Diary

2010-03-26T23:44:00.003Z

My plan today was to think about reviews.
But I'm tired.
I did the final revision of the script, sent it off to my agent, and to someone who might possibly translate the play into Japanese, gave each cast member a copy of the published text (Nick Hern Books) saw the show, had some lovely conversations afterwards.
And now I'm tired.
So what I have to say about reviews must wait.
And there are so many of them!
Not just the press, but the online ones, too.
It's sad that so many of the online ones mimic the worst aspect of traditional press one - written in haste, without giving themselves the time and the space to think in depth, and - worst of all - aping the ridiculous and arbitrary star rating system.
But the whole point of writing online in that it gives you the opportunity to do something different.
I stumbled across one that does:
http://glasgowtheatre.blogspot.com/2010/03/every-one.html
and I would commend it.
The remarkable thing about this show, though, has been that I have received so much positive response from all kinds of different sources.
Sometimes from people writing out of the blue.
Like this one:
"Dear Jo Clifford,
I work at Samuel French's Theatre Bookshop and I read your play Every One today. I was just contacting you really to say thank you very much for writing such a great and moving play. I read the new plays when they come in because I like to know what we have in the shop but yours is the only one I have read that has provoked any kind of reaction in me or moved me so much.
I have only read the play so have not had the fortune of seeing it performed so can only imagine the staging and impact it must have.
After reading it I just felt I had to contact you, it had that much of an effect on me.
So once again, thank you "

That means more than all the five star reviews in the world.

2010-03-25T22:33:00.002Z

Last night was one of those occasions when this strange self-imposed task of writing an entry each night felt like something of a chore.
So in no way did I do justice to the deep fear I felt before the press night.
Fear that manifested itself in the usual rather absurd ways - trying to find cards for cast and crew, worrying I had forgotten somebody - plus another one.
A new one, and not so welcome: anxiety about what to wear.
I managed to get my hair done in the afternoon, in its way a minor triumph; but the rushing about of the previous week had left me no time or space to buy a dress. Or even a new top or skirt.
I found myself in my bedroom doing the clasic thing of trying stuff on, taking it off, throwing it on the floor.. until finally opting for something very dull that I had worn often before but which throughout the evening seemed to continually come apart at the seams.
The skirt felt too narrow so I kept almost tripping, the topkept riding up, the cardi seemed to be all over the place.
It was one of those extremely rare occasions when I regretted not being able to present myself as a man.
That would have been so much easier.

And if I look back at where the far comes from... it's like being in love.
It's the vulnerability of self exosure. And the intoxication of it too...

2010-03-24T22:16:00.002Z

When the play opened, it became something very different.
That is the wonderful things about theatre: that it is not a fixed entity, a dead commodity that can be bought and sold as such, but a living organism.
It's also why it has difficulty, sometimes, holding its own in a world that is totally at home buying and selling commodities.
The difference was partly in me, because I was less afraid; and partly in the actors, who I suspect were also less afraid and beginning to find their way of interacting with the audience.
This time I could see many people were listening; i could experience their attention; and I was able to receive their praise.
There was a lot of praise: and there continues to be.
And I know that what i have done, whatever its faults, is worth doing.
That seems so banal: but its worth saying.
I seem to have a new respect for my work that I am not sure I ever had before.

2010-03-23T22:30:00.002Z

I travelled up by train from Oxford in time to see the preview.
Usually I enjoy train journeys, but this one I loathed.
Both trains were overcrowded, lacking in facilities, chaotic in their feeling and seriously slow.
The slowness must have been in my imagination because neither was actually late: and I guess this was to do with my mounting tension.
I've never been away during production week; and while in theory this was a good idea, in the sense that I didn't sit in on rehearsals where there was nothing I could usefully do and worry, in practice it all somehow left me feeling seriously exposed and vulnerable.
It's like the feeling you get when you hand in an essay, say, or a piece of work you've invested much time and effort to get right... only worse, I think, because this play represents about a year's hard work on my part.
And the exposure of some very raw and very private parts of my self.

