Pages to Stages...
Novel Ideas
Read novels → play with ideas → inspired Impro Theatre
pics by Dean Ben Ayre at Improv Fest Ireland 2023
the Book Club
The book club bit is as book clubs are. We select a novel for the month. We read it in our own time. We gather. We discuss the book, but then—and this is what makes this a book club with a difference—we take inspiring ideas from our novel, and we bring them into play...
PLAY
Taking influence from writing style, form and content, we play around with our novel's ideas—big and small. We establish it's storytelling structures and narrative devices, learning them as theatrical formats and games we can add to our rolodex.
Playing with the novel's characters in different scenarios, we explore the world, new possibilities, and alternative endings for these works. We then devise inspired characters and scenarios, delve into similar themes, and figure out how we can develop our narrated theatre improvisations to the same effect as these much-beloved texts.
impro theatre
In 2023, we presented one such narrated theatre improvisation at Improv Fest Ireland. It was called Ghost Writers, and we're incredibly keen to fully realise it as the end goal for this "pages to stages" process.
Our story begins at a typewriter, on an abandoned writing desk. Its pages are blank, and the surrounding space is clear. The conditions are ripe for Ghost Writers to materialise—taking possession of the keys to bring your Novel Ideas to life!
Otherworldly voices narrate for ephemeral figures in motion, transcending this space and time to conjure vast stories into play, in vivid scenes. Reaching their supernatural end, they'll vanish, swift as they appeared—leaving not a trace behind except but the story.
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