Rolling Pin

It’s kind of like you have a rolling pin and some dodgy pastry and you try your hardest to roll it out nice and flat before the Rudolph cookie cutter comes out from the draw.

I’m turning into a mummy.

I’m trying to sketch out an idea for the 24 Degrees. There are a few bits:

• Character – a mother to be and a mother that is. Perhaps I should not write about pregnancy but seeing as I’ll be composing this play during my last bouts of freedom and my first pregnancy, it dominates my mindscape.
• Phrases – “I’m pregnant, my life’s a mess, I’m gonna have to move back in with my mum” this notion but the mum spoken about is someone who isn’t mumsey.
• The most convincing arguments in the mouths of the most loathsome characters – I must do this to not make it so 2d, although reality bears different. And I must do the opposite with my “nice” characters.
• The father character – should I include a father of the unborn and a father of the mum2be? Perhaps they can be more similar.
• Singapore – I really want to include the Singaporean notion of snobbishness and how this isn’t apparent. It’s something that you can only experience if you know Singaporeans. I need to capture their racism, sense of hierarchy and conservatism. I need to capture the attitude of how a place can exist where all the TV channels are government sanctioned and where it’s illegal to own a satellite dish, a place where homosexuality is still punishable by the death penalty, where Jehovah’s Witness-ism is illegal and their refusal to do national service also warrants the death penalty. In turn I need to balance this with home, the UK and how we whinge and moan but how really… we have it fucking lucky. I need to show how the UK and the sentiment of the people that live here is what saves us from crazy-rule like what Singapore has, and I need to question how the standard of living, in those strict confines, is far better then the standard of living here.
• Kakalack – a scene where a cockroach crawls into the mouth of a sleeping man, and then out again. He awakens and crushes it. He awakes in the morning and sees it crushed. It is not a dream.