Friday 22 April 2011

'I'M NOT REALLY YOUR DAD'

Our guest speaker this month at Pontardawe Script Cafe was Louise Osborn, writer and director of stage,  TV and film drama. In work-shopping Rose Wattley's play,'Identity', she focused on how to use emotion dramatically without falling into melodrama. Rose's play is autobiographical, and focuses on the moment when at the age of 13 she is told by the man she has always regarded as her father, that she is adopted.
      It is hard to imagine the extent of the shock and confusion that Rose felt that day in the allotment. It was March 1945 and the war was coming to an end. She was told that the person she had thought of as an aunt  throughout her childhood was in fact her mother.  It was never spoken about again but her relationship with her adoptive mother deteriorated. At the age of 16 she went to live with her birth mother but it didn't work out.  
       There is a current ITV series, 'Long Lost Families', introduced by Davina MacCall, that explores the experience and helps bring together families split by adoption. Last night the programme explored the story of twins, who were born out of wedlock and adopted separately as babies. One found out through the taunts of a childhood friend that her parents weren't her birth parents. Her aunt who lived a few doors down would bring her knitting each evening and watch TV with her and 'parents'. It turned out that the aunt was her mother and her parents were in fact her grandparents. She was told that she had a sister and in her sixties she tried to trace her. The other twin had no idea that she had a sister, let alone a twin, until she was approached by the researchers on the programme. They had been living for over half a century within three miles of each other.
     In my work as a counsellor I have heard many moving stories about people's experience of adoption. One client was sent away to a convent in Ireland to have her baby and had to give up a son to a Catholic priest who arranged the adoption. She went on to get married and had two daughters, but she always hoped that one day she would be reunited with her son. When her daughters were in their twenties she set about looking for him.  Since having a child himself he had also been searching for his mother. There was a gradual process of communication through the Catholic Adoption Society; letters, emails, telephone calls and at last after what seemed eternity, the first meeting. She described it like 'falling in love'. They couldn't wait to see each other again but the rest of the family weren't so ecstatic. The joy of their reunion was overshadowed by sadness and disappointment. The daughters were jealous of their half brother and refused to get involved. My client had a vivid tattoo painted on her back of castles and dragons that metaphorically charted her journey to find her son. At each session she would throw off her shirt and show me the new developments.
     One of my clients was adopted and then at the age of twenty had a child herself that she had to give up for adoption. She was able to send her a birthday card and Christmas card every year but not see her until she was 16. That meeting was momentous for my client. But afterwards her child wasn't interested in pursuing a relationship with her. My client was left bereft.
     It is always risky to put your play up for scrutiny at Script Cafe. Even more so when it's also your own real life story. Louise Osborn dealt with the issues in Rose's play with great sensitivity and at the same time gave us all plenty of guidance in how to use emotion authentically and dramatically in writing for the theatre.
    

Monday 18 April 2011

KNOT OF THE HEART

On Saturday afternoon a group of writers from the Arvon course I attended last November gathered in the foyer of the Almeida Theatre to see David Eldridge's play, 'Knot of the Heart.' David was our tutor.      His play examines relationships within a dysfunctional middle class family-a family of addicts. The main character, Lucy, loses her job in the media for being caught taking drugs. Her life sinks as she becomes addicted to heroin. Her mother is an alcoholic. Her sister cuts herself. The play explores the co-dependent relationship between Lucy and her mother, who in her efforts to look after Lucy becomes her pimp. By the end of the play, Lucy's been off heroin for a year and managed to move far away from her mother to South Africa.
      Interesting subject material and well written dialogue. Overall, our group gave the play the thumbs up and felt the trip to London was well worth it. However, I'm not sure if it was the acting or the direction, but there was little build up of tension, most of the action was played at the top of the anguish range, and Lucy's character lacked empathy so I found it quite hard to really stay engaged with her.  At times the behaviour of the mother's character was not always convincing, but she was challenging and has stayed with me. She did also make me wonder if in the efforts to look after my children, the way I sometimes behave may be meeting my own needs and not always be in their long term good.
       David has another new play, 'Stock Da'Wa', directed by Kathy Burke, on at the Hampstead Theatre until mid May.
  
