In Bits

a postponement…

Hello all… just to say, disappointingly-frustratingly-annoyingly etc etc, In Bits won’t be kicking off this spring due to matters out of my control (at the moment).  So thanks for your support and keep an eye on this space. 

More soon from… the Writer…

from odd to epilepsy, from Lynn to Julia

I was diagnosed with epilepsy in the late 80’s, which seems such a long time ago now.  And from that time things definitely started to change for me - certainly a realisation that I wasn’t just odd.  I was carrying a disability, an impairment, which was giving me a particular perspective on reality.  A perspective that, once diagnosed as the effects of a condition, rescued me from the sort of highwire existence I was putting myself through - and on to surer ground.  And that ground, as it solidified under my feet, became a road which led towards working in areas that touched on disability, touched on my epilepsy, touched on my experience.

I worked in Disability Arts, I worked in the Disability Sector and then, some five years ago, I found myself working in a Brain Rehabilitation Unit.  I was only in the Unit for a short time, six months or so, working in an admin capacity, but I met so many people in that time whose lives had been blown apart by brain injury - it had an immediate effect on me.  It reflected back aspects of myself, my own fear and bewilderments, large and distorted.  I saw pain, anger, frustration, lives (of patients and families) torn apart (to use a cliche).  And it sent me back into fictional characters I’d created over the previous years - to see what parts of them came out of Danny with epilepsy, and that Danny’s pain and anger and frustration…

I’d written a one-act play called ‘The Anniversary Waltz’ which played in the Stephen Joseph Theatre back in 2004 I think.  It told the story of Danny and Lynn whose marriage was becoming rocky after Lynn had suffered a road traffic accident.  They came through it all and, after more than a few surprises, Lynn is pregnant and it’s happy ever after - The End.  But the character of Lynn stayed with me - she was so wrapped up with herself and her anger that even the happiness in front of her wasn’t helping.  And I wondered what path Lynn’s life might have taken on another day, if the car that had run her down had done a more severe-thorough job on her body…  And the main character of In Bits, Julia, slowly crystallised in my imagination - a young woman with a life flung violently off one path and onto another…

1: where to begin? by the writer

Where to begin? At the beginning (which belongs in some musical number I half remember - probably Sound of Music…) which was some three coming up to four years ago when my play, ‘To Be Continued’, won North West Playwright’s Silver Anniversary competition commission.  And then time passed, as it’s prone to do, and we arrived, NWP and me and director Ian Hastings, at the title ‘In Bits’.  So, a play was born, then hibernated soon after, but is stretching itself and looking forward to a fruitful autumn.

What is ‘In Bits’ about? Always the toughy this question.  I always go pale and stuttery when asked.  Cos plays are about so many things - not least the mental and creative state of the writer at the time.  It’s about…

Well, first - it’s about a voice.  An insistent and angry voice of Julia, who has been run down by some prick in a BMW and trying to recover something of the memory of the day when her life changed.  Her memory’s edging back. But it’s a struggle.  Her voice had been in my head, the angry voice of so many of the Brain Injured people I’d met and worked with over the years (more on ‘over the years’ some other time perhaps?). Angry - flung on to a different path, with a different set of wiring.  And yet, filter through the anger and there’s the release of a truth hidden inside like a genie in the flask.  So Julia rails at the world.  And I, her faithful amanuensis, take down the words…

So there’s one start for ‘In Bits’.  Another is…

I worked for a short time in a Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit and got more than a little angry myself - seeing these damaged bodies and souls being nursed back to some sort of health by people who are… well - not really valued for the work they do.  Paid a pittance and trained with just enough to get by - at least that’s my strong impression - these people live pressed right up to pain and distress each day and their work, as is the work of other caring professions, is so undervalued and lacking in respect it angers me.  And that, I suppose is part of ‘In Bits’. 

But a bigger part, and the part which took hold of Julia’s voice and began to build a play, was the day when, working in my Admin Assistant job I heard the story of a would-be carer who was in the process of being denied the post because… He had epilepsy.  Which angered me.  Because I have epilepsy…

You see! It’s all coming together isn’t it?

And looking back at what I’ve just written there’s a lot of ‘anger’.  But ‘In Bits’ is much more than this I hope…