multi-award winning playwright & performer Claire Dowie podcast interview by Marysia Trembecka for Love Your Creativity [ 27:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
– ‘I just do it. ….when I say I don’t care, I mean I don’t care whether there is an audience, I don’t care whether there is any money, it seems to just turn up, the money and the audience. I have never done anything I don’t want to do… and why not? I think if you are true to yourself then it will be alright, if you are trying to be like somebody else, or trying to do like somebody else then it’s not going to work.’
Claire Dowie is a multi award winning playwright, actress, director, performer and oftentimes comic. Her plays have been translated into many different languages and her first novel Creating Chaos was published last year.
Her two most famous plays ADULT CHILD DEAD CHILD is on the A level Drama British curriculum and WHY IS JOHN LENNON WEARING A SKIRT on the A level English Literature British curriculum. She is performing them alongside three other of her plays at the Festival of Solo Festival: Best Of The Fest festival from June 30th to July 12th.
Colin Watkeys has directed her for over 30 years and is a well known solo theatre director and he interjects throughout the interview. Claire and I are doing a double header with her play ‘Why is John Lennon wearing a skirt?’ and my ‘The Singing Psychic’ show on July 3rd and the 8th at the White Bear Theatre, Kennington, London both plays directed by Colin.
Thursday 2nd July at 7.30pm and Wednesday 8th July at 7.30pmFor more details on the Face to face: festival of solo theatre and for bookings please go to http://www.solotheatrefestival.co.uk/
Hit the play in popup to play the podcast or go to the Love Your Creativity iTunes podcast
In this podcast interview we cover how Claire feels about making the work, how she feels she is not an actress and how the characters dictate the plays to her. Inevitably given Adult Child Dead Child is about expectations and the John Lennon play about women growing up amid low expectations feminism, being a female comic or performer in still a very full on man’s world and how to create and work on a character.
Highlights include
- How she feels she just sits down and reads the paper and her characters write the plays for her. This is however after she has spent a lot of time with the character, seeing how they react in certain situations
- How Claire feels when plays on feminism and women having a voice are still relevant according to the feedback she has been getting from the ‘younger generation’
- How male reviewers assume automatically that men are funny and male playwrights are good and yet when it comes to women, she has seen far too many men walk to the bar when a female comic comes on stage
- What it feels like to have other people perform your work
- How she always manages to write, make, produce and tour the shows: she feels the characters make her do so.
- How she doesn’t care about other people’s opinions when she is writing, that you must trust your own instincts and not listen to what you think other people want to hear, when you are writing a play
- The inspiration behind her Bob Dylan tarot cards
- Her advice to us all is just to get out and do it
- And a lot of laughter
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- Face to face: festival of solo theatre
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- The Singing Psychic, created and performed by Marysia Trembecka
If you enjoyed this you may also like my podcast interview with Colin Watkeys about developing your own solo theatre show
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- https://loveyourcreativity.com/2014/07/04/how-to-create-a-solo-theatre-show-interview-with-colin-watkeys/
- Both Claire and I are also taking shows to the Camden Fringe 2015,www.SingingPsychic.tv
- to book tickets for my Camden Fringe show of The Singing Psychic, Aug 17th to the 22nd 2015 at 9.15pm each night
- go to http://tristanbatestheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the-singing-psychic–camden-fringe-2015 or
- http://www.camdenfringe.com/detailact.php?acts_id=321
For Claire and Martin Stewart’s show http://www.camdenfringe.com/detailact.php?acts_id=179
Tags: 30 years, a level curriculum drama, a level curriculum englis, adult child dead child, Audience, best of the fest, bob dylan, Camden, camden fringe 2015, Claire, Claire Dowie, Colin Watkeys, creating chaos, director, John Lennon, john lennon wearing skirt, London, Martin Stewart, Marysia Trembecka, Performance, Performing arts, Play, Playwright, reviewers, Solo Theatre, Stevie Wonder, THE SINGING PSYCHIC, theatre, White Bear Theatre, why is john lennon wearin
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