It was hard for the cast, too, having spent weeks and weeks performing to a blank wall, to suddenly be confronted by a crowd of people instead.
They seemed very visibly nervous, and they lost quite a few of the words sometimes.
(I've just performed "Leave to Remain" in a small meeting room in the theatre; and the last place I performed it was St John's church; and the geographical, emotional, and somehow vibrational contrast between the two venues knocked me off balance. Enough so i got some of the words wrong. Even with script in hand. So for them it would have been worse)
At the beginning, when she has to introduce herself, Kath's character asks: "What would you say?".
This was intended to be a rhetorical question; but at the preview a voice came down from the balcony: "I'm from Dundee".
Kath, bless her, said: "Well, that's not a bad idea. But you're out there and I'm up here and I think I'll just stick to the facts..." and there she was. Back in the script.
At the end of Act One the audience all looked a bit pole-axed, and I was convinced none of them would come back.
But they all did...
And at the end was applause that I felt was tepid, but which friends told me was enthusiastic. After sitting amidst a crowd of sobbing people.
I had a dreadful moment of futility: a moment when I could see all the effort I had gone into making the play right, and couldn't stop myself from wondering if it was all in the slightest worthwhile.
But that moment quickly passed.

2010-03-22T23:20:00.002Z

I know I meant to write about the preview of "Every One".
But today i had an amazing birthday.
I suppose I want to record that.
One thing I had anticipated was getting my bus pass: which did, in fact, duly appear, and which I used, and got excited about...
But I wasn't expecting the beautiful flowers, for some reason, or the torrent of good will messages that poured into my in box.
Nor the beautifully touching letter from my brother Tony, posting a jar of moisturiser I left behind.
Birthdays have always been so hard for me.
I've thought a lot about why this should be. Because I always wanted girl's presents, secretly, and didn't dare ask for them.
Because I've a strong feeling that actually my mum and dead were truly and deeply disappointed when they discovered I was apparently a boy, though they did all they could to hide that fact and love me as deeply as they possibly could.
And so they've been very hard to celebrate.
One massive thing that has happened this year is that I have just had a play open in a beautiful theatre and be, very obviously, a big success.
The fact that somehow someone I love so deeply managed to come and see me and we had such a wonderful time together.
But all the good things have happened, I think, because I have finally learned to appreciate myself.
And so this birthday really has been a source of joyful celebration.

2010-03-21T22:00:00.002Z

21st March.
Snapshot of a week:
Tuesday:
I travelled down to Reading to visit my brother.
Tony is a remarkable and courageous human being who struggles against a terrifying collection of illnesses and disabilities with the most astonishing positive spirit.
He does everything he canto accept me; consistently calls me 'Jo'; read an interview in the Herald which refers to me as she, as it should, with obvious interest and pride.
But to stay in his sheltered housing, and encounter the hostile looks of his housemates, and be introduced as his "brother" is a sad indication of how complex and difficult all this can be.

Wednesday:
Hugely relieved to leave for Oxford. Where I was staying in Merton College, and the dear porters referred to me as 'madam' and were intensely helpful and I felt much more like myself again.
It was a strange sensation, as if I had blundered into a parallel universe.
I was staying in a uite of undergraduate rooms: a large bedroom, shower room en suite, and a study sitting room. The facilities were infinitely better than what I had as a Professor in QMU.
In this beautiful medieval quadrangle: but however lived there normally had a poster of the Manhattan sky line. Which is quite probably where they would rather be.

Thursday:
Frightened at first to go in to the hall for breakfast. It is huge, medieval, most splendid: but far too like "Big School" at Clifton College for comfort. I found yself feeling intimidated and lonely all over again.
But I rallied; people were so friendly.
Then to the Burton Taylot Studio of the Oxford Playhouse for rehearsals.
Break for lunch with Laurie Maguire, a lovely professor who has recently published a book on Helen of Trpy with most of a chapter devoted to the Helen in my FAUST.
Then the reading: it was of a translation of Gil Vicente's DON DUARDOS which I then adapted 18 years ago and which got forgotten about.
But what a good job I had done!
Lovely cast read it beautifully; uch enthusiasm; several possibilities for future production.
And old friends in the evening. What a happy time.

Friday:
Miserable journey home in overcrowded rattling trains back to Edinburgh for the EVERY ONE preview.
And what happened there deserves an entry all to itself.

2010-03-15T20:59:00.002Z

Production week: Day 1
Masses of laughter today.
And sore legs and feet.
And the cast of "The Cherry Orchard" have just started their rehearsals. A lovely, excellent cast. One actor I am so fond of who was in "Losing Venice" and he said "You know, Jo, we may not always understand your words but they are always a pleasure to speak".
As ever, my heart warmed to it.
But i thought: "This time you will understand every word".
In the afternoon, another run through with the dancers and the children and I think, finally, this is the first time I have absolutely everything seen everything through.
So I know now that all the individual bits work.
And they all hang together properly too. It all works as a whole.
It's as if finally the last piece in my jigsaw has fallen into place. Not for them, of course. So much work awaits them between now and the opening on Saturday.
As for me, I feel intensely proud.

