Playwriting, Editing, Techs... and Knitting

Sunday was the first day of tech-ing for ‘Brightest and Best’. It was also - I realised with mixed feelings - almost 23 years since my first similar experience, for the Barnes Theatre Company’s production of The Mermaid some time in the last century. The BTC was run by Anne Carroll - one of the most inspiring theatre-people I’ve ever met. It was just a youth drama group, but those early experiences are still the ones I measure everything against. Techs were magical at the church hall on Kitson Road, and I vividly remember coming through the doors the weekend before the show to find Coeks and Darrol suspended up ladders, fixing lights and painting flats. That’s where I fell in love with theatre.

The first day in the ‘space’ is also the moment I revert to theatre geek. I find it incredibly exciting to look around me and see everyone locked into some kind of activity: Helen engrossed behind her sound desk; Eliot attempting to design an improvised window effect with a hi-tech lighting board and square of black cardboard; Ali – seconds earlier hanging by her fingertips from the rafters of the rehearsal room – now dressing the set; Will and Hetty trying costumes for the first time; Anna and Nadia… knitting.

But what struck me most in Sunday’s epic eleven-hour call was that it felt like just another form of writing, or at least an evolution of that process - the high speed making and unmaking of decisions (blocking, sound and lighting levels, props…) just another act of (physical) editing.

Something that has also been incredibly important for Natalie is the idea of spaces, or gaps. On one level, that’s been about filling in the world of the play. Just as a playwright develops the back-story that belongs outside the play, she and the cast have done amazing work to discover what the audience never sees. What Daisy Gibson looks like, for example? Or what happened when Terry was chased round the biology lab with a scalpel?

But even more significant has been the discovery of what happens between scenes. ‘Scene change rehearsals’ have been a major part of the process, and not just for practical reasons of slickness, etc., but because they form an integral part of the drama. So much of the storytelling exists in these liminal moments of change and transition. It’s in seeing these that I get to witness the expression of ideas that have been explored in detail during rehearsals. It’s made me more aware than ever that a play isn’t theatre until it’s in performance, and that this transformation is much more profound that simply a movement from page to stage. In fundamental respects, the direction has just been a continuation of the process I began with pen and paper.

And the process isn’t over yet. We just about got to the end yesterday, but now’s the day of the dress rehearsal.

Then, tomorrow, we’ll be in front of an audience for the first time.

Gulp.

(This is a cross posting with Natalie's website and the official BB blog - with lots of information about the show and the company: http://www.natalieibuwashere.co.uk/Natalie_Ibu_Was_Here/BB_Blog.html)

James Bond, post-its, and behaving very badly…

Almost three weeks ago, I wrote that I intended to track the process of producing 'Brightest and Best' on this blog. So the reason I’ve been completely silent is slightly ironic – the process of producing 'Brightest and Best'.

I suppose there’s been some other stuff going on, with the start of the Westminster term and seemingly endless marking. But the challenges of mounting a fringe production are pretty overwhelming all on their own.

My last post was just before auditions – which ended up spanning a week. We saw fantastic people, but after a while you feel you’re going snow blind. Still, we managed it and have now finished week #1 with an amazing team. And not just of actors. In fact, almost the most exciting moment for me was the first production meeting where I sat in awe listening to the designers and stage managers talk logistics. It’s such a privilege having all these people working to make the play a success. And hearing them chat about the technical kit they need to do it makes me feel like I’m in a James Bond film.

Now I’m taking more of a back seat. All playwrights make negotiations with directors over their involvement in rehearsals. It’s certainly true that vital re-writes come out of the experience of seeing actors test your scenes. But I think you have to put your trust in the expertise of the people you work with. Not everyone will agree, but I’m not sure a writer necessarily has the clearest vision of their own work. (Natalie is certainly able to describe 'Brightest and Best' much better than me.) Of course, it may be possible for a director or actors to misinterpret a play, but I’d rather take that risk, knowing that there’s a much greater chance their take will release new energy and ideas.

When I have been in the rehearsal room (barn/shed?), one thing I’ve noticed is that the wall is becoming increasingly plastered with bits of paper: the cast’s research into the play. It reminds me of the moment a colleague arrived at Westminster to share my office. The first things he noticed were post-it notes everywhere – my first attempts to plot out the structure of the play. It seems like the achingly painful process of writing can be summed up by the movement of small bits of paper stuck to one wall, to slightly bigger bits of paper stuck to another.

Another thing that happened on the bus home last night was that I bumped into my old French teacher. We had a lovely chat, although I guiltily remembered that I was one of his most annoying pupils. I was only eleven at the time, but I think I remember him sending a letter home to my parents about my terrible behaviour. That trauma aside, I'm hoping the meeting was a good omen..

