Written by Stefanie Moore
The Hive is Greater Manchester Fringe Festival's first commission opportunity, offering mentoring from industry professions; supported by Arts Council England.
Stefanie won the duologue category and is being mentored by the world-famous playwright, Tim Firth.
A rehearsed reading of her work-in-progress is being performed at Studio Salford Development Week on Tuesday, 5th March.
Stefanie Moore:
The idea for Blue Lines came from a question that I was asked while leading a Sex Education lesson in a Peckham school about 10 years ago.. Teaching these sessions can be incredibly awkward but this particular question, posed by a fifteen year old girl with all the confidence and swagger of a Little Mix member, still holds the power to wake me up either laughing or screaming in the middle of the night. And no, I won’t tell you what the question is; you’ll have to come and see the play for that – Blue Lines, yeah? Book your ticket.
This is my first play and with all the cavalier attitude of someone who has no idea what they’re doing, I entered it into The Hive competition and got through to the scratch night. I had to perform the first 5 pages of the script – and this was excruciating – I had been an actor in a previous life but had given it up because I spent most of the time telling myself I was terrible at it. There was some brilliant writing on show; at the end of the night, I packed up, went home, whined at my sleeping toddler and forgot about it.
It was a genuine shock to win – and a brilliant, genuine shock to be mentored by Tim Firth. I started to read and think about theatre again, something which I had largely avoided since deciding I was just bad at the whole thing back in my twenties. Mike’s podcast (The WFTS Podcast)was incisive and helpful when thinking about structure, something which I had thought (hoped) would be kind of intuitive and organic. Not so. After doing my reading and listening, the first draft flew out of my head onto the page. I think it was an idea that had been a long time in the thinking, if not the writing.
Again with that cavalier attitude – I sent off the first draft to Tim with all the arrogance of the true idiot. I thought it was perfect. His notes suggested otherwise, but in the most diplomatic and constructive way. The big thing I learnt was to keep it awkward. My writing tends to be quite rat-tat-tat and a bit smartarse, like a forties Hepburn/Tracey comedy, where the characters always have a comeback line. Tim encouraged me to trust the actors more, to say more with pauses and non-sequiturs. This, along with his cuts, has been transformative for the piece as a whole and has made it seem more truthful, which it should. It is, in many respects, based on my truth.
Also, beware the monologue! Tim suggested that I find ways of carrying the emotion through dialogue or gesture. Most importantly, he advised me not to simply trust the audience and actors to understand, but allow them to do some of the work in piecing the story together.
I am now on my third draft and focussing on movement in and out of scenes – and thinking about music, stage directions and sound effects, something which has proved the toughest thing to do so far. I thought it was enough to think about the words!
This whole process has been about taking risks with my writing and in this spirit, I only committed to the Development Process with Mike last week. It will probably be me reading one of the parts as rehearsal time has been short – so another opportunity to wrestle the inner critic! What I want from the reading is a sense of the piece from beginning to end. And, if I’m honest, I want to see if it carries the emotional punch that it does for me, that it did for me when writing it.
Stefanie Moore.
Come and see the rehearsed reading of Blue Lines at Studio Salford Development Week 12.
