I have decided to call my piece ‘These Are the Daze’ and to accompany my advertisement of this performance i included my previous poem:
When she was 2 she played in the dirt
As the sprinklers in the grass would spurt
She made sure that no small thing could get hurt
“The things that you love are going to kill you”
her mother said
And as that replayed in her head
She thought of the time she could have been dead
As she sit in the garden with jelly on her tongue
A wasp was lured in by the sun
The strawberry scent, oh how it hung
Into the mouth, it stung and stung.
It seems you have a purpose my dear
a reason for you to still be here,
what will the future be for third years?
when we leave will it all become clear?
Here is a photo of my tech rehearsal. With everything underway, i have been rehearsing and chopping and changing material to suit the piece better. A final script will be attached to the end of this post.
But first,
I include some rehearsal practices for sheer entertainment…
FINAL SCRIPT:
START SONG CURIOUS LIT STAGE
My names jode the toad
I sing when im walkin down the road
Im always going with the flow
Steady as I go
Walking down the road
In me own world
No-one but me
Oh don’t the swans look lovely
The birds are nesting in the trees
Rustling the leaves
Whistling with me
Skippin along I feel me ead
Pigeon poo, but I don’t dread
I think that ill just laugh instead
Not a thing to dread
Poo is on me ead
I live in a world
In the unknown
I aint got a clue where im gonna go
Who would have known, Three years have flown
So I better go
Start me solo show
AUDIO BREAKTHROUGH / LIGHTING STATE 1
She lives in a vortex
A space cadet
She
scurries between the clouds and the leaves
this is what it means for her to live in a dream
“What a strange little girl you have
Doesn’t she want to play with dolls
Or toys,
why does she always play with the boys
Didn’t you teach her to be scared of spiders and bugs
And not to play amongst the mud
Jonny got an ipad for his 6th birthday
He signed up to facebook yesterday”
That’s all good and well mandy
But your kid doesn’t know that that bird out there in the garden is a sparrow
There’s trouble with the people and their minds are growing narrow
This child however born into the millennials
Has a mind too active to simply sit still
She
wants to be outside
“but there’s horrible people out there my dear
You want to get yourself inside where you can see the world in HD”
With the news on in the background, violence hate and war she
Lets her imagination set her free
When she leaves school
She will enrol onto a drama degree
Defer for a year and work in the local pub to get herself some money
“What are you going to do with that then
You want to get yourself a proper job”
What like you she says
Working in a grey office that gets you plenty of dosh
and are you happy no of course not
And that’s why youre in here every night, drowning your mind with your usual pint
She’ll get through university and face problems on the way like
Having to do a dissertation while her father drinks away the pain and yet
she seems like she’s the happiest person in the world doesn’t she?
And that’s because she lets her mind wander freely
Another world she visits every single day
when you look at her she seems vacant because she’s floating far away
if you try to speak with her she will look very blank
And although she seems to be listening its difficult
when in youre mind you’re crossing a river bank
Creativity she says
The key to her degree
It lets my mind wander freely and I don’t have to be me
“But what are you going to do with that when you leave
Haven’t you got plans to travel or teach, that we can add to your CV “
The truth is Bianca from student support, I don’t know
All I know is an office job is some place I don’t want to go
Sorry what did you say, I was too busy looking at your desk and creating a story about the life you had before we just met and how your day might’ve gone and what maybe you had for breakfast cos your desk bin is starting to smell of the browning banana skin, and that’s made me hungry and reminded me of a spider, sometimes they find them you know, hidden inside and yeah i hear that spiders can sometimes get under your skin, lay their eggs in your arm and you have to scratch out their kin, I had a spider once, a tarantula called Ziggy, stardust and the spiders on mars are all sat their learning how to play guitar at the bar in space I float with them as they wiggle their waists and imagine being a dancer, what if I could do that or what if I could go on to climb the ifle tower and… seriously Three years are up now, where am I gonna go, and as the colours in my mind start to overflow I look outside my window and I watch the world pass me by as I dream in slow mo
Projection 1 butterfly SAME LIGHTING
(AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION)
Greg’s middle aged 2 kids and a wife
Started here in 04 to save some money on the side
He had visions of moving to the other side
Now he sits here wondering what happened to his life
Now he’s travelling to work on the tube everyday
Started out with colour then his body turned grey
Could’ve been a lawyer could’ve learned to fly a plane
I could’ve been someone I could’ve gone a different way
and now gregs not dumb not numb to the feeling
sits at his desk and he stares to the ceiling
thinks about the air in his lungs that hes breathing
whats the point in living if you’ve got no meaning
SAME LIGHTING
I always like to be the one that makes people laugh
I haven’t had the best of pasts you see I like to make light of things now because I know what its like to be down
Maybe that’s why ive always got my head in the clouds
Some call it procrastination I call it expressive imagination
Some call it adhd I call it escaping this world and the harsh realities
So when I came to this university I flourished
A drama degree of course ive been encouraged
I find it very difficult to do the writing part
Because it makes me sit still and the daydreaming starts
And Ive never really been able to master the art
Of not taking the bad things to heart
So I try not to take things very seriously
And I try and spread love to everybody
And that’s exactly the way I wanna be
One thing people probably don’t know about me
Is that I am actually filled with a lot of empathy
And that frightens me
Because I feel so much
Maybe too much for this world
Even as such a little girl
I had so much anger for the darkness in the world
I remember climbing a tree and seeing a redish goo come out of the bark it was the tree sap
See but for me I thought it was bleeding because I had climbed it and ive never been able to get over that
I remember how boys would stamp on snails in front of me and I would cry and cry
Pick up their shells bit by bit to try and fix it back together and I still wonder why
They say the phrase ‘she wouldn’t even hurt a fly’ very lightly
Because I wouldn’t
I couldn’t
These things may seem so minute to you, there’s bigger things that happen in the world yes that’s very true but these things keep me awake at night
And now you know the reason why I try and escape it all in my mind
Im just a happy person
And I believe in myself
You know its so important
Life does through you some shit at times weve all been through it
But were here for a purpose and I wanna be an actress I think I can do it
So when I leave here, im gonna pursue it
RECORDING AUDIO –
INTO PRJOECTION ON LINE ‘IVE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED WHAT IM GOING TO DO WITH YOU’ IN AUDIO
There I am
Centre stage at the reception desk
The lights flicker and fade because the meter hasn’t been paid
Ive got a job in the company of a lifetime
Applied through an agency and they want me they want me
Im printing and phoning and theyre typing and probing
And ive signed on with an agency for admin work and theres a position coming up next year in head offcies they say ive got potential and I’m about to go up now
To print off another invoice ive got to go now
I like my job
I feel like this is where I am meant to be
Ive learnt how to fax invoices
Ive learnt how to open spreadsheets
I can do 30 a day
Aren’t you happy I went this way
As as the time goes tick tock
There’s a knock at her door 15 years later
A promotion
No fulfilled dreams to travel the ocean
She went with the greyness of the motions
And the man in the grey suit got out his net
caught the butterfly so now she’s good for dead
Im not scared about leaving university
Im absolutely fucking shitting myself
But when the hands of life clasp around your throat
And theres no oxygen to your brain the colours will start to drain
and youre listening to the same person explain
how if you don’t settle down theyre going to class you insane
and I don’t know if you feel the same
but when you turn 82 and you look back on your life with regret who are you going to blame?
Grow up they said
What does that mean?
Well im saying no cos if I continue to dream
Ill never grow old but you’ll outgrow me.
END