Birdsong

Tomorrow I am going to watch the last preview of BIRDSONG with Steve. We are bringing the Literary Executor of the Dodie Smith Estate, and his wife, to see the show as well. I am really looking forward to seeing Birdsong, which will be a fascinating example of how you adapt a book, with hundreds of characters, into a play. The choices you have to make when adapting something are vast. Although you have the basic structure of the story before you, what you choose to take from it, and what you create to embellish it, can make or break an adaptation. Collaborating with Steve on those choices, in the early days of adapting I Capture the Castle, was so helpful for me. You can get too precious about certain scenes in the story, which might not help to move the action forward, and collaborating on this before you even start the dialogue really makes an enormous difference.