My first love is the theatre.  Ever since I could speak I said I would be an actress one day.  My whole life focused towards this one goal: countless drama classes, singing lessons, parts in community plays, school plays, music performances.  I've been involved in theatre in almost every possible sense: acting, singing, stage management, directing, painting scenery, making props and costumes, editing scripts and even moving lights and winding up cables afterwards.  Theatre is all I ever dreamt of.

So why was it that half way through my drama degree I begin to realise I'm not happy.  Something's not right.  I'm doing my dream degree, but it's making me miserable.  It's hard to realise that everything you ever thought you were, everything you've ever wanted isn't quite what you want anymore.  It takes some strength, believe me, to let your entire past go like that.

I still love theatre.  But I don't want to be squinting into the bright lights anymore, what I want now is to sit in the back of a darkened auditorium and listen to actors speaking my words, my thoughts, my beliefs.

Poetry is a big part of my theatre.  To me, they are inextricably linked.  There is poetry in the speech of theatre, in the stage directions.  Often, my characters actually speak in verse.

I missed out on an opportunity recently.  A playwriting competition that would have been just perfect for me.  But I only found out about it two weeks before the closing date.  And one and a half weeks was spent trying out other ideas and thinking up things to write about.  It normally takes me two years to write a full play.  I guess two weeks just isn't enough time for me.  But, seeing as this is the first play I've started in about four years there's still a victory in this for me.  I'll finish it and save it for something else.