2010-03-14T21:02:00.002Z

14th March. About to start production week. (Week 5)
One of the difficulties of the play, I think, is that it's my most explicit attempt to write a play exploring the 'other' dimension - that place which, by definition, has no words to describe it.
For the programme, we put in a that bit from Corinthians - that bit about love.
I have since discovered that Corinth was a port much frequented by sailors whose principal industry was brothels. So this might have something to do with St Paul's preocupation with 'love' here.
Anyway.
I've been re-reading Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" and came across this passage:

�No, it isn�t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of truth.

The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no-one knows of it or sees it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity.

The pious know most about this. That is why they set up the saints and what they call the communion of saints. We are on our way to them all our lives long in every good deed, in every brave thought, in every love.

The communion of the saints, in earlier times it was set by painters in a golden heaven, shining, beautiful and full of peace, and it is nothing else but what I meant a moment ago when I called it eternity. It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for.

There you will find your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher, Philip of Neri and all. There are many saints who at first were sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin, and vice.

Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no-one to guide us. Our only guide is our home-sickness�.

Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Penguin, 179-180.

.... which describes it very well.
And which I gave to a dear loved companion and friend today because it seemed to me to ring true to her situation, as she escapes froma state of oppression.

And then "home", I understand, matters so much towards the end of the play too.

2010-03-13T21:43:00.004Z

Week 4: saturday
My daughter Katie and her boyfriend got the keys to their new flat today, and I was able to see it with them.
It's their first home together.
Such a joy to share their pride and excitement...
It made up for some disappointment I found myself feeling at missing the run today.
All my plays need an audience. They are simply not about creating a self-contained world behind a "fourth wall".
They're conversations with, inter-actions with, their audiences.
And this one much more even than most.
After weeks and weeks of addressing a blank wall, the actors finally had an audience in the form of the dancers of act two.
A lovely message from Mark indicated this made a huge difference.
And yes, I knew it would, and I always try to allow for that, but it's still a joy to see it happen.
I have to contain my impatience.

2010-03-12T23:17:00.002Z

Week four: friday
One of the strangest things about being a playwright is that my involvement in the play decreases just as the actors' involvement increases.
Its true that the script seems as if etched into my brain, and I find page after page of it as if unscrolling in my memory: but that apart, i woke this morning to find myself focusing on the next three projects.
Before going down to meet a lovely drama studnt who wanted to interview me about her new project. "The Penis Monologues".
And then i wandered round Hoxton, which is the strangest mixture of urban decay and utter sophistication, before heading off to the Canal Museum, amateurish but endearing, and terribly English in a gentle sort of way. After that it was amazing portait heads from Ife in the British Museum; the most esquisite re-enactment of the Japanes tea ceremony; gorgeous figurines from the Cyclades; a cup of China white tea; and to end it all, a wonderful supper in the most vibrant and friendly multi-cultural bar in Brixton.
And I am amazed and delighted at the variety and scope of cultural activity available in this city.

2010-03-11T23:08:00.002Z

week 4: thursday
Now I've left rehearsals altogether...and feel a bit naked, somehow.
In London to speak at a public meeting organised by Amnesty on religious fundamentalism and freedom of expression.
I was nervous before hand. I'd forgotten how unpleasant a physical sensation fear is.
but it went well, as these things do, because I sem to find speaking in public easier and easier.
I feel confident, wholly present, relaxed, I can even crack jokes...
and I look at myself in some wonder and think: how can this be?
But how wonderful that it is...

2010-03-10T22:37:00.003Z

Week 4: wednesday.
In one sense I really have very little to do in rehearsals any more.
Sometime I add or remove a word. Today, I think, I also consented that a fullstop be replaced by a question mark.
But that doesn't make it any easier to be there.
The actors are suffering just now because they're not yet completely on top of their lines.
Now this really has nothing to do with me: but i can't stop myself feeling responsible.
Just as I worry about whether the play will be a success for the theatre or not.
Or the effect it will have on the audience who come.
I could get really absurd about all this, as if I have to support the whole theatre like Atlas on my shoulders.
And I can forget how much we all laugh sometimes; or the fierce joy involved in the collective creation of something worthwhile.

