Shakespeare's Sister

I have decided that the fitting return to blogging for me is definitely an exploration of my Dissertation this year - that is, the somewhat self-imposed task to write a whole play. It sounds like fun, and to an extent it is, but I think recording the experience as I go along, for posterity, and because I have the terrible ability to forget important details of things, is the way forwards. The title of my chosen MA is 'Theatre: Writing,Directing,and Performance' - my sole aim when I started the course was to get more experience in Directing, and so naturally one would be led to assume that when presented with the option choices for Dissertation - which were, er, Writing, Directing, or Performance... - I should have gone with the Directing option. However, it's been a tough old year in the Oliver household, and frankly, the course wasn't quite what I wanted in terms of support and camaraderie, so I opted for something which would allow more freedom and let me work on my own - writing a play. The course gave us some limited experience of play writing, in the first term - we were set plays to read every week, then discussed these in seminars, before being given small writing tasks, culminating writing in a half-hour play. Unfortunately mine didn't go particularly well in the academic sense, due to me laboring under the extreme misapprehension that being funny is a good thing. Not so. Theatre is a serious place don't you know. Not a place for mad old ladies on buses. I passed, with a moderate mark, but that was me told. Undeterred, I swaggered into the main arena, armed with false confidence and the knowledge that 'Funny is not ok' - so my dissertation piece is about as far away from 'funny' as you can possibly imagine. I won't go into what it is about today, as I have now been sat in the study room in the library for the best part of an hour having not even opened the play document yet (Procrastinaton - 1, Kayleigh - 0) but rest assured, I will fill you in, dear reader, on that, and the odd problems I find I am facing as I try and put some semblance of order into 50 to 100 pages of mind boggling confusion. Til then, adieu.