I’ve just arrived home from Live Theatre after day of Sawdust and Stardust development time. This is a solo theatre piece that Laura Lindow and I are creating as a work-in-progress for the festival. In early conversations, Laura and I shared an interest in working together as a theatre maker and a singer/songwriter to create….something! Anything! I remember us talking about how much we both loved language.
So here we are, exploring and discovering things together to make a short work-in-progress. This first week has been exciting, challenging and to me, quite fascinating. I’ve been a gigging musician for half my life, and it’s been almost a decade since I performed in something that wasn’t exclusively music-oriented. I tell a lie - I did play a giant singing panda in a children's show called Extreme Earth last year, which was quite out of my comfort zone, but the 'on your feet' work in Sawdust and Stardust feels even more unfamiliar. I’ve been surprised to find that I have some potent private demons nibbling at my self-belief. These demons have spent the week dancing around the room – mostly scrutinising my ability to do basic things, like move across a stage. Maybe it’s because I usually hide behind my piano, I don’t know, but out of context I seem to have briefly forgotten every useful thing I’ve ever learned (i.e. how to walk) and I’m also forgetting some of the fundamental principles that have underpinned my work as a singer - to know when to ‘get out of my own way’, to go with my gut and that when performing, making a clear choice, even if it’s the wrong one, is better that making no choice at all. I’m relieved that after a week, some of this is slowly coming back. With Laura’s help, and as the piece begins to manifest, I’m learning to take things less seriously, to speak up when I’m scared and to try to be courageous. In fact, I’m learning a lot.
My hope is that we make a piece that has the energy and immediacy of a song itself, whilst really doing justice to the storytelling and the theatre of what we are creating.
I’m guessing that come March 13th, despite the dancing demons, it’ll feel a lot like singing a brand new song for the first time, and I’m really looking forward to us all making new discoveries together.
So here we are, exploring and discovering things together to make a short work-in-progress. This first week has been exciting, challenging and to me, quite fascinating. I’ve been a gigging musician for half my life, and it’s been almost a decade since I performed in something that wasn’t exclusively music-oriented. I tell a lie - I did play a giant singing panda in a children's show called Extreme Earth last year, which was quite out of my comfort zone, but the 'on your feet' work in Sawdust and Stardust feels even more unfamiliar. I’ve been surprised to find that I have some potent private demons nibbling at my self-belief. These demons have spent the week dancing around the room – mostly scrutinising my ability to do basic things, like move across a stage. Maybe it’s because I usually hide behind my piano, I don’t know, but out of context I seem to have briefly forgotten every useful thing I’ve ever learned (i.e. how to walk) and I’m also forgetting some of the fundamental principles that have underpinned my work as a singer - to know when to ‘get out of my own way’, to go with my gut and that when performing, making a clear choice, even if it’s the wrong one, is better that making no choice at all. I’m relieved that after a week, some of this is slowly coming back. With Laura’s help, and as the piece begins to manifest, I’m learning to take things less seriously, to speak up when I’m scared and to try to be courageous. In fact, I’m learning a lot.
My hope is that we make a piece that has the energy and immediacy of a song itself, whilst really doing justice to the storytelling and the theatre of what we are creating.
I’m guessing that come March 13th, despite the dancing demons, it’ll feel a lot like singing a brand new song for the first time, and I’m really looking forward to us all making new discoveries together.
Beccy Owen
Singer-songwriter
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