Touching Bodies

It was thanks to Pitch Breath Theatre, a community theatre company, that I had a chance to perform and also to direct my first play. Jo, the artistic director, asked one day: do you want to direct the next show? I said: yes, and by the way i’ve written a play. Lesson: always have something in your back pocket.

Moving people around a stage and making it visually engaging felt foreign to me, but Jo was a great teacher. The was before I was making fringe theatre and I didn’t fully appreciate at the the time what a gift it was to get to play around in black box theatre with a full lighting rig and technician. Ah, community arts funding.

I remember an early reversal thinking ‘why are the actors saying the words I wrote? Do’t they know I just made them up?’ They were wonderful, and we got to do a mini tour of the show. What a great first theatre writing and directing experience!