Private Plays is a project I am illustrating with Do It Theatre - http://privateplays.wordpress.com/

Private Plays are published over at the above website. 6 Private Plays will be published in each series until they are collected as a collection. The first Private Play - The Lonely Beekeeper has been published and my blog post about this is below.

Illustrating A Private Play 

After each Private Play is published I will write a blog post highlighting the challenges and methods undertaken in putting together the Play Scripts.

The first Private Play to be published is The Lonely Beekeeper. This was emailed over to me by Do It Theatre. Firstly I gave it a read through, being a bit of a writer myself I suggested a couple of minor changes, but was impressed by the idea, especially the ranting character Ashley.

For the script I didn’t want to illustrate the obvious things such as the character and the interior of the bedroom. I like to take little elements from the script and sketch up a few ideas. For this I decided to do a brief sketch of the Calpol logo as the character said the doctor smelled like this particular brand of children’s medicine.

The Edinburgh based singer songwriter Rob St. John was also mentioned, so I did a really basic drawing of a CD and the controls of a CD player. Private Plays tend to require very few props, but I like the fact that this play had its own soundtrack and that a CD player was needed.

For The Lonely Beekeeper I decided to do a plan of a typical bedroom as a example of where the play could take place. I didn’t want to draw the bedroom itself as this may be a far too visceral image and I would like the illustrations to only hint at what could happen when the play is performed. I have decided to do a plan for each of the scripts so expect to see more images like this in the future Private Plays.

Overall I think The Lonely Beekeeper is a great introduction to Private Plays and hopefully foreshadows the subsequent plays in the series. In the meantime please download the play and give it a read.

Thanks,

Steven