Summer Writing Project - Day One

This blog might have reached you from Italy. My original idea was to re-create a journey of 1972, writing a play for the Hampstead Theatre, and writing a blog as the main means of communicating with you. I imagined I would be working away at my work, and you would be working away at yours, and somehow the thoughts would flow between us. Well, at the eleventh hour Central decided this would not be a good idea, and would not be a good investment for the School.

So after thinking it through, I'm thinking I will try to undertake the project, so far as possible, without actually going to Italy. This is going to involve liberal doses of Dante - on the tube. And working in the National Gallery - as close as possible to works by the same artists I would have been looking at, if not the actual works themselves.

One of the ideas behind this project is the proposition that writing a play is just a kind of prolonged improvisation - just like any other improvisation - and just like any other improvisation has a great deal with creating the frame. One of the frames in this case will be the National Gallery. Whenever I can I intend to spend the morning there writing - looking at paintings similar to those I would have been close to in Italy.

What's the connection between the pictures and the writing? Well, that's a question I might try to unravel. If time allows.