This introduction was performed as an opening speech during the Women’s Education Program Graduation Ceremony.

I have been asked to say a few words regarding the Writing for Drama course that 6 of us have been lucky and privileged enough to take part in over the last three terms.

At the beginning of the year we enrolled in a Writing for Information course, not knowing what to expect, least of all me being up here telling you of what you are about to see. At the end of term 1 and after having lots of fun, yet still learning, Liz Campbell asked us if we would be interested in doing something in term 2. There was a positive reaction and in term 2 we were enrolled in a Writing for Drama course.

Liz decided that we would learn how to write monologues. She gave us all a sheet of paper with 48 questions and asked us all to create a character using questions such as what colour eyes the person had, where they lived, what they had for breakfast, down to the time that they got up in the morning. Most people created a fictional character and we had to refer to them in the first person "my name is …, I live at such and such a place." After we had written these character traits, we then had to go and create a story talking to someone or to themselves. There was not to be any dialogue between the characters. We video taped the result and thought that was the end of our journey into monologue writing, WRONG!! - Liz sought a grant to continue on with what we were doing.

Luckily for us, and I hope for more women in the future, we were able to carry on and refine the process even more. Many of us ladies had not written anything more than a note to the teacher when our children were sick or the weekly shopping list over the last few decades, so this was a great experience - to realize that we were able to achieve what we have today.

When we started in term 3 we again had to fill in our character questionnaire. Funnily enough we all picked people that we knew and family members to write about. We then had to write another story about the person but this time in third person: "her name is, she lives in etc." We had to get to know the character personally through our writing so we wrote a day in the life of that person, so that we knew what time she got up, what she had for breakfast down to what time she went to bed. After that we watched videos called "Talking Heads". They helped us to realize the difference between monologues and writing stories where there is a two-way conversation.

How did we manage this you might wonder? Well, we have someone talking on the phone and not letting the other person answer, or we are talking to a pet, a photograph or just to ourselves which, as we all know, is not uncommon.

When we had written our monologues we would all sit down and read them to the rest of the group. This was a very important part of the process as we would all then have an input into what each other had written. Helping each other out was a help not only to the other person but to ourselves. In other words, we fed off each other. Just when we thought that we had finished our writing Liz turns around and tells us that we have to change the names of the real people we have written about - to be able to disassociate ourselves from loved ones or people that we knew, so that we did not feel that we were betraying them in any way.

Over the last three weeks we have been working with Marg, a professional director, and she has once again made us cut things out or shorten them. This was also a good learning outcome. We got to look into the relationship between the writer and the director and how they do not always see the script as the writer does. This could be because of time limits or they feel that some things would work better another way. Under Marg’s direction I cut my 5 pages down to 3 yet it still seems to work the way that I wrote it. Lucky for Marg, Liz was not there when she was doing this to our writing! Then we had the added privilege to have a professional actor "Anna" look at our work and, along with Marg, read through our scripts and change them even more, as everyone interprets the characters in different ways.

In the last week we all went down to the television studio where each of us read our scripts and then Anna read them as well. This was great experience and we loved hearing someone else read what we had written.

I know that a lot of other women in Women’s Ed have been following our progress and have been very eager to get into the same class that we have enjoyed. This has never been done before in Women’s Education so we hope that Liz is successful. All 6 of the ladies that have participated have gained so much, even if it is just the knowledge that we are capable of doing it - along with pride in what we have achieved. We call ourselves "pioneers" and we hope that it is just the start of good things to come – but, as they say, all good things come to an end and for us that is so, but hopefully not the end, but the beginning for others.

We hope you enjoy what you are going to read and we would all like to say thank you to Liz. We shall miss our Thursday mornings with her.

So enjoy.

Thank-you.