Tribute Podcasts Philip Shelley

James Bellwether wonders how many people were called before someone picked up the phone to him to tell him that his own Dad was dying.

That is what it is like being the child of a 'great� man. Always ignored, never valued for yourself. While James is angry, he is not bitter. He just has one thing to find out. What happened to the letters he wrote to his father whilst his father was a political prisoner? Did his father keep them or not?

So starts James�s journey through his father�s life via a tour of his office. The questions are: will he find what he is looking for? And regardless of the outcome, what will it mean to James? What are the next steps for the 'not-so-great� man?

There are a few hats that I currently wear but I�m a mum first and foremost and I couldn�t imagine my life without my lovely boy. I still can�t quite believe I�ve got him and the idea of anything happening to him is just too awful� And so, incomplete families and lost children have dominated my recent work. I don�t know whether, by writing about them, I subconciously think I�ll be able to rid myself of all these fears but there it is and so there was always going to be this tangent to my 'Tribute�.

I wanted to layer the script a bit though and to make sure the deceased got a rounded tribute that paid testament to her character. I hit on the device of reading out a statement / email, not meant for a funeral, which allowed me to present a deeper insight into the narrator, as well as into Marcie. I also liked the idea that there had been an argument and, through the recounting of it, we got to learn more about the two characters and their relationship.

Finally, I wanted the reveal to be poignant and to strike a real chord. A few years ago, I read an interview with a woman who had lost her only child. In the piece she said that you�re an orphan if you lose your parents and a widow or widower if you lose a husband or wife. There isn�t a name for those who lose a child. Perhaps because it�s too awful to put into words.

I met a sculptor on Twitter who told me that before unveiling her latest work she had to chop a piece off her statue because it offended a surviving relative of the subject. The ceremony would not have gone ahead if the appendage had stayed on.

The artistic process is not sacred. If people can butt in, they will. Sometimes two hands are better than one. Artists often collaborate. We see it in the case of the master and apprentice. Occasionally the apprentice becomes more celebrated than the master. What happens to that pseudo-parental, curatorial relationship then? And when one dies, what sort of eulogy does the other give? What if the apprentice were the first to go?

...is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of my own father, who died 4 years ago. The trigger for this whole project though was the death of my mother who died in March. The moment when your second parent dies is a big one in anyone�s life, alerting you even more sharply to your own mortality, and it has made me think about the relationship my parents had with each other, about my relationship with both of them - and my relationships with my own 4 children.

This is a monologue about communication, or the lack of it, and about a lack of resolution in relationships.

The catalyst of my Tribute was a bookmark. I wanted my tribute to focus on the emotions that death/bereavement brings up. Death is so unfathomable our brain pulls in many different ways to understand it. The emotion of my piece comes from a few of the comedic memories within it being personal to me. Stories that make me smile when I think of them now, and were a joy to write, and more importantly get right in this Tribute. Alongside this is a twist that changes the whole genre of the piece. This allowed me to explore questions about the finality of death, and if we had a way to overcome it how we would use it.

Finally, and most importantly, this becomes as much about the person giving the tribute, and shows the effect that people can have in the lives of others. What bigger Tribute could there be than shaping someone else's thoughts and life?

I spent a lot of years with a scattergun approach to life, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, but always leaning towards my creative side. I worked for BBC Radio Drama, wrote and directed plays, self published a novel, trained and then practised as an Alexander Technique teacher, and wrote marketing materials for small companies, to name a few. Then the unthinkable happened, I became a full time carer for, and then lost, my lovely husband. Life didn�t seem all that appealing for a while, and I decided I needed to find a focus, to try to rekindle my enthusiasm. So I am now half way through an MA in Writing for Performance and Publication at Leeds University.

Wading through the treacle of grief, I started off trying to write very serious and worthy pieces, only to be told that they were funny. It seemed the more serious I thought I was being, the more people were finding amusing in the things my characters were saying. So I have come to the conclusion that embracing the comedy in life is no bad thing, and hence my contribution to Tribute.

I had the idea during a dispute with my neighbour, who can be very awkward. At the same time, many of my friends were experiencing awful problems with their neighbours. There was the woman who was obsessive about where other people parked their cars, the man who couldn�t bear for anyone else to build anything, reporting everyone around him to the planners, even though he happily went round building all sorts without any sorts of permissions, and the woman who helped herself to other people�s gardens, manicuring them neatly like a municipal park, whether or not the garden�s owner liked it that way. The stress that went along with these disputes as they escalated brought with it awful misery. Knowing where I had been emotionally in the last couple of years, I could well imagine how a neighbour of such awfulness as the Tricia of my piece could impact upon the emotional wellbeing of all around her, especially if the setting was a small row of terraces cut off from the outside world. So this was the starting point for my piece - a woman trying very hard not to show her relief at the passing of her awful neighbour. I hope you enjoy it.