So now it’s back to work on another crucial aspect of putting on a play: getting an audience. With that in mind, here’s a link to an article in today’s Guardian about how the fringe really is the place to be (and thanks to @peter_raynard who tweeted this earlier). Oh, and there's a link to tickets too!:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/jan/30/london-fringe-theatre-good

http://www.wegottickets.com/f/3727

New Year / New Words

The Westminster term hasn’t quite started yet, although I’ve worked out that I’ve read roughly two, decently-sized novels’ worth of student writing this Christmas! Some great stuff though – makes me anxious to do some of my own…

But there’s not much time for that at the moment, as I’m right in the middle of auditions for my new play ‘Brightest and Best’ (details on the link opposite…) In fact this term I have a bit less teaching, so for the next few weeks I’m going to be posting more on the practical side of things. ‘Brightest and Best’ opens on 15^th February, and I think it’s going to be an exhausting (but exhilarating) task to get the show on its feet by then. The director is Natalie Ibu, who I’ve worked with on a few different projects and is one of the most inspiring people I know in theatre.

The audition process has been fascinating so far, particularly for the way that it starts to reveal the play in new ways. Hearing actors interpret and re-interpret scenes opens up so many possibilities, and I’m going to be re-writing / re-working for much of next week as a result of things I’ve learnt already. In particular two phrases, or questions, have really stood out for me – Natalie uses them a lot: What is the ‘offer’ the character is making? And what is the ‘cost’ to them of what they are saying/doing? Really, this is just another way of addressing dramatic agendas and stakes, but ‘offer’ and ‘cost’ are much more dynamic and evocative descriptions of those processes. I was reminded of Declan Donellan’s book 'The Actor and The Target' in which he talks about the weakness of the traditional question ‘what does a character want?’ and the energy that is released instead if you ask ‘what does one character need from the other?’ So much of the creative process seems to depend on the choice of words we use to describe what we’re up to.

The auditions have also been fun because I get to read in all the other parts.  It’s hard, being a frustrated actor…

Right, time to rush off to audition day #3. But for anyone who’s interesting in tracking the process of putting on this play a bit more closely, I’ve decided to take a jump into the twittersphere. So you can follow me, and other members of the creative team here…

@matt_morrison77

@NMHIBUIsHere

@zannawharfe

Do sign up and keep in touch!

The play's the thing...

The purpose of this blog was to record all the theatre-related things that I find myself involved in. So the reason I haven’t posted for almost a fortnight is slightly ironic: actually doing a play.

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…

Opera and muddle...

On Monday night, I had the more unusual experience of going to see a production of Verdi's opera La Traviata - and for all that some people dismiss opera for being overblown or melodramatic, what struck me was the simplicity and subtlety of the storytelling. A friend once told me that they loved drama because it was just about human beings getting themselves into a muddle. I was reminded of that when I realised that (in this interpretation at least) the opera lacked anyone obviously villainous. Instead, characters just make wrong choices (although right, at the time, from their own points of view). There’s a particularly moving scene between the heroine and her would-be father in law, in which he tries to dissuade her from marrying his son (her past as a courtesan is wrecking the family honour). There’s no malice in the interaction, just determined positions. But the fallout is as great as in any tragedy.

The opera is in four acts, and each one has an entirely different energy, which was beautifully reflected in the aesthetics of the design. I left the theatre with a strong sense of the ‘colour’ of each phrase of the storytelling, both figuratively and literally. It reminded me that ‘structure’ in writing is much more than just ‘narrative structure’. Indeed, perhaps the most important thing about a story is that we see it from all angles, as if it were a three dimensional object. So, we witness all the central characters interacting with each other, revealing different aspects of themselves in the fresh permutations. And we need to see those same characters in different ‘universes’ too, to deepen our sense of them by observing their choices in these contexts. This kind of structural ‘patterning’ allows a story to be pulled along by the slightest of ‘plots’, giving us space to concentrate on the richer elements of characterisation. Many of Harold Pinter’s plays seem to operate in this way. In The Caretaker, for example, there are three very simple acts. In the first, Aston brings a manipulative outsider (Davies) into the house, where he is also exposed to Aston’s vicious brother Mick. In Act 2, Davies is established as the 'caretaker' and enjoys a fragile acceptance. In the third act, Davies overplays his hand and is ejected. These three sections sit at dramatic right angles to each other. I wonder if their elegance would be undermined by the kind of Robert McKee style ‘plotting’ that seems to dominate contemporary approaches to dramatic writing?

On a completely separate note, I’m off to see Foxfinder at The Finborough tonight. It’s part of a festival of new writing that a play of mine is also appearing in. So apologies - the link below is really just a shameless plug…
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/2011/production-papatango.php

Blogs on Blogs

A friend