Welcome to the World of Spent Ambition

Hello, thanks for stopping by. My name is Steve Timms, and I'm one of the co-founders (with Ben Power) of a new, Manchester based theatre company, Spent Ambition. I am also the writer of Temp/Casual. Temp/Casual was first staged at the 24:7 Festival in July 2009. The play had been around - in different guises - for several years. Entering it into the festival was a last throw of the creative dice. If nothing happened this time, I mused, then I'll just file this one away in a box under the bed. Surprisingly, it was chosen, the production was a sell-out, and got excellent reviews. More interestingly, the themes of the piece seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people - particularly those trapped in badly paid, tedious employment. We are now staging an expanded version of the play at the Contact Theatre, beginning on May 18th 2011 for five performances (including a matinee). For those who don't know, or are not from Manchester, I should explain a little about the 24:7 Festival itself. Now in its 8th year, 24:7 is a grass-roots theatre festival, with the focus on new writing. The festival was founded by local actors David Slack and Amanda Hennessy and in its early days, the  aim was to stage 24 new plays over the course of a single week. Recently, this has been reduced to a more manageable figure of 10. Much of the work shown goes on to be developed and produced elsewhere. If it wasn't for the festival, I probably wouldn't be sat here typing this blog. In life, I do have a tendency to go off at tangents, so I might as well continue the tradition here. Recently, I created an album and uploaded some old university photos onto Facebook. I was seized by a mania to share these memories with anyone who might be vaguely interested, and spent hours scanning my pre-digital snaps. Over the next few days, a wave of nostalgia swept through Facebook; a small one but a wave nontheless. Suddenly, I was in contact with people I hadn't spoken to in 15 years - albeit in the manner of abbreviated comments posted on one anothers walls. Fifteen years! Is it really that long? Suddenly it seemed very recent. I remember the last night of my degree, a farewell Communication Arts party at a club called Beyond Beach Babylon. It was a wild crazy night, great fun, but incredibly sad. The last photograph in the Facebook album features myself and a friend smiling for the camera; an hour after this was taken, I was in a taxi, and then back home to my rented student accomodation. My housemate was so drunk, he had been forced to leave the party early. The details are still vivid, I can even remember the unreadable note he had left for me, written in the fit of an alcoholic stupor; it looked like a spider had fallen in an ink well and danced across the paper. So there was nobody for me to speak with, nobody to ask the question - 'Do you feel as sad as I do?' I remember sitting on the sofa, and crying hysterically.  Grief  bubbled out of me. It was years later before I understood what exactly I had experienced - it was the pain of loss. University had been the best three years of my life, and suddenly it was over. What was I going to do now? Would I  lose touch with my friends? Why could I not go back and start again? Nothing lasts forever, sadly; we are all Temp/Casual ... I had been involved the first two festivals (2004 & 2005). To be honest, in those days, it was a more shambolic affair. I still have flashbacks about the play Lovesick, when the spotlight blew mid-performance, and one of actors had to deliver a monologue in the dark (and the technician blunderingly played the music cues on fast forward, so it sounded like Alvin & the Chipmunks). But in 2011, 24:7 has morphed into a cooler, slicker, better organised affair, and one of the key events of the theatre calendar. One of the rules is that plays must be no longer than sixty minutes. Temp/Casual was originally written as a full length play and had to be radically condensed to fulfill the criteria of the festival; with the new production, we have the luxury of putting back all those missing scenes. The pain of loss ...  what happens after university? After graduation, I spent several years aimlessly drifting. I had hopes and dreams but was no closer to achieving them. I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to write plays, stories, screenplays. I had a thousand ideas buzzing around my head. Where was I? In 1997 I had won a prestigious journalism competition; I thought the phone would ring and doors would open. Wrong.  I was working in an Oldham book shop with creaky floorboards. Some people might think this sounds interesting but at the end of the day, I was stacking shelves and standing behind a till, spitting sarcasm at the customers, and plagued by a sense of failure and frustration - that my life was going absolutely nowhere. This I found frightening. I have a talent for self pity and displayed it regularly during this period. Yes, I was  a moaning sod but the emotions were real. Surely I could not be the only one to feel this way ...? All good art is created from suffering and I'm glad I went through these wilderness years. This is where Temp/Casual was born. The play is about four friends and media studies graduates - Adam, Martin, Susan and Stick - who are hungry for fame and success. Three years after graduation, their collective ambition has begun to wane, and the quartet find themselves adrift in a world of drugs, debt and soul destroying employment. Even worse, the friendships they once shared slowly begin to fracture. I chose the name Spent Ambition for a reason. Once I was  ambitious, a classic over-achiever, driven by a need for  success. Why? Because I thought this would fill the emptiness inside. I thought it would impress people. That it would boost my non-existent self esteem. Bullshit of course. Today I care less. I still care but I'm no longer driven in the same way. What a relief!  Ambition has become a sort of short hand for 'no-talent.' The evidence is everywhere - check out all the wannabes on Big Brother, X-Factor, The Apprentice, The Only Way is Essex. They contribute nothing of value to this world but oh, how they want to own it. The epitome of this peculiar phenomenon is Katie Price. The woman is ambition made flesh (or silicon).  Her empire is forever expanding but her range of products - cheap perfume, illiterature novels, garish kiddy books - are so hideously naff, they wouldn't even be allowed entry into a land-fill site ('Your name's not down, you're not coming in.') But that's not the point. What is the point? The fact that we all know who she is. And all of us means everyone on this planet. Like a shark, Katie's restless, hungry, never satisfied. But look at her eyes - dead inside. Shark's eyes. Ambition? It's not worth the bother. That was a big tangent. Apologies. At the end, Temp/Casual poses the question 'If you had to chose between love and success - which would it be?' Some people might want both. Isn't one enough? Come and see the play and decide for yourself. Thanks for listening. Call again some time.

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10/04/2011

by Steve Timms

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