Soaked Bike Ride, Another Draft, & The Collaborative Habit

This weekend I went for a big long bike ride in which I followed the canal north...and just kept on riding. 

It was great! I went through three little music festivals (Féte de la Musique is coming up!) and then stopped and wrote my friend Rosie a letter...before a giant black rain cloud caught up to me and absolutely SOAKED me on the way home!

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I rewrote the opening song to Steph: The Musical. Andre and Katy came over and we rehearsed it a bit, but I hadn't finished it at that point (left it too late - didn't start working on it till a few hours before they arrived) and so we could only do so much. I really like the beginning now. But I'm having trouble giving a sense of a meaningful journey in NZ and showing her really changing - as opposed to just talking about it - in the length of one song. My current solution is for her to speak directly to the audience:

Hi! My name’s Steph, and this is a story from my life. When I was twenty years old, I went to New Zealand, and I had the most incredible time! I made awesome friends, I bungie jumped, I fell in love with a Maori boy called Tama, and I nearly got molested by a super dodgy farmer I was working for. But I got away! So don’t worry. Anyway! During my trip to New Zealand something special happened. You see – all my life I’d felt like there was something missing inside me. But I could never pinpoint what it was…

I kind of like it. But it also feels like I'm cheating. We'll see how it works in practice I guess.

I'm starting to stress about it now, because there is only one week left of school, and Amanda arrives here this Tuesday, and I still have a lot of work to do as a director (and possibly as a writer). I would really love for this song to be a part of our showing on Friday, if we have one, but I also know that it doesn't matter how much I want it ("Your will is good but it's boring...") - it just works or it doesn't. And I'm not sure that I will be able to make it work with the time I have next week. So in a way I need to just go with the flow, try and shake of this hopeful 'winning mentality' I have and just continue to work.

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I also finished Twyla Tharp's The Collaborative Habit.

Another blunt, bossy, interesting and practical book from Twyla. 

I really like the way she writes! The ideas in this book (how to collaborate) are particularly relevant to me. I often try and do everything myself (e.g. Steph: The Musical!), and I'm slowly realising that I need to work with others. That I can't do everything alone. And actually, what I can do with others is better than what I can do just by myself. So this is going to be one of my goals from now on. To collaborate more often. To reach out and work with other people. Share my passion and ideas and see what comes of it.