I have just this very day finished a full draft of musical score for Anthology, an epic series of shows produced by the indefatigable Slung Low in association with the Liverpool Everyman. Wooh!
From the Slung Low site:
7 routes. 7 stories. Told in different places on different paths in Liverpool. Take your chance, take your seat and discover which story chooses you.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning quantity over quality. But sometimes needs must as the devil drives, and quite frankly you didn’t realise at the time what you signed up for… that the deadline would be quite so tight.
Ah, who am I kidding – I knew it’d be a tight schedule. That’s half the fun, isn’t it? 😉
So in order to get the musical score written for five of these shows (two didn’t require music in the end, instead being subtly sound designed by the phenomenally hard working and immensely skilled Matt Angove) in just under five weeks, something had to give. Priorities were drawn up and sacrifices made. Sort of.
– Accept it. Don’t fight it. It’s going to get done. Have faith in yourself. If you don’t, who will?
– Prioritise. Cut out all the chaff. Remove extraneous work and social obligations – anything that can be postponed, do it. What’s the most urgent music to be written? On this project, I had several songs to write, one for a full choir, so these were written first so that the performers could get to learning them as quickly as possible!
– Schedule. Break all the work up into smaller bitesize chunks. Take a reasonable amount of time to plan your time so that you can…
– Concentrate on today only. Worrying about what you have to do tomorrow, the day after, next week is a waste of your energy.
– Focus. Turn off email, twitter, let the phone go to voicemail. Go offline. Work hard and jealously guard your time against anything less worth your while. This is important. No-one is going to write this music but you, and no-one else will get blamed when deadlines are missed. Work hard, whilst remembering to…
– Communicate. Keep everyone in the loop who needs to be. On this project that meant the director, the sound designer, the movement director, the producer, the stage manager, the company manager, the press office and my sound assistant at different times and in different ways. Whilst it’s important to get the job done, it’s also important to get the right job done, especially on something as fluid as new theatre. Scripts get re-written, budgets get squeezed, new technologies have their unforeseen quirks. Plans change, and you’ve got to make sure everyone’s on the same page.
– Recharge. That amount of music cannot be written and still remain top quality when you’re running on fumes. Factor in at least a day every week where you step away from the mac/piano/manuscript paper and do something else. Anything else. Get your head out of the game. Your subconscious will continue to work on the problem and you’ll find a miraculous pool of ideas are ready for you to dip into when you’re back at work the next day. Trust me on this, it really does work. I work anywhere up to 5+ times faster that morning after a day off. It’s truly bizarre if you’re not used to it. 🙂
To recap…
Accept – Prioritise – Schedule – Concentrate – Focus – Communicate – Recharge
A recipe for undeniable creative success.
Anthology is a series of seven promenade and installation shows, based at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool from 28th September until 1st November 2010. For more information and to book tickets, click to visit the official site.
I’d love to hear what you thought of the show when you see it.
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