Took a comic book scripting class on Monday night past .Or perhaps I should say I gave a comic scripting class in The Crescent Arts Centre. In a lovely airy classroom with wide french windows along one side and ballerina mirrors along the other. The event was the brain child of Sean from Cinemagic who invited me to take the first night. To get the ball rolling on a month long project with a view to producing an on-line comic which is all the work of a new wave of young writers and artists from the province. The hope is that each participant will contribute a piece of their own work, the theme uniting them being SEE ME, NOW. We are making our own little time-capsule, saving this moment, and we are going to bury that time-capsule on the internet. I have done workshops before and each one is a very different experience. Sean handed the class over to me and I did my best to inspire and inform. To try coaxing the student into breaking the tyranny of the blank page and produce a stand alone piece of work. In the beginnings it is always very basic. Pens, pencils, erazers and sharpeners all rallying to combat the glaring emptiness of a page resisting being filled. Hopefully we have made a good start. Everyone in the class rose to the occasion and after a short break to draw breath and collate our thinking we got down to the nuts and bolts of telling stories. The breadth of their stories was impressive. Everything from the very personal,to the political,to the fantastical. I was most pleased with their efforts and do hope each one completes the projects they have begun. It will be an interesting compilation come the upload.
You know I remember back in the day when I used to go to the Crescent Arts Centre when it was a nightclub. An old run down church venue where I used to dance til the early hour. Swinging a sweaty head full of dreads. Busting my scarecrow moves. I got jumped and beat up one night by some blokes who thought I was a complete freak. The person I was with ran away in fear and left me to get a punching and a kicking. Later that same night I challenged him about this and he started crying and said IT IS NO GOOD DEPENDING ON ME.I AM SORRY. I HAVE NO COURAGE. He was so pathetically honest I remember bursting out laughing. Such was the generosity of our young spirits we both laughed long and stupidly. Despite my bruises and tattered nerves. Or maybe because of them, who knows.
Who would have believed that many years later I would be taking a class in a refurbished version of that sticky floored venue. On a subject that has brought me so much joy..
Certainly not me in my Haysi Fantasyzee Days.
JOHN WAYNE IS INDEED BIG LEGGY.
