By Jenny Bradley.
Jenny Bradley, writer and director of ‘Lockdown Unleashed’, is a writer with a successful career in business. She is a published poet and short story writer; her radio plays have been broadcast on the BBC. Her work has been published in anthologies, websites and in the Bristol Post where she was columnist for a year. She won an award for flash fiction. Her literary agent obtained an offer from a publisher for her first novel. She reads at events and ran a successful poetry open-mic for Clevedon Literary Festival and was a Judge for Poetry on The Lake. She finds living on the North Somerset Coast inspirational and is currently writing a book themed on the coast. Her recent book ‘Sibling Poets’, a book of poetry and short pieces of fiction written with her brother Jonathan Bradley, was published this year. It is available at bookshops and on Amazon.
In ‘Lockdown Unleashed’ Jenny has brought together three monologues written in 2020 in the first six months of the covid19 lockdown and the gradual easing of restrictions. They feature Mrs Eldon, an ordinary woman living alone, and are interspersed with poems written during that period. Sparked by some of her own experiences in lockdown, Jenny turned them into comedy.
The first monologue was written as a radio play and then adapted as a performance for a retirement party over zoom. Jenny worked with actor Vicki Vowles to bring the first monologue to life. In a collaborative process of iterative recordings also rehearsed and performed over zoom, they cobbled a production together which required a great deal of ingenuity and creativity. Luckily, it involved much laughter. They discovered that sounds distort and what they thought was a knock on the door sounded like someone trying to make a sound like a knock on the door rather than an actual knock on the door. They learned to pile pillows and duvets and talk into an open wardrobe to get better sound recordings. Finally they got something that worked. The play received fabulous feedback and was broadcast on radio Bristol.
After the success of the first monologue, Jenny decided to write a second featuring the same strong character, Mrs Eldon, to continue her journey through lockdown. This too was broadcast on Radio Bristol. The third monologue came later, finished only recently, but based on several earlier drafts amalgamated into one. We watch Mrs Eldon become bolder and think about dating again. Each monologue stands alone as a story but together the three also make a story, the nearest equivalent being a flash fiction book.
The whole creative process saved Jenny’s sanity at a very difficult time. It was an extremely productive time with Jenny also creating Sibling Poets. Some poems inevitably featured lockdown experiences, from real sadness and a stifling feeling of being caged to moments of hope in witnessing a beautiful sunset. The poetry reflects and documents other aspects of lockdown too, in particular the profound effect nature had on so many of us both in a nurturing way and a vivid awareness of its power and beauty. That we need to look after it not only for its own sake but because we too are nature and depend on it for our survival.
Lockdown Unleashed takes us back into the lockdown time and space with humour and pathos. With no budget or production team, the monologues have been adapted for stage, so the audience witnesses the rap on wood for a knock on the door and a mini handbell masquerading as the doorbell. The show becomes something of a behind the scenes peep and tell production. Jenny says ‘Vicki is the perfect person to colloborate with, she is a great performer and it is wonderful to see the monologues come alive. I’m reading some of my poetry between the monologues which adds a different dimension, capturing moments which many will relate to, both soulful and humorous.’
Twitter: @JBradleyWriter
Blog: JennyBradleyWriter
Email: jenny@jennybradley.co.uk