Collecting life stories

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Bowerbird by Alana Valentine
Paperback Published 2018 by Currency Press

 Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright who is well known for her verbatim theatre scripts. Valentine takes the actual words of real people and creates a theatrical production. Sounds easy right? It is far from that. 
The beauty of Valentine's book is that she does not lecture on structure, inciting incidents, turning points. For Valentine '... craft is simply the ability to have what you imagine on the page correlate with what works as drama on the stage.' Valentine takes you on a journey of success, failure and more importantly learning how to craft a narrative from the words of other people respectfully. The importance of not betraying the trust that individuals have shown you in telling their stories. 
The other journey is that of Valentine emergence as a playwright and her continual efforts to continue to bring her work to the stage. She does not stray from discussing self-doubt. jealousy and the struggles to keep having your voice heard. 
This is a wonderful read for anyone who is involved in theatre.

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