Just When You're Thinking Things Over. (11/3/14)

So here's a quandary for you:

I want to write scripts. I'm working on trying to break into both TV and Theatre. I'm doing my homework with joining writers' groups and studying the published works of other playwrights. I decided that, given my current availability, I should see if I could apply to the newly reopened (legendary) Everyman Theatre for any possibility of voluntary work; a way to gain experience while I'm learning the trade.

So I had a look around their website, registered for their mailing list, added a note at the foot of the registration details that I submitted to enquire re the above and continued surfing the site for anything of interest/use.

I alighted on a link to a reading group that The Everyman - and its sister, The Playhouse - run wherein a group of up to thirty can stage read throughs of the plays currently being staged, discuss the work, attend talks by actors, directors, academics etc.

There's only one drawback in all this.

It's an over 50s only group.

'No drawback' you say, 'you are, by your own admission, now over 50.'

Yes. But.

Joining an over 50s group is surely an absolutely blatant admission that I'm old? Shouldn't I be joining up with/working alongside the young turks of the industry? Involving myself with those starting out on their own great new adventure? Associating with the young at heart?

If I actually make the effort to join this group am I admitting that I am advancing in my years? Am I implying that I have time on my hands and am looking for new hobbies to fill this early retirement that I have blundered in to?

Or am I likely to find that every over 50 in the universe feels exactly the same as me and is still internally convinced that they're still 22?

[An aside at this point - two really as the first is that Radcliffe & Maconie have just started playing Marquee Moon and the day will never come that those first notes fail to make me inordinately happy - an ex-colleague asked me on our closing do, whilst talking about being 50, "But do you still think of yourself as being 18?". "No" I replied, "I think of myself as being 22, I didn't even think of myself as being 18 when I was 18."]

And to answer the question in the paragraph before last?

Undoubtedly the latter.

Join. It's not even a question.

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