Guest Post by Sara Alexander

For most of my twenties and thirties I looked on my changeable interests and talents as a disadvantage, revealing, as my dad would remind with glee, a personality incapable of finishing anything. He was, in part, correct. I dohave a pathological resistance to finishing – I even leave cupboard doors open in case I need to go back in them later. This infuriates all of the folks I live with (and there are many, my parents, my husband, our two children) and it is something I am working on. Come to find out, procrastination of this sort is related closer to a perfectionist’s disposition; you don’t start or finish for fear that it won’t be the best thing you can possibly produce.

I finished my debut novel, after its decade percolation in my imagination, once I shelved the fear and did the work at a writing class in NYC instead. Completion was a huge turning point, in more ways than one. I finally allowed myself to receive a new message that I was, indeed, a finisher and also, that my varied interests and skills were a strength rather than a weakness that leeched my focus. 

At the moment I am about to begin a run of the most bold, beautiful and bonkers play I’ve been in to date and am looking forward to the release of my third novel. My ‘weakness’ for flitting from one project to another has fed a deep drive and spurred a gorgeous cross-pollination. The play, Rejoicing at her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herselfhas been developed over the past few years, with intimate conversations and staggered weeks of research and development supported by the Arts Council. The writer/actor Bella Heesom, Olivier award winning director and dramaturg Donnacadh O’Briain and legendary choreographer Liz Rankin and I explored the theme of female sexuality and shame-free sensuality. This work ran concurrent to writing my latest novel and fed my imagination in beautiful ways. 

My third novel’s protagonist is a headstrong Sardinian pianist training in 1970s Rome. In one room (of real life and my imagination) my colleagues and I were exploring the roots of female shame, and in another I was delving into what the sexual and feminist awakening in 1970s Rome looked like. 

Exploring the freedom and subconscious-led play of rehearsal rooms liberates my writing brain too. The discoveries uncovered in the privacy and safety of an experimental rehearsal feeds my creativity and courage to push the boundaries of my novels’ characters. In turn, the long stretches of solitude whilst writing is a great antidote to the intense physical and emotional transformations that are required as an actor. 

It is a tender balance, and one that feeds my deep belief that we can operate at our best when we draw and cross reference all aspects of ourselves and our real experience to share the most authentic version of our imaginations as we can muster. For a woman creating, freedom, the sense of play, the desire to probe aspects of characters and myself that are not always comfortable, beautiful or pristine is where the richest material, performance and stories are seeded.

I intend to keep feeding that compost of my imagination and weaving the differing strands of my work life into as colourful a plait as I can create.

Sara Alexander will be performing in Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Woman Applauded Herself at the Ovalhouse Theatre 9^th-25^thMay and her next novel The Last Concerto, is published by HQ in August. Find out more about Sara and her work at saraalexander.net