Opinion - 501 Words

For those of you that know me, you'll know that I have some great influences in my life, and one of these influences is Paul Foster (@PAFoster on twitter). I was casually looking through my twitter feed a while back and up popped a link to his website / blog thing ( www.pafoster.com if you want to check it out), so me being nosy, I thought I'd check it out. In doing so I discovered 501 words, a scheme whereby 'the word of the day' is used to inspire writers to write over 501 words, hence the name. On reading Paul's attempt I thought to myself, I wanna give this a go for myself but I never got round to it... That was at least until last night. Half 10 at night, I'm sat bored on my computer and I thought to myself it's time to be productive. So this is my first attempt at trying to create a piece of drama, and the word of the day was 'Opinion'. ENJOY!! (PS I'll post any I do onto here so I have an online record to for people to look at) :

SALLY: I've always grown up thinking to myself, I want to be me and no one else. I look around at the people in college and all of them dress the same. The 'preppy' look so everyone wears their Topman jeans, Doc Martins Boots and Barbour Jackets, but not me. It may mean something to some people to help them fit in, but to be honest I don't care. I've been through a lot from my old school. Some people could call it an emo stage, I didn't wanna leave the house in the mornings, I didn't wanna talk to anyone, but to me it was just 5 years of bullying.

I took to drugs you know, nothing hardcore, but it kept me going. I'd be high most of the time and fuck knows what shit I was injecting into myself. To be honest I didn't care, if I killed myself so be it, I just didn't see the point to life. Now normally people would 'blame the parents' but they did nothing. Maybe thats why I should be mad at them, but had they tried to stop, I would have killed em. Thats how fucked up I was.

But what happened then isn't the same now. I've tried to start again I guess, but no matter what I try it'll never leave me. Everything I do, I do because of what happened and I wouldn't change it, no matter how much it was killing me inside at the time. Even my hair and clothes represent me. I've had more different hair colours than those charmeleon things and my clothes, well its mine. People may stop and looks but fuck them. I'm sorry I'm not one of your clones. I'm sorry I am me. Sally Wallis. Ha, saying this now, It feels like some epic speeches from one of those films before the characters goes to face certain death but I'm not. I've just seen too many of 'em.

The thing is I don't normally like to tell people what I feel. It's nice keeping it inside coz then you know that no one knows. If no one knows, they can't use it against me and well people can presume all is good. I hide it you see, if you show it, you're weak. Its like anything, you show them that you can't handle it and they will break you.

(HER PHONE RINGS. AS IT DOES SKINDRED'S 'STAND FOR SOMETHING' CAN BE HEARD PLAYING AS A RINGTONE)

Ahh, I'll answer it later, I just love the ringtone. I do it all the time just so I can hear the song. You know like one of those songs that mean something to do almost as if they tell your life story, well this is mine. I saw them playing at Reading last year and they were so good! Rasta AND metal music at the same time. Such an eargasm.

(THE CHORUS PLAYS AND SALLY SINGS ALONG)

If you want it you got to rise and take it,
You go to wake up you know you can't contain this.
Stand for something!
Or you'll fall for anything.

If you want it you got to fight for it,
Wake up you'll never contain it.
Stand for something!
Or you'll fall for anything.

It's on my ipod and I've played it like 300 times. Thats when you know you've got a real tune, when no matter how many times you listen to it, it still means something and you don't get bored of it. You ask anyone of my friends and they'll tell you just how much of an addiction this song is...

(AS SHE SPEAKS, HER PHONE RINGS AGAIN)

Ha, I feel popular. I guess I'd better answer or they won't shut up... But I might just let it play a little longer

(THE SONG PLAYS AGAIN AND FADES OUT)

HALLO spaceboy!

As you can see, blogging in full length isn't really my speciality and I only do it on the odd occasion (Well, once about a year ago...). But I felt what I saw yesterday deserved some credit and when you're play is blogged about by me, then you know that it must have been superb!

I am of course referring to 'Spaceboy' by PAFoster (Or Paul as I know him). The play itself had only ever been performed once before at a rehearsed reading in London, starring Tom Addy, A fellow riverside member, but unfortunately for reasons unknown to me right now, I wasn't able to go. However, last night marked the premiere, which me and a couple of friends were lucky enough to attend, to what I think is a play with SO much potential (I say that as in it should be west end material in my opinion). But what's the play about you ask? Well this is a bit of an overview for you:

Spaceboy
by
PAFoster

Part One – ‘If I Fall’

Single, self-employed Nathan falls for his next-door neighbour, thirty something Anna Walker.

But Anna has a painful past and a troubled teenage son; and when a local lad goes missing, Nathan’s new relationship is tested to the brink.

Part Two – ‘Moondust Will Cover Me’

Fifteen year old Hayden is a little confused and thinks he’s in love; and that would be fine, if his new found friend wasn’t hearing voices.

Inspired by the Major Tom Trio by David Bowie, the play was originally written as a 45 minute radio play, but in doing this task for his writing group, but in doing so he was forced to remove his favourite character Hayden, whose story we get to see in the second act which was added at a later stage. The play is written in the present continuous tense which only makes everything going on more naturalistic and vivid to me. I won't go into details about the play as I don't want to ruin it for any eager beavers who may with to watch the play today. If so here's the link with all the details.

It's not often you get to meet a writer let alone spend the day as his PA, a job which I took very seriously and fulfilled my duties as required. OK, that isn't true but I did have a great day and learnt a lot as well as having a fun day and visiting the sights of Woking, a not so exciting prospect on the face of it, but really was intriguing. And as an added reason to watch the play tonight, Paul is doing a Q+A session after the performance if you have any questions you may want to ask Paul about the play and writing in general

I'm also really excited about his future productions, which if you are interested in, can be discovered via his blog and everything here

Words really can't describe how good the play was and a lot of credit should also be given to the actors and directors of the performance from Peer Productions. Having spoken to Paul, he really felt you did his play a lot of justice and therefore you should be very proud of what you have produced.

And so as a leaving comment, in the words of David Bowie, Paul Foster you've really made the grade.