I will keep this up...

Yes, I will.

So, rewrites... hmmmm.

The one thing everyone has is a horror rewrite story, they're often:
'apocryphal': 'they made me change him from a one footed, sixteen nippled, blue alien into Samantha Morton.
'disquieting': 'they liked the Viet-Cong angle, but wanted to set it in New Zealand'.
or... 'laughable': 'I wrote "in a moment" and those bastards changed it to "in a minute", well, I pulled the script'.

Now, maybe I'm missing the point, but surely a changed 'you know' to a 'well, you know' isn't going to destroy your character arch.

So far in: I have changed the odd 'lad' to 'son' to 'fella'; I've rewritten dialogue from a Yorkshire dialect to a more standard dialect (for a actor whose first language is not English); and I've rewritten the end of the play several times. In fact, the last ten or so pages have been done away with, tinkered, and totally reworked pretty much every week for the last two months.

Maybe, I've sold out my writerly vision (have I balls). Maybe, I'm not strong-willed enough (double balls). MAYBE, the script wasn't up to much in the first place (triple... well, maybe). OR... maybe, the play is all the better for my listening to others.

I think that's the one. It may get frustrating, it may seem like you're losing control, but these people are directors, actors, and writers themselves, so to stick your fingers in your ears at them is just plain daft. Rewriting for me is a brand-spanking new creative process in itself. You get to talk about this thing you've written, with people who are (or at least should be, if they're in the room) genuinely enthused by what you've created, and you get to make it proper loads better.

Rewriting is the new writing as far as I can tell.

--------------

Oh, we now have a stage manager, Kate Fallon. She is lovely and is writing down blocking (which should be called 'where people have moved or will move to') so I don't have to... superb.

Tomorrow, we get props and a bit of the set.

In a bit and that.