And afterwords I have to say I had to force myself a bit to a training session of volunteers for CRUSE, the bereavement counselling charity, where I was due to be speaking.
A CRUSE counsellor helped me hugely after Susie's death; and it was good to pay a little of that back.
Also it was such a pleasure to be in the company of such dedicated and caring people.
I staggered back, still weary, but pleased that i did that.

2010-03-09T22:30:00.002Z

Week four: tuesday.
Cast are getting somewhat wobbly from spending so long on their feet talking to a blank wall. In spite of which they keep discovering in ways I find utterly fascinating... I still tweak words from time to time. Brief session with the Youth group, which was a real pleasure: they are devising a piece related to my play which they perform the week after it opens. And then to a public discussion organised by the Middle Eastern Festival of Spirituality and Peacein St John's church. A bit to my dismay, I found myself getting quite aggressive with one questioner. And incoherent with another. David Greig spoke of his experience bring his play "Damascus" to Damascus.
I am a bit ashamed to record that what i remember was a really pleasant walk with him all the way back along Princes' St to Waverley Station, and then home. I am so fond of him. If also a bit jealous: for having the chance to explore all the darkness of PETER PAN without simultaneously having to make it a jolly Christmas show.
And he said a lovely thing about a remark I made about theatre being a kind of gym for empathy.
But the real thing I remember is that I could walk all the way back from St John's church without my knees getting sore.

2010-03-08T22:52:00.002Z

Week four: Monday.
An extraordinary happy day.
It seems so important to me to deny this myth that the best creativity coms from suffering. I think it comes from pleasure and joy.
A lot of that about in the rehearsal room. And a lot of laughter.
And at lunch I had a really pleasant interview with the Glasgow Herald; and then had my eyebrows done; and then in the evening took part in a discussion at the National Library of Scotland about the Traverse in general and the 1985 season in particular.
What surprised and delighted me was that the lecture hall was full..
And a lovely dinner afterwards. I used to read about literary events, and would wish I was there to attend them too, and then always a bit disappointed with the writers I actually met. Because mostly we seemed to whinge about money.
But tonight, with Joyce McMillan, and Peter Arnott, and David Harrower, and Chris Hannan, it was such sheer pleasure.
And perhaps the best bit was to be with Chris, and Peter: the three of us, survivors of that 1985 season. Still creating, still in good shape, and still capable of such happiness.

2010-03-07T22:19:00.002Z

Week 3: Sunday.
This was the day I thought yesterday was going to be.
After church, i went to the railway station to have some photos taken in a photobooth.
To get my bus pass.
It never ceases to astonish me, now, that when I have a photo taken I like and recognise the face I see.
Which I never used to be able to do.
And then back home, I assemble all I need for the form, and finally fill in the Gender Recognition form and assemble all the bits it needs...
Fire off letters to the artistic directors I know in Scotland and England to see if they'll come to see EVERY ONE...
and that is something else I never used to be able to do.
And then it's the ironing.
EVERY ONE is rather full of ironing. Partly in response to all the ironing in that horrible LOOK BACK IN ANGER...

2010-03-06T21:05:00.002Z

Week 3: Saturday

Today was the quiet day I have been longing for all week.
The day to get the jobs done that need doing, but which there hasn't been time for.
The day to be quiet and enjoy the world.

Of course, it didn't quite work out like that.
All the tiredness I have been suppressing rose to the surface.
And I found myself missing the person I love.

My mother-in-law gave me gingerbread today. It's a new cake every Saturday. It is important I evaluate it.

I praised it, as it deserved. The recipe was from Women's Weekly, and she remembered a time when she gave it to Granny Morphew. A formidable and scarey lady: who said it was the best gingerbread she had ever tasted.

And that was sixty years ago.

Then in the afternoon I found myself being interviewed down the phone by a Blogger from Liberalconspiracu.com in preparation for the Amnesty event I am speaking at on thursday.
(http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1505)
.. and which for some reason I find impossible to visualise.

I am speaking in public at some event or another every night this coming week; and I can see them in my mind's eye very clearly.
But not tis one.
Perhaps because it is in London: and London is such a foreign country.

