Empathy. Could that be a by-product of the pandemic?
Chapter 10: Difference, disability & pushing the form.
Move fast and break things. That’s the mantra of Mark Zuckerberg. And while I understand where he’s coming from, I favour a different possibility. I’m more of the move fast and make things frame of mind.
When you set out to create ten films, in ten weeks, in a world that is locked down, moving fast and making things is definitely where you’re at. What also becomes apparent when you’re moving at that pace is that soon you’re off the edge of the maps. You’re in a new creative landscape that probably hasn’t been explored before.
Or, more correctly, you can decide that is where you are.
If this is getting a bit esoteric, let me bring it back to the practicalities of working this fast.
You need a new script each week.
You need a new actor each week.
You need a new script each week.
What I rapidly learned was that if you had to keep the material coming, and if there was no point agonising over one particular script because you needed a different one next week, you had to make creative judgements very quickly. You had to trust your instincts.
It was a bit like being The Roadrunner.
When you’ve run off the edge of a cliff, you’ll be alright as long as you don’t look down. So I didn’t look down. And I didn’t look back. I just kept on running. And because I did keep running I ended up in a whole new creative landscape. Or I thought I ended up in a whole new creative landscape – which amounts to the same thing.
So I was writing monologues. But how much could you do in a monologue? How complex could you make it as a piece of work? How many layers of meaning could build in? And could you do things in a short form monologue that might take a couple of hours to explore in a conventional play?
I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. But if you’re creating and filming a new monologue every week, for ten weeks, you do have the chance try and figure some of this stuff out.
And possibly most important of all, because the world was locked down, and no-one was interested in what I was doing, there were no gate keepers. No-one to get approval, or permission, from.
At which point I need to introduce you to Simon Minty.
Simon was the actor who made the next film. Except he isn’t an actor. He’s an excellent writer, a very funny man, a tireless creative force for disability rights and opportunities, and he may well have over-indulged in eye-liner during a youthful New Romantic phase.
All of this is admirable. And I’m willing to give him a pass on the eye-liner malarky because we all do stupid things when we’re young.
I met him at a conference at which he’d spoken. What he’d said, and how he said it, had been a revelation. He was a next-level communicator. He spoke, I listened. And I understood his world, and my world, a bit better as a result.
And maybe I understood myself, and the limitations of my thinking, a bit better too.
So the next film didn’t start with an idea for a script, it started with the person I wanted to perform it. Simon Minty.
I got in touch and we talked on Zoom.
Thankfully, he was up for it. Or at least up for having a look at whatever I wrote for him.
But what to write?
Also, how do you write about disability when you’re not disabled and you don’t want to produce something that is cliched, patronising or just doesn’t get it? Because I knew that if I did any of that Simon wouldn’t touch the script with a barge pole. Or even someone else’s barge pole that he’d borrowed.
My answer was Be Bold.
Don’t write a script about disability, write a script about difference. Also, push the monologue form. Deconstruct it. Re-imagine it. Re-imagine what a ‘character’ could be.
So the script was going to be about difference – what if you took the concept of ‘difference’ and turned that into the character?
But could a concept be a character?
No idea. So let’s find out. And let’s layer in meaning. And lived experience. And let’s set it in the world we found ourselves in now. A world of lockdowns, and queuing to get into supermarkets, and each of us having to figure out what was safe when we went out, and all the other bollocks we found ourselves dealing with.
That’s where the empathy bit came in. Because what struck me was that this new world of being treated with fear and suspicion when we did go out, maybe wasn’t such a new world for some people.
I sent Simon the script. Thankfully he said yes.
One of the few changes he wanted was a reference to New Romantics. So I added that. And here’s the film we made called ‘Diff’ which features a character called Diff, who is the concept of difference personified.
For a piece of work that’s only seven minutes long, I think it packs a lot in. And it gives you a lot to think about. (If you’re in the mood for thinking).
Oh, and Diff is played by Simon Le Minty….
Coming next Friday: Rescued by a puppet.
But first here’s ‘Diff’ for you to enjoy: