But that’s also been a reminder of the fact that trying
to be a writer means much more than just ‘the work’. And perhaps theatre, more
than any other literary form, is about process rather than product. Not only
because a play script is on some levels a blueprint for performance; that it
doesn’t become ‘theatre’ until rehearsals with actors and a director bring it
to life. But also because it’s an intense and emotional social experience. Rather
than being a means to an end, writing sometimes just feels like a way to live.
It’s exhausting though. The play (‘Through the Night’)
went well. It was, as always, a learning experience. There’s nothing more
exposing that putting your words into the mouths of actors – they won’t let you
get away with a single inconsistency. And then you have to accept that the
audience reaction is completely out of your hands. It’s nerve-racking, and a bit
of me is glad to be back to some kind of normality today. But I’ve never been
able to resist the addictive qualities of the theatre, and in no time I’ll be itching
to get involved in the next project. Ultimately, I know that it’s only when I’m
standing in a rehearsal room that I’m in my right space...
But there has been some other activity in the last few
weeks, not least the end of my first MA playwriting course. That has been an
incredibly enriching experience, and together we’ve interrogated some
fascinating questions about the internal dramaturgy of plays, and how that can
reflect or resist content. Our discussions about ‘London Road’ and ‘Jerusalem’
have been particularly interesting. The former explores the nature of
community, marginalising, almost to the point of eradication, the ‘outsider’
figures – the prostitutes whose lives have been threatened, or taken, by the
murderer Steve Wright. And ‘Jersualem’s two productions (in the West End and in
the Occupy London encampments) have raised compelling questions about the
radical (or otherwise) impulses in the storytelling. In
the last class of the semester, I also revisited a paper I wrote at the
beginning of the year about presentations of ‘the apocalypse’ in modern drama.
There, I argued that it is only the plays that break form with the aid of
lyricism, metaphor and poetry that can hope to provide a truthful glimpse of
such a catastrophic rupture.
I’ll also give a quick mention to another play which deals
with a different sort of breakdown. ‘Haunted Child’ at The Royal Court is about a
husband who announces one day that he’s found a new spiritual path, in the form
of a bizarre, quasi-scientific cult. It’s a strange play, which seems to have
left a lot of reviewers puzzled. Personally, I thought it was quite beautiful and
moving. The way it presents a kind of mania as endlessly self-fulfilling was frightening,
and the play addresses the nature of fundamentalist philosophies without losing
the sense of a deeply personal tragedy for the family…
