Originally published on Disability Arts Online, 28th December 2013

I’m eight. I’m dreaming. I’m floating – I think I’m on top of the world. I change position, as if there is infinite space and nothingness around me, then I feel my head hitting a partition of some sort. It takes me by surprise, so much so that I stick out an arm to push it out of the way. I want there to still be nothingness.
Before I know it, I’m falling; I’m not dreaming that I am falling. The cool night air whooshing past my face tells me that I’ve woken up, but it’s too dark for me to see anything. I panic because I haven’t my hearing aids in and I can’t hear anything.
Again before I’ve composed myself, my nose hits something abrasive, like a Brillo pad, then the rest of my body follows. I taste blood in my mouth. I realise that I’ve hit the floor of a holiday caravan from the top bunk bed in the dark – but only because my mother switches on the light.

Silence. There are four faces staring at me slack-jawed. I worry that the extract from my childhood I’ve just described may be the worst thing I’ve ever written.
‘Wow,’ Deafinitely Theatre’s Andrew Muir finally says, and with that my paranoia subsides. I’m participating in the company’s first HUB scriptwriting workshop – part of a three-year initiative to nurture the skills of Deaf actors, writers and directors – and the description of a childhood memory is just one of the exercises we’ve been participating in. It’s going brilliantly, and I’m learning a lot about my fellow participants. We have four writers on board this year, and my understanding is that Deafinitely plans to bring in more for 2014.
For some time now I have been wanting to create a play. I already have an idea for one – but it’s probably too grand a vision to achieve on a shoestring at this tentative stage.
But when Andrew talks about writing ‘truth’ in the workshop, I know exactly what he means. In order to write a play that an audience can relate to, you need life experience. You can’t write in a vacuum. There has to be authenticity. Imagination is all very well – and believe you me, I have lots – but if you haven’t lived, what wisdom and knowledge can you draw inspiration from?
The key is to be aware of what you are experiencing, and its potential ramifications for not just you, but other people in your life. It could be something quite boring – like waking up to a sloping, plain white ceiling at home, like I did on the morning of the workshop – that you could spin interesting connotations off at a tangent.
Why is my ceiling white? Why does it slope? From this I can tell you that I live on a hill, on the fringe of the local woods overlooking a view of provincial rooftops and that my house has subsistence, but it’s never been as bad as my landlord has made out, even though they tried to use it as an excuse to put me off bidding for it (I am a social tenant) but I persevered, and that prior to my moving in 10 months later my landlord offered me a choice of colour scheme and I asked for all the walls to be painted white instead of the obligatory magnolia and that is why the ceiling I’m looking at within seconds of waking up is the colour it is.
There you have it: a background that will help shape your story and its accompanying characters. This is the kind of ‘truth’ that I think Andrew wants us to write.
But this workshop is just the beginning. Andrew isn’t keen for the four of us to create a play – at least, not yet. While there were certainly some brilliant set-pieces over the years, the trouble with Deafinitely’s 4Play scheme was how it made out to be about THE PLAY, with directors and actors and sets and props and lighting and costumes and so on when it should have focused instead on nurturing writers’ skills and confidence over time.
So, instead of a play, we are to write a character monologue as a work-in-progress. The HUB actors will have a separate workshop programme of their own to commit to (a couple of which I have already participated in by way of introduction to theatrical practice, and my, how enlightening those were too).
In lieu of what the writers are being asked to do, the turnaround will be short: some drafting of our monologues in January, followed by a collaboration with a Deaf actor where necessary, rehearsals, and then a performance in front of an invited audience made up of theatre professionals, family and friends in late February. Then when more writers join the HUB, we work on something bigger; the following year, it gets even bigger, and so forth.
As this is a work-in-progress, collaborations with actors in the development of our character monologues are not strictly necessary. Some of us are going to perform our own pieces as part of our professional development. I certainly am.
As I said earlier, I already have an idea for a drama, but it’s just too grand a vision to realise on a shoestring. What I can do – and this is what Andrew himself advises – is pick one of the characters that I want to people my play, and write a monologue for him or her (I haven’t decided which). Naturally it would be premature for me to tell you what it’s about – even though the theme of drowning will be relevant – but I can say, with my characteristic mix of excitement, confidence and resolution I suppose, that there will be ‘truth’.