2010-03-05T20:35:00.002Z

Week 3: Friday
Tears ago.
A lot of tears, in fact.
The show makes me cry in a way that at times makes me question my usefulness in rehearsals: I cry because it touches my grief.
And my grief is still very raw... so perhaps this is not reliable.
I'm trying to find a way of expressing the certain detachment that is necessary to judge the effect of the script.
You need to be detached: but at the same time profoundly passionate.
The whole thing is a puzzle: one I feel just now too tired to even attempt to unravel.
Even though its only twenty to nine.
But then there are the drama on stage; and another, really very wonderful drama unfolding offstage.
And today i saw the whole show for the very first time: the production is moving in the right direction.
And the script, as far as I can tell, is absolutely fine.
I need to accept that for now my work is over.
And I can rest.

2010-03-04T23:50:00.002Z

Week three: Thursday
An amazing and intense day.
i don't recall ever witnessing rehearsals of such an emotionally charged play.
When i am not crying, i am looking at this with amazed astonishment.
Who wrote this?
Apparently I did.
And then having my brain picked by a lady at over lunch who wanted my advice about a certain city in Northern Spain's bid to be European Capital of Culture of 2016.
And having to leave rehearsals, suddenly, to meet someone I desperately needed to meet.
And am so glad I did.
And then preparing for the coming of most of the actors, and Becca, and a few friends beside to gather today and listen to LA PRINCESSE DE CLEVES, which we did, and it was so lovely to hear it in company.
And now, if I can, I really must sleep.

2010-03-03T22:51:00.002Z

Week 3: Wednesday.
I spent most of the morning with my mother-in-law.
She had a couple of hospital appointments, and I went with her. The western General is a bewildering kind of place, and it's good to help her through it.
She has a love of life and an admirable courage in the face of death... and I have told her I cannot go on living as a man. That I am not John any more.
But she also has an ability not to look at aspects of life that disturb her, and because she is 85 and pretty frail and certainly vulnerable I am reluctant to challenge her.
But tn she insists on calling me John and thinking of me as her son-in-law.
And this, in a public space, causes me intense discomfort.
It's a problem I can't yet resolve; and after hours of it, it's a great relief to be out of it, and my own dear real self, and in rehearsal again.
And especially today: yesterday's crises seem to be over and I can look and listen to the text and know it is OK.
I can relax about it.
Or at least Act One.

2010-03-02T21:46:00.002Z

Week 3: Tuesday.
Just home from dancing.
So wonderful to be wordless in a loving atmosphere after a day secretly fretting over words. Commas even.
I feel for the actors. So exposed up there.
In a place that will demand their utmost powers of presence and of concentration.
I have to keep suppressing my desires to make it easier for them... because to do o would, I know, weaken the play.
And when they get past all their concerns and worries and their sense of strangeness at what they are called on to do, and their anxieties about learning the words.... what comes out is so powerful...
I had to sit to the side late this afternoon: sitting in front of them felt like being exposed to some kind of emotional hurricane.
Also thinking of the spectator at LEAVE TO REMAIN last night who, like me, had had to take care of their partner as they died from a brain tumour.
The intensity of the suffering that involves is so exceptional: and i was so glad to be there to be able to tell her, not just with words, but with my whole presence, that we can recover.
And will.
And "learn to love and live joyfully again".
As it says in the script: and which I can now perform, not just as a pious hope, but as something which I know to be true.

2010-03-01T23:07:00.002Z

Monday night.
First thing: check proofs of EVERY ONE for Nick Hern Books, the publisher. Compile and send brief biog.
Second thing: Queue in post office to post said proofs to arrive tomorrow.
Third thing: Arrive at rehearsals. Spend lunch break starting to write programme note for Lyceum production.
Fourth thing: In rehearsals. Reluctantly face the fact that a rewrite I wrote of a speech in act one that was causing trouble has still not solved problem.
Fifth thing: Spend tea break rewriting the rewrite.
Sixth thing: pray rewritten rewrite will work better. It may do: but the jury is out.
Seventh thing: brief supper.
Eighth: rest flat out on church floor.
Ninth: set up for LEAVE TO REMAIN.
Tenth: perform LEAVE TO REMAIN in church. (Weirdly: this may be one of the best performances so far)
Eleventh: Co lead the discussion afterwards.
Twelfth: Put the chairs back in the Lady Chapel.
Thirteenth: Drink a dubious cocktail called Weeping Figs with the others to celebrate.We did a box office split with the church: 60% to us, 40% to them.
Which probably means that most of what I earned got spent on the cocktail. And then the taxi home.
But I am glad we did it.
And proud. Proud of what we have done.

2010-02-28T22:45:00.003Z

Memo to self: try to keep up. Try to find out what rehearsal day this is...

Whatever the number, it has been remarkable.

