Conflict, cabaret and the end of the world…

It’s only Wednesday, but already it feels like an incredible amount has happened. This afternoon was the first MA class for Conflict in the City. Great to meet students with such amazingly different life experiences - three who have lived in Saudi Arabia, others from the Lebanon and India and other places besides. And out of our discussions on theatre’s relationship to the city came some excellent suggestions for events I could share here. In particular, the platform discussions at The National Theatre with writers like Mike Bartlett, whose city-themed play 13 opens soon: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/1355/platforms/all-forthcoming-platforms.html

And this is another link to the Review Show’s segment on Stephen Poliakoff’s new play My City (28min 30sec in): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0153n2z Not hugely positive it must be said – so probably best to watch after seeing the play if you’re going.

In my Making Plays class on Monday, I also gave my students an off-the-top-of-my-head list of some major new-writing theatres, which I thought might be worth copying here. It’s very selective – and London-centric. They’re just the places I tend to visit most (do let me know which ones I must add!). But for starters: The Bush, Theatre503, The Finborough, The Gate, The Arcola, The Southwark Playhouse, The Kings Head, Hampstead Theatre, The Battersea Arts Centre, The National Theatre and The Royal Court. There are also many companies-at-large who produce new work across the country. Paines Plough, Shunt, Punch Drunk, HighTide and Kneehigh are just some of the best known. I’m also going to add a company that it turns out one of my new first-year students, Anna Beecher, has run for the last few years: Fat Content (check them out here: http://fatcontent.org/). They have a particular interest in cabaret, which reminded me about The Soho Theatre’s new downstairs cabaret studio. (If you’re interested in the wider scene, by the way, Ben Walters - TimeOut’s cabaret editor - is the go-to guy: http://www.timeout.com/london/cabaret/article/1934/cabaret-a-beginners-guide-to-the-london-scene).

One other topic kept resurfacing this week: the question of the presentation of science in drama. How do we research it, and what are our responsibilities as writers? My feeling (and I’ve had plenty of arguments about this in the past) is that it’s a mistake for writers to try to turn themselves into, or present themselves as, ‘experts’. Recently there have been many important plays dealing with climate change (Greenland, The Heretic, The Contingency Plan are just three). But the dilemma for me is to what extent, or on what level, the writer can contribute to the debate and cast new light on the problem. Is it legitimate for a play to try and ‘teach’ an audience science? Writers spend their careers learning how to persuade with words. But what’s the guarantee that they really understand an issue in all its nuance and complexity, even after months of research? I often feel that the writers who embrace poetry, lyricism and metaphor succeed in a way that those who try to display their research and promote new solutions don’t. Although it’s not explicitly about environmental issues, The Drowned World (by Gary Owen) is a play which deals with politics and society in the aftermath of another kind of apocalyptic event or transformation. I think it’s a beautiful treatment of such a shattering possibility, which finds a muscular dramatic language to express its ideas…

On a completely different note, I’ve just got back from The Veil at the National Theatre. It’s going to take me a little while to work out what I thought, though…

(And finally, thanks to those who have commented, online or off, about the idea for this blog.)

‘Felt-likes’, revolving doors… and other ideas I've pinched from someone else

This is slightly nerve-wracking. A first blog post. My first blog post. Years behind the curve…

So why have I started?

For about eight years, I’ve taught creative writing at the University of Westminster. And for the last five, I’ve worked with students moving from their first to final years across a whole degree. In that time, I’ve had the privilege of engaging with their work – which has often been brilliant, funny, inspiring and surprising – and also with a huge number of visiting writers, for whom exactly the same can be said. But I’ve never made any record of it. I’ve allowed these interactions to happen in the present tense – which has been exhilarating. But this summer I realised I wanted to have something to look back on...

That isn’t the only reason. I also want to write something ‘live’. Active. Something that people, if they want, can follow and respond to, and which tries to give some shape to the collective experience of a creative writing degree. More personally, I want to think about what it means for me, as a playwright myself, to teach what I do. How it feeds back into my own practice. How it inspires it. Blocks it sometimes. Frees it at others.

These are the sorts of things I hope to include:

- a sense of how the weeks play out. Today is day 1, week 1, of the autumn term, 2011. For some students, it’s the first day of their degree. For others, it’s the beginning of their final year. I hope for both these groups – and the one stuck in between - some of what ends up posted here may actually be quite useful

- the chance to share some of my experiences. Plays and books I love (and don’t love). The work I’m engaged in myself. Challenges, problems and breakthroughs

- a record of the conversations I have with the writers (old-hands and brand-news) that pass through the same doors as me everyday.


With the first of these points in mind, here, literally, is what this week means for me: it’s the week I start teaching two groups of second years for my playwriting course ‘Making Plays’; it’s the week I’ll be teaching two ‘Writing the City’ classes - a course looking at London as a place of literary inspiration and production; it’s the week I teach my first MA playwriting class, ‘Conflict and the City’; it’s the week I (re)meet the six third-years I’ll be tutoring for final year playwriting projects. And then there’s all the other theatre/writing-related stuff that fits in around it all, which I’ll try and cover as I go along…

In the spirit of sharing experiences, I’ll kick off by just mentioning two plays I saw this weekend: The God of Soho at The Globe and The Wild Bride at the Lyric. Both exuberant, funny, full of panache. The first had some unfair reviews, I think. There was something delightful and anarchic about it, even if the script has the sort of structure dramaturgs get very exercised by. Something iffy too, about the structure of the The Wild Bride - but otherwise the macabre mix of bluegrass and torture worked just fine for me... Unfortunately, The Wild Bride finished on Saturday - but I'd really recommend going to the next Kneehigh show, whatever it is (here's their website: http://www.kneehigh.co.uk/ ). There’s one more chance for The God of Soho (this Friday), and the director Raz Shaw is worth watching out for...

I'll sign off with a couple of ideas that have stayed with me from the last week - when the corridors filled with students as if a damn had suddenly burst nearby. On Wednesday, I met forty of them with my colleague Nick Johnstone and we talked about the differences between literal and artistic truth. Nick also introduced the concept of ‘felt-likes’: a phrase his daughter uses to describe what the rest of us would probably just call fibs. Only, for her, ‘felt-likes’ aren’t untrue at all. They’re just a much more interesting way of expressing the world as she understands it. (If you want more context to this discussion, check out this article about James Frey’s controversial ‘memoir’A Million Little Pieces: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/sep/15/usa.world)

Finally, Nick had another nice metaphor that I wanted to remember/poach. He described writing over a lifetime as like spinning around in a revolving door. With the hope that, if you’re lucky, you might be flung out the other side a very slightly better person.

Ok, enough for now. Off to the first class of the new year...