Friday 13 September 2013

Damn You - That Was My Idea! Except, it wasn't really...

I had this really great idea for a show about five / six years ago.  I can't prove this, there are few decent notes and no witnesses.  I was going to get recordings of a famous production of Hamlet and get a modern cast to exactly copy the performance from the recording and put that on stage.  It was going to be great.
And then I found out The Wooster Group had done it this year.
Bastards.
How dare they? I thought.  That was my idea!
Bastards.
Well, no, that's not fair, it's not their fault.
Bastards.
Ideas are cheap, ideas are easy - it's not that I'd told them and they nicked it.  I'm sure loads of people had the idea.  It's just they did it first.
Bastards.
No, look, they're not bastards.  They're not.  They took an idea and they ran with it.  Good on them.
Bastards.
Okay, now I think it's clear that what's really going on is that I'm beating myself for not doing it first, externalising irritation with myself and projecting it onto The Wooster Group.
Bastards.
Nope, still haven't dealt sufficiently with this yet.
To be fair, my idea would have been staged a bit differently.  I didn't catch the show, so I can't be certain.  I was going to have the "To be or not to be" speech done as a showdown between different actors, just like that bit in Zoolander when David Bowie turns up for no readily apparent reason.
That would have been cool.
Oh well.
Never mind.
Think I've calmed down now.
Or maybe I'm just glad I dodged a bullet as many of the reviews said it was a bit dull.
I think the point I'm attempting to make is that you shouldn't sit on an idea for too long, because anyone can have an idea.  However, not everyone will make that idea come true, and if you've had the idea you should get off your arse and make it real.  This is what next years Project 10/52 is all about.  I'm clearing out some of the ideas, the ideas that are sitting about, not really doing anything.  They're not fully fledged plays, many of them will never be born into the world as such, but they might make it into something special over the ten projects I've got lined up for next year.
And if they get written up, recorded, performed or published then no one is going to get to those ideas first.  They'll be my ideas, made manifest.  So there.  And then perhaps someone will write a blog about how some bloke called Robert Crighton got to their great idea first and call me a bastard.
Except you can't, because I've already had that idea and written a blog about it.
This'll be the point where someone emails me a link to a blog/book/thing that's said this same point already, then I'll look pretty stupid.
So, just in case this happens, I'll get in an early...
Bastards.

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