing class, I started on it. And from Goodge Street to Golders Green I sketched out what I think and hope is the core narrative story of this new play. The fun, and challenge, will be how I take the ‘traditional’ story beat and dismantle it and bring it back together to create new meaning through a different structure.

            Sure, I could take it easy and just write the narrative drama. But I got into this R&D and applied for funds to try new practices and see what works for me and if I could indeed create work in different ways. Even if it is some colossal failure, at least I’ll have come away learning that this kind of process doesn’t work for me.

            Yeah. No pressure.

             

              Gorgonae, Day 3 – The Old Vic Lab Work Rooms

              | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

              I’m late posting about our third day because I had to pour some gasoline on the fire to get enough pages written for our fourth day to see what I might have swirling around in my head and in this world.

              To be honest, I’m floundering. It’s a new feeling. I’m pretty controlled and organised when I write. I know the world, the characters, the basic story. And if not I at least know the beginning and end.

              For a good 30 minutes I did the whole staring-at-the-screen-and-wait thing.

              I didnae like it.

              I’m sure part of this is coloured by my last 9-month malaise of not wanting to write anymore. But I think that’s a cop out?

              Eventually I just started writing. Good, bad or indifferent I decided it was better to have crap on a page to give me somewhere to go from than to walk in with nothing to work from.

              And it’s not that I’m worried about being judged in the room because I’m familiar enough with my fellow collaborators that I don’t worry about that.

              It might be that our third day was so fraught with complex conversations and debates about the politics of these characters and who these women are. It got heated – in the most positive way.

              I don’t think people (i.e., the West) really understand how complex the Middle East is. Four Middle Easterners in the room born ‘over there’ and even WE couldn’t wrap our head around everything.

              So then the question becomes: Who are we telling this story to and for? Because believe it or not that matters. My ultimate goal is to present an Arab narrative no one knows, one that counters the narrative perpetuated by the media’s Theatre of Terrorism, one that brings in audiences that look like us because they deserve to be properly portrayed on stage with authenticity and truth through the eyes of a cultural sibling and not some tourist who finds our lives (social, political, other) ‘fascinating’.

              But then how to write it – non-traditionally – without alienating one audience or preaching to the other or, God forbid, not saying anything new or interesting.

              It’s a large albatross to be hanging around anyone’s neck.

              I don’t know if what I wrote last night will capture any of that. It might be that it will make no damn sense. But at least I’ll leave today with some kind of answer and some semblance of a path to walk on.

              Or I’ll just pour more gasoline on it all.

                Gorgonae, Day 2 – The Old Vic Lab Work Rooms

                | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

                Day 2 and I had a proper slept-through-the-alarm-like-a-teenager moment. It goes without saying that I was brain dead for the first hour or so of our discussions in the room, but I found that oddly helpful because it allowed me to hone in on statements that really stuck out to me as potential themes, or character arcs, or plot points.

                These 3 sisters are starting to take more and more shape in my head and I keep coming back to three lines I write yesterday, initially as part of the marketing blurb for our sharing invitation, but which made it into a test scene I wrote in the wee hours of the morning.

                She wanted to taste the sun.
                She wanted to heal a mountain.
                She wanted to break the sky.

                Familiar idioms, with a twist; idealistic and seemingly impossible to achieve, but tempting and clearly fraught with problematics.

                Today’s GRAND moment of insight came about towards the end of the day when we we talking about terms used to describe the traditional roles of Arab women vs. contemporary terms. I was first fascinated that the traditional terms were couched in emotions and the contemporary in the intellectual. My light bulb moment was in thinking about what you sacrifice when you want to achieve something greater and it occurred to me that in the West there is no sense of losing something great when you want to achieve something like freedom; there is also no grand idea because the notion of family and land is not as deep-rooted in places like America where national pride is about a flag or an identity. The exchange is small. In the East, you are willing to do anything for freedom and status for your land and for your family leaving the individual to the last because the first two will take care of the third.

                Maybe that’s why it’s hard for the West to understand why the East fights so hard. To be so passionate about a piece of land? It’s also why the East can’t seem to get their shit together excepting the fact that this is a centuries’ old fight. The connection to the earth and what it signifies is a massive important factor in these decisions usually because the land is all and all is the land. In America or London, for the most part, if you have to move house – you move house. That is a luxury people in the west don’t have. The land is the basin for roots, identity, tradition, and family history.

                If the land goes – then you go.

                But if we understand the need for freedom and independence and identity through the land then how do you decide which is the right movement and which is the wrong one? Can we even ascribe those terms to opposing sides of the camp? It’s the old adage of thinking about both sides of the war who each think the other side is the enemy and they are in the right.

                Maybe that’s why these age-old fights can’t seem to die down. And at the end of the day, I wonder if the one to suffer is Freedom. People die. It is final. Freedom has to stagger on perpetually wounded but unable to die.

                It’s enough to do your head in, innit?

                  Gorgonae, Day 1 – The Old Vic Lab Work Rooms

                  | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

                  I am thoroughly and utterly wiped out. I forgot what a 10-5 day in a rehearsal room was like. And I forgot how exhausting talking and thinking for that long could be.

