First Ideas to First Performances

"There is nothing as exciting as an idea." So said a theatre director with whom I once worked at the beginning of our rehearsals.

 In a sense he was right. There is nothing quite so thrilling as that first idea - the one that wakes up writers and artists of all kinds at three in the morning and has them running to their notebook, laptop, instrument or canvas because they know they just can't get back to sleep until it's been recorded in some way. The moment of inspiration somehow carries so much promise that it is hard - if not impossible - to ever re-create it fully in the finished work. Sometimes it seems to me as if the whole idea of the creative process is about getting that first moment of the idea back in a more concrete form.

It shouldn't stay the same though. Things change so much along the way and the creative process throws up many more facets than that one original idea ever contained. Yet in that first moment of a new idea there is the spark of life itself... That's what it can feel like anyway.

In rehearsals, that moment happens when suddenly all the elements come together for the first time, the actors are firing on all cylinders, communicating on an instinctive level with each other, and then you get that spark of life. That is very exciting. Much of the rest of rehearsal and into long runs of performances is then about trying to recreate and hold onto that first moment of truth as closely as you can, because in rehearsal, that moment is your inspirational idea.

When you do manage to hold on to that spark of quicksilver, it makes you feel as if you're the greatest actor - or writer, artist or musician - in the world.

All too often though, those moments and ideas are like balloons that pop when you try to grab hold of them too hard. They float away from you like dreams as you wake up. No matter how quickly you try to grab hold of the string, the balloon is already out of reach and disappearing into the clouds.

Right now I'm trying to maintain some of those 'first ideas' long enough to create a new play and workshop based on Treasure Island. As with my previous play about Robinson Crusoe, I want to find a personal hook, an emotional context and theme that interests me, to hang my version of the classic story onto. (Or tie the balloon string to.) In Robinson Crusoe the themes were how we fill our lives, how we discover what is most important to us, and that old favourite: 'Fathers and Sons'. For Treasure Island it's about memories and possessions, and how much those things come together to create who we are. What is truly ours? What has been pirated from other sources? (Just as I piratically steal ideas from classic stories to create my own plays.)

At the moment the process is the thing. I seem to have a lot of balloons of ideas in the air right now, and most of them have very slippery string. But nothing is ever wasted. The good ideas, the right ones, always float  back to you again one way or another - even if they have changed into a different shape while they have been up there in the air.

And that change is quite exciting too.