I Hear Voices Across My Desk, Composing, 18/09/2014

Wednesday was so ridiculously busy that I couldn’t really sit down and blog an entry for today, but I got some things done on the way home from my campus in Oakville. So I was able to load this up to post this evening. The schedule goes, I’ll probably promote this as Friday’s post as well, write a conclusion to my thoughts on my coming battle with Robert Nozick for Saturday, then post my review of Doctor Who: Time Heist for either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

It’s not so much that Adam Writes Everything is scattershot. Posts are regular, with few unscheduled skips. But there are always variations to the plan that pop up at the last minute. 

One quite pleasant such variation was the first read-through of You Were My Friend, as the cast and crew sat around a desk at the Pearl Company in Hamilton. It was the first time that anything I wrote was performed by professional actors in a professional context. The play’s director Mel told me beforehand how wonderful it felt to hear your words being spoken, and it really is a beautiful feeling. It helps that my dialogue wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was generally pretty good.

I designed You Were My Friend as a social realist play, a simple story about people under pressure from the current economy. Hearing Samantha and Hannah, our actors, read through the script in real time also gave me a good sense of how the narrative unfolds over time. Samantha’s character comes from a working class background and a hostile home environment, but begins with an optimistic, hopeful attitude about her fellow humans and her new life in the rough neighbourhoods of Toronto. But as the grind of the everlasting recession goes on, that hope gets pushed under her anger and frustration at continuing exploitation by customers, bosses, and co-workers.

Hannah’s character is already jaded from working in mediocre office jobs for a few years, and funnels that bitterness into rage at the idiocy of the human race. She hates people to distract her from hating herself. Samantha is the centre of gravity around which Hannah flies fuelled by rage until she crashes. Substance use (but not really abuse, as that would be too cheesy in my context) is how they deal with their frustrations.

Another pleasant aspect of the play’s production is that I now have a promotional team working for me. Well, I shouldn’t be quite so hierarchical about it. I’m retraining right now in the Corporate Communications program at Sheridan College, and our working teams each have to promote a not-for-profit event this Fall as a credit for one of our courses. 

Our professor for this course was cool with our promoting You Were My Friend, which plays over this November. So we have a publicity team working at the training program for the best public relations practitioners in Canada. And they’re cool with my paying them in complementary tickets. 

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