Posted on November 8th, 2023
As the East of England leg of the Ghost Stories By Candlelight tour draws to a close this weekend and the creative team take a short break before we head to Shakespeare’s Globe – we wanted to catch-up with our Playwrights. The process of seeing your own writing transformed in the rehearsal room and brought to life on stage is always enlightening, often joyful and at many times scary. Let’s see how they got on.
Nicola Werenowska wrote Beach Hut, set on Lowestoft Beach, which tells the story of a mother and daughter’s ghostly trip to the seaside.
“I have loved being a writer on this production. Not only has it been a wonderful and challenging opportunity to explore a new writing genre with superb support from High Tide but it’s been great to work alongside other writers and I love the way the stories and song work together and the way common themes resonate throughout the entire piece. Theatre is always a collaborative process but I never knew what a joy it would be to write on a multi authored piece.” – Nicola Werenowska
Shamser Sinha’s duologue Sacrifice set near Pin Mill explores grief, family dynamics, and ‘witchtok’!
“As a writer who consistently has *too many ideas* writing a shorter segment was always a challenge. It was messy, and in the end as deranged as wanted. As a group, I felt that waves of what one of us were inspired by or voiced in the workshop found their way into the weave of other segments composed by the rest, with lyric and music fabricating the patchwork. It’s one story. My greatest surprise was seeing how the way the actors move and use the lights on stage animated and told that story. I mean I was expecting the music and dialogue to, but not the way the actors moving the lights about, would also move the story on and bring out the actors’ voice, and physical expression.’ – Shamser Sinha
Kelly Jones wrote the final tale Run set on a Friday night in Romford, following a young woman on her walk home.
“I tell people, this show is a collaboration between the words, the lights and the actor. As a writer, I had never worked with lighting in the way that we do in this show. Often lighting happens separately to the text work, but in Ghost Stories, the lighting was as much part of the text as the words. We learnt early in the process that the genre relies on the senses, but it was only during rehearsals that we found out what it could do. It is far scarier to see a light flicker on and off on stage, than being told by the storyteller it does. This is something I will take forward with me into all my writing projects, especially when I am writing my next Ghost Story!” – Kelly Jones