  

Friday 15 April 2011

CIRCLE DANCING ON GRAVESTONES

I wasn't expecting to be dancing on the gravestone of the High Sheriff of Brecon(1774) and his Clerk when I signed up for Circle Dancing at Brecon Cathedral this week.
   I'm a regular circle dancer at a local village hall in Cardiff. We are a group of mainly older women who are retired or semi-retired. Our members come from all walks of life. They include an ex surgeon,  social worker, midwife, drama adviser, lab technician, administrator, and a Russian academic who was also an accomplished musician specialising in medieval music. Sadly, she got dementia and following the dances became increasingly difficult for her. Despite encouragement from the group she felt embarressed and anxious and finally left. Our oldest member was 89 this week and we celebrated with home baked muffins. Phyllis had been a P.E. teacher and until recently took a Keep Fit class for the over 50s. She may be deaf and aching with arthritis but she glides around our circle with the grace of a young woman.
      We dance to folk music from Israel, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Ukraine.  Our teacher has had a series of problems with her health. She often forgets the steps herself so is very forgiving when we do too. She calls it 'variations on a dance from another village'. Last week, during a rowdy Greek song with scarves she stamped hard on her own foot. We fell about laughing. Poor teacher! We waltz, skip, jump, limp, yelp, whoop, and clap ourselves. It's the one time in the week when you are guaranteed a good laugh.
    Circle Dancing in Brecon Cathedral was a very different experience. I went with a friend I'd first met in Indonesia, forty three years ago. She suffers from a nasty chronic cough and was anxious that she wouldn't be able to dance for very long without it getting the better of her. We were there celebrating the end of winter and the joy of this glorious spring and early summer. The leader was a green goddess dressed in shades of jade chiffon and sparkly black shoes. In front of the altar our large circle of women and men gathered to dance to the music of Kopanitsa, a two person band, playing guitar, clarinet and accordion. In the middle of our circle was a church candle swathed in an embroidered cloth. People were invited to place items of personal importance on the cloth. I spied a teddy bear, some crystals, a drawing of Swirling Derbishers, a sprig of ivy and a decorated jar of something that looked like blackcurrant jam.
    At the start the Dean read out some biblical references to the joy of the dance and the evening began. I was standing next to the Dean, a tall willowy man. He squeezed my hand while we listened to instructions from the green goddess. I didn't like it. I mean I'm married. Couldn't he see my ring?  In the interval my friend who'd been holding his other hand asked me if I'd noticed the Dean's nervous finger spasms.
      We danced slowly and reverently over the tombstones of local heroes with names like Lancelot and Prydderch. When a dance came to the end we stood very still, holding on to each other's sweating spasming hands, and following the clarinet's last notes circling high up into the rafts of the Cathedral. The saints in the stained glass windows smiled angelically down on us. There was no laughing, whooping or yelping. Even my friend's cough had been silenced.  This was a sacred experience - a pagan celebration in the house of Christ at Easter time.  Two hundred years ago you'd probably have been hung by the High Sheriff for taking part in such a blasphemy.  I smiled to my pagan self and returned the Dean's squeeze.
    

Monday 11 April 2011

THE CURLY OAK

Yesterday, we visited Wentwood, a beautiful forest near Usk. It is well used by mountain cyclists, and witches are said to practice there, but we went to see the famous curly oak that sits among larch trees deep in the forest. The curly oak is said to be more than 900 years old. We walked around it, stroking its pelt and crusty skin, poking our noses into its stomach, looking up inside its elongated body at cathedral towers and spires. I wanted to sit down inside on a cushion of grated bark, but I resisted. Instead we tried to imagine what the ancient tree must have seen in centuries of conflict.
      This is border territory much fought over through the ages. As we named the wars we could remember between the Welsh and the English, I saw several Welsh bowmen pulling back the strings on their bows with poisoned arrows destined for the armoured English beyond us. I turned and saw Royalists and Cavaliers in pitched metallic battle. Medieval men and women humped and hauled their wares along the track. Everywhere monsters, dragons, elves and devils appeared from stumps of wood left for beetling insects.
     This area is till much fought over. Monmouthshire is the only county in Wales not to support the Welsh Assembly having more powers. It will be interesting to see how the county votes in the forthcoming Welsh General Election.

Friday 8 April 2011

SUMMER IS SPRINGIN' IN

We've had another sunny week here in South Wales. Wednesday was a blip when heavy rain made it feel like winter had returned. Despite the weather, we try to walk most days. Being outside heightens our senses and makes me thank God and Verdana, my spirit of the universe for their gifts.
     The woods are full of succulent wood anemones. There's a whiff of garlic, shiny leaves are almost ready to produce snowy flowers.  Along the hedgerows are banks of wild primroses and planted daffodils. On patches of open grass rugs of dandelions sparkle in the sunshine. Blue and great tits, blackbirds, robins and hedge sparrows sing their hearts out and argue over territory. Rooks, who like to be near humans are nesting in tall trees by the highway. Yesterday, in the distance we heard the hammering of a greater-spotted wood pecker. Flashes of unrecognisable brown and tan fly in and out of budding blackthorn bush. Lambs' tails wag enthusiastically beneath their mothers. Everyone you meet on a country walk is friendly. It's a truly wonderful time of year to celebrate life.
    Ironically, April for me also represents a time of mourning. Over the past decade three friends and an uncle died during this month. Last week a friend's son, aged 40, died of cancer. Our thoughts are with her in her sorrow.