R.I.P. Dirty Creatures, 2005 – 2009

Remember way back when I started this blog, how I would talk about my great full length play?

The one that was going to shake New Zealand audiences, would play it so close to the edge it would be … er … edgy? My grand opus?

Remember?

Three and a half drafts later, it is time to put my beloved dirty creatures to rest. Yes. To the dark recesses of the hard drive (with a CD copy) it will be committed, never to be seen or heard again.

Over the years I have tried to craft it, I have forgotten what it was that I wanted to say. Even when I was writing it, the premise was not always clear to me. The idea of a artist blowing himself up was intriguing (that was the surprise ending), but I could never get the idea to fully develop into something satisfying.

I don’t know whether this counts as a failure or just part of the journey to something better. I’ve learnt a few lessons from it – for starters, doing a treatment is a really good way to structure a play and if you can’t summarise your play in a sentence, then it’s not going to be clear to the audience either. Well that’s certainly the case for me. At the moment, I don’t feel like I have anything meaningful to say and if anything, I want my work to be meaningful. I don’t want to just be writing for the sake of writing.

There are bits of prose that I’ve been working on (you’ve seen some of it already) and there are a couple of satire pieces I’m working on. But for now, anyway, I think my voice is still to come and that my best writing will arrive in a few years yet.

Just not now.