Odysseus makes it home

Done.  Play written.

Sirens at work, by Herbert James Draper (link below)

Picture is by Herbert James Draper - another Victorian artist.

Note that our costuming will be significantly less revealing.

Anyway, I have managed to turn almost everyone into a girl.  Including the crew.  Also included are Circe, a siren, several songs, some offstage Cyclopes, Penelope and an invented maidservant, Poseidon and Aeolus.  We'll have a read this afternoon and see how it works.

Had enormous fun re-writing the words of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree."

Probably will need a re-draft, but I'll test drive it first.

Odysseus in full flow

I've mentioned before I need deadlines.

Play needs to be at least in workable state by tomorrow afternoon.  As often happens, the sheer terror of that thought has opened the floodgates.  Play progressing nicely now and have appropriate numbers of parts for likely cast.

Will need to track down some bloke with big boomy voice to do offstage cyclops, but easier by far than trying to use a child.  Although -- childlike cyclops might also be good?

Details, details.  Get the words down first.  Fiddle with mechanics later.

Back to Odysseus

I love this picture.  I can't tell if Odysseus is exasperated by some idiocy committed by his crew, slightly perturbed by something just out of eyeshot or merely having an "I wonder where I am now?" moment.

Saw some very good auditions indeed from the Bowes children and now need to finish writing the play to accommodate them all properly.  Lots of potential among this cast including a couple of rather useful singers.

Am toying with getting sirens to sing "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from the Little Mermaid.

Starting to enjoy this now after a serious block.  Possibly enforced absence from this script has helped.

Just discovered what Odysseus is looking at:

Circe en grande tenue.

Just about there

It may not seem like it, but I've been fairly incommunicado for the last couple of days. 

That's clearly a relative term as I've posted a lot on this blog, but (and this is very unusual) I have been deliberately offline for chatting.  Partly because I've been running from rehearsal to rehearsal, but also because I've needed to keep my fingers focused on writing some actual script.

Success is imminent.  I nearly have enough to let the Drama Club test drive it today.  Even more important, enough to let them take bits away and look at it prior to auditions next week.

Finding enough readily pronounceable Greek girl's names has been a challenge and I'm still not sure about Omphale.

Odysseus goes home

Been working on the play I need to have semi-sorted by Friday.  It's for the after-school Drama Club I run for Bowes School and will be their end of summer term production.

Thinking small gets me nowhere, so I've gone to the other extreme with this.  The cast will about twelve in number (currently twelve, but we often pick up a couple more once the show starts rehearsing).  Age range 7-11.  Ability varied.  One boy.

It needs to tie in vaguely with the school's Olympic theme.  It needs songs (I have some good singers this year).  It needs movement (I have some good dancers this year).  It needs enough parts for everyone to have some keynote scene where what they say matters.  Run time around 30 minutes.

I think the Odyssey is a natural choice, myself.

Olympics - well, it's ancient Greece.
Songs - check.  Sirens sing.  Sailors sing.
Movement - check.  Ships, pigs, harpies, Scylla and Charybdis, sirens, sheep, winds.
Parts - check.  See above and add Penelope, Odysseus and random gods to that list.

Outline done.  Know how to deal with Cyclops.  Know how to deal with ship-stuff.

Need to find suitable siren songs and sea shanties, plus plaintive song for Penelope.

Then I have to do is write enough of it for them to audition with. 

By Friday.

I'm an idiot.