Performing extracts of "Jesus" to trans activists from Europe was an amazing experience. For many of them, policies here in Scotland are a model of good practice. For all the difficulties so many of us still face, speaking with them made me aware of our blessings.

I was thinking of this especially this morning as i went to church. I went to St. Johns - an amazing busy church in Edinburgh's west End which runs 4 services every Sunday. There were about 150 at the morning service Suzanne and I had been invited to attend. We stood up during the notices to tell the congregation about LEAVE TO REMAIN which we have just performed this evening (and are performing again tomorrow).

I felt totally welcomed. Without any equivocation or reserve: and i could not help but reflect that not so ,oong ago that would have felt so impossible on so many different fronts.

And the service was so beautiful...

And then we rehearsed, and then in the afternoon something very beautiful and unexpected happened, which I cannot describe here, but left me with a real hope for future happiness.

There were maybe about 25 to see the show, which we performed in the main body of this beautiful church for the very first time. Such a building has a profound effect on performance: you have to speak slowly, to stop your voice disappearing into the echo, and the whole space demands a kind of mindful presence that is very challenging and beautiful to discover.

there's more to it than that, but what that is i am too tired all of a sudden to even begin to describe.

I think we did well.

2010-02-27T21:19:00.003Z

... and I forget what day this is.
Saturday, yes, and maybe about a fortnight into the Every One rehearsals that I have largely been absent from since Wednesday.
Thursday... I was rehearsing a different project altogether. "Leave To Remain" that we are performing tomorrow (Sunday) and Monday at St. John's church.
The last time we did it we played to an audience of four in the Lady Chapel.
This time we have tried, who knows with what success, to publicise the event a little bit more.

And Suzanne, who I write and perform with, insisted with wonderful ooptimism we rehearse in the main body of the church.
Which is enormous. And so powerful, if you figure out how to use it.
And immensely enjoyable to explore.

And then in the afternoon i was off to Dundee. Lovely meeting with the lovely man who runs Dundee Rep.; and then in the evening I was performing for the LGBT Soc at Dundee university in honour of LGBT History Month.
i read two wonderful pieces of writing from two very talented writers of the trans writers group _ Amy Redford and Kristi Taylor.
And an extract from "Jesus Queen of Heaven".

The train was late in the wild night; I got home after midnight; I broke my habit of writing this blog daily.

Friday... a massage in the morning. I wept deeply, bitterly.

"Leave to remain" again in the afternoon, and then a quick hour with "Every One" at the Lyceum. They were doing the last scene. That made me cry too. I had to sit to one side to try to avoid distracting the actors.

And today... sweet consideration shown me by the man who runs the local shop. The coffee with my mother-in-law. Then a restless sleep before heading up the road to the Carlton hotel to perform about 30 minutes of "Jesus Queen of Heaven" for a group of European trans-activists.

I felt pleased because i managed to do it off the book. I think it went well.

2010-02-24T21:54:00.002Z

Day ten
It was a death scene today.
It was difficult stay calm and detached and make sure the writing was right because today is the fifth anniversary of Susie's death.
And at the lunch break as i was walking to the sandwich shop I found myself wondering: "How do i write like this? Where does it all come from?". And then later on in the afternoon i was trying to clarify something by describing the process of the deaths I have witnessed... so i suppose that is the answer.
And then tonight, in the midst of some serious exhaustion, i still managed to have a meeting with a solicitor to witness the Solemn Declaration which is part of my application for Gender Recognition.
So new life is still beginning.

2010-02-23T21:26:00.002Z

Day 9
I remember when i started I had no idea what i was supposed to be doing in rehearsals.
So i tended to sit around looking nervous. And worried about how bad I perceived my play to be.
Of course the actors all though i was thinking how really bad they were; and it didn't really help that I had no answer to any of the questions they asked me.
I would say things like "It just turned out that way" which might have been true but were, in fact, completely useless.
And I used to feel hopelessly inadequate because I never knew how they were supposed to say the lines.
It took me ages to understand that wasn't my job.
That instead my job is to check the text. Try to notice the difference between a line that is difficult because, for reasons of their own, the actor may be encountering difficulties with exactly how to say it, or what to do with it... and a line that is difficult because it needs changing.
On the whole this play seems to be working far far better than ever i imagined it would. But today we hit a passage that did need a rewrite.
And it was a real pleasure to think about what in the writing was causing the problem and how it could be sorted out.
Which i think I just have.
And I think the play is all the better for it.
I maybe wrong, however.
Only time will tell.