                  I also love that tea breaks are a thing in rehearsals in London. That would NEVER – I repeat – NEVER happen in NYC.

                  I really didn’t know what to expect going into the room but to be honest much of what we did today was akin to what table work would be. However, a lot of the conversation was free-flowing that melted into digressions and tangents with some guidelines set here and there, but I think we all needed to come to grips with what we are trying to wrestle as I figure out the potential of this piece.

                  I am trying very hard not to think about the music/sound/looping aspect and the movement I want created for the piece. Mostly because it will just get in the way of my writing. And mostly because that’s not my provenance to be sticking my nose into.

                  I thought I could stop myself from writing anything this week, but I failed. My brain was buzzing with all the ideas floated around the room today about freedom, choice, independence, and the decisions you make to have all of those in a world where you are given no options. Is it all indeed nature or nurture? When is it social conditioning and when is it brainwashing?

                  For me, the most remarkable realisation was listening to the rhetoric of women who are a part of al-Khansaa and those of the YPG and how they say almost the exact same things down to a one or two word difference. It makes you starkly aware of the shared language of desire these diametrically opposed women use when talking about freedom and protecting their land. It then fucks with your mind as you want to label one good and one bad based on your own personal morality codes but the truth is that you can’t do that.

                  If you accept that the desire for freedom is important then how do you discount someone’s desire for it if they participate in behaviour deemed ‘evil’. The greyness of morality rears its ugly head.

                  It’s a lot to try and parse out, but a lot of themes were repeated throughout the course of the day and I’ve started to get a clearer idea who these three sisters are and what their immediate origin is. It’s hard to remove the piece from the myth that originally sparked it, but thankfully the myth of the Gorgon sisters is so short and incomplete that I don’t have much to worry about. Although, I am happy (and these blessed moments of dramatic serendipity have occurred a lot in my career – thank you muses) that my original impulse about the myth and the three sisters does align neatly with what I am trying to do here.

                  So when I should have been in bed I was playing with a looping app, percussive breaths, and writing what I think is going to be the opening salvo of this piece. It’s anybody’s guess what is going to stick after this week and during the 3 weeks I take to write more material before our week of rehearsal for the sharing, and a part of me wants to control the situation and just get it done, but I’m trying to learn different ways of creating theatre.

                  Either way I will come out of this learning something new about what works for me and what is futile.

                    A New Project / A Semi-New Start

                    | So Sayeth Se Vaughn

                    I am writing this much later than I intended, but I’ve spent most of the evening going back to my old Facebook page and re-connecting and merging and reinstating my previous life; mostly because I need to reconnect to my tribe and my community in some way. It’s too easy to let it all become out-of-sight-out-of-mind, but I am finding these days that it is increasingly difficult to find good people in this world, and people who you can call ‘friend’.

                    It’s not something that has happened randomly but is a preface to a new project I am about to jump into tomorrow which terrifies and excites me. I decided to try writing and creating a piece of theatre in a way I never have before. I also decided after a 9-month self-imposed exile from writing to try and get back on the horse. And the only way I could do that was to put myself into collaborative environments to keep me honest and to stop me from simply shutting my laptop and turning off my words.

                    I have an idea. A sense of characters. But no real story or plot or dialogue written. I wanted to get into a room with a director and actors and see what I could do in that scenario. I am trying to build on my practice in the hopes that I develop a new skill. Worst case I realise this way of working is NOT for me. Best case I have an amazing new piece of theatre.

                    I’ve managed to pull in a musician and a movement director, get a grant from the Arts Council of England, and a place with the Old Vic Labs for this coming week, a month off to write, and a week in May to rehearse ending with a sharing.

                    I’ve made sure to surround myself with actors I’ve worked with before and who feel like my missing cultural siblings. A director I trust who can call me on my shit and who challenges me even when I don’t want it. And a musician I’ve never worked with before, but who is doing new cool things with Arabic sounds. I’m also thrilled that 90% of us working on the project are Middle Eastern born in the Middle East. #authentic

                    The piece, in brief, is loosely based on the myth of the Gorgon sisters. I’m using that mythos to create an aural piece about Syrian female freedom fighters (look them up if this sounds new to you). Instead of going missionary with the form, I am working with the entire team to create a piece that uses movement and sound/music (via live instruments and a looping machine) to explore the story of three sisters who have different perspectives of being Women in War and whose paths veer, intersecting only once with dire consequences.

                    I’m sure I don’t need to go into why this narrative is important and why now. The truth is that I am so tired of seeing the same reinforced bullshit onstage that is created and perpetuated by the media’s Theatre of Terrorism. I am also tired of cultural tourists being the only ones to write plays about the Middle East and get then produced because it’s a safer bet (?). I also want to see stories by and for and about my people that aren’t the same hackneyed characterisations. Now there’s no saying this will get produced. It may never see the light of day beyond the sharing. But at least I’ll have ammo to get angry down the road instead of having never tried to do anything and then whinged for no reason.