The Plan

The plan was to write reems of poetry which I would then put aside for a while, and then edit each page down to absolute essentials, or at least what a non-poet like me considers essential. The plan was abandoned when I started working with Wildream Theatre Company on truning my one man show – Examine Your Zip – into a two man show. I’m not precious about these things and both Paul and Blaise are more skilled than me. We put it on in April and had a great response, and when I think of it, I still find it odd that it’s my play.

While we were working on that I did a small role in The Passion Project, a community theatre project in Ballyfermot. I also wrote a screenplay for the Dublin Filmmaker’s Collective One Year Feature Film Challenge, which is halfway through now. My film is no longer part of that. Nobody wanted to make it and,never having directed anything, I don’t feel qualified to direct it myself. I was also too busy with theatre stuff to properly pursue it as a movie. Now I’m back working with Paul and Blaise, and we’re looking at adapting the screenplay into a stageplay. So if all goes well, we start drilling down into it on thursday, then we rip it apart, find what works, discard what doesn’t, and put it on. And the thing is, I’m happier about that than if it had become a movie. Still, it would be nice to do something in movies, if only to raise my profile enought to sell a few books. A goal to be achieved.

 

 

Soul.

Reap

 

This is a quote from my book The Company of Thieves.

Heart of Gold

Heart of Gold

Addressing the Assembly

40 Shades of Green 2

A little from the book I’ve been currently working on for the last couple of years, so it better be good! 40 Shades of Green, it’s the story of a man who is destroyed by his own vanity and the envy of others.

 

The Only Survivor

why I sing

This is the only line to survive from a lyric I wrote once upon a time.

The first play I wrote…

The first play I wrote was called The Trial of The Living Dead, and it was staged in Cardiff in 1991. I’d gone to a drama workshop because I had nothing else to do that day. When the facilitator asked if any of us could write, someone volunteered me, and I was immediately put on the spot to come up with something for the following week. I hadn’t planned on being there the following week, but in the panic of the challenge, I agreed to write a play in a week.

When I got home that night and realized I’d never written anything longer than an essay, I started to panic again, but faced with the choice of crawling under the bed and never going outside again, (I did say I was panicked) or giving it a go, I sat down and started to write.

With no clue as to how you get people on and off stage, I decided a courtroom was the best setting. Knowing nothing about court procedures, I made it a gameshow/courtcase. Then I just had to find something to write about. At that time there were riots in Britain over the Poll-Tax, and the government were coming down hard on everybody.

So there I was writing a play about a gameshow/courtcase where someone is being prosecuted for not paying his Poll-Tax. But I didn’t know why, and the first thing that occurred to me was that he’d been dead for six years. The idea of a reanimated corpse put on trial for not paying a tax that didn’t exist when he was alive felt like it was too good an idea not to use. The script was only 12 pages long, but I’d written my first play!

My new play is longer and it doesn’t have any reanimated corpses. It’s called Examine Your Zip and it’s based on my experiences in the world of Direct Marketing. It’s directed by Paul Winters, the man behind last years A Peculiar Arrangement, and we’re at the International Bar from the 3 – 7 April @ 7:30.

And I would love to see it turned into an Opera.

Martin Greene Speaks

Wildream Theatre

The first of our teaser posters for Examine Your Zip, by Fergus Anthony. Martin explains one of the fundamentals of good advertising practice!

martin-greene-speaks-poster-01

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