Recharged

An elderly (but still childlike) gentleman by the name of Ove (when he feels like it) moved from the Stockholm area to my village a few years ago, and unlike the rest of the villagers, he sees opportunities and solutions, not problems around him. I met him today. My dad and I went to his house, a house that he shares with a female friend of his, also from the Stockholm area, to say hello today. Dad wanted to introduce me to him, because he took one look at the abandoned root cellars outside his house and saw an opportunity, and that is to create a meeting place for people, a kind of café/theatre. He invited us in for coffee and gave me a guided tour of his and his friend's house and told me a 3rd of his life story. He then told me about his theatre projects, one is a children's theatre group which he's already started, but he lacks the experience in acting and theatre to really go deeper with the kids, and I'm to go there on Monday and I guess if all goes well, I'm to lead the group with games and exercises in the future. The amazing thing is that when I worked as a trainee at the village daycare centre in 2004, I organized a modest endeavour of similar nature and those kids that wanted to got to rehearse and perform a small little theatre show - and it's the same three girls who joined me then who have joined in this projects now! What are the odds?

The second project of his is more of a long term one. It's to make a play of a true story of a friend of his that is written down in memoar format in a book that's been published already and put it up. We went to the library so that I could borrow the book and read it, and if I had any ideas, he said, feel free to write them down (because, of course, I happened to mention that I'm a writer too!) and if the guy that he's been talking to about writing the script doesn't get his shit together, I might get to write it! I started reading the book, it's really interesting so far, lots of material! Ove wanted a kind of Romeo & Juliet play, so the story's already been done, and the details are already done as well, I just have to combine the two and create the dialogue! Which might be trickier than it sounds because "Juliet" was a Romani (or "gypsy" as they've been called) and that's a whole other culture and language right there...

We'll see what happens, but at least it gave me a bit of a boost to talk to someone with a bit of a positive attitude again, it's like a breath of fresh air!