Katherine and I arrive in the dark. The next day is so misty it is hard to discover what Bradford is actually like, but we get a warm welcome at The Mill. Which is a lovely theatre and space – quiet and contained – so perfect for developing work in.
Until Lou arrives on Friday Katherine and I are looking at the stories for the second room. In our 2008 week-long development at WAC we generated three stories – one for each piece. However I was only guessing at what they needed to contain, so one was less successful and we put it to one side for that set of performances. Now we come back to it, its the Ruff by Mikaela Lyons, and is also perhaps the most complicated bit of jewellery thematicly – it is made of concertinaed paper maps made into an Elizabethan neck ruff, with threads of pearls hanging off it.
The piece has always been associated with the sea and questing/journeying/discovering. The character has always been a Queen. Katherine and I read over previous work on it, and spend the early afternoon thrashing out a structure. Then I give Katherine a time constraint and leave her to it. The time constraint is designed to stop the urge to edit, which for many of us cramps creative writing before it's even started. Later Katherine and I will come back to it, I'll edit it down, we'll make adjustments and she will re-write it slower with more precision and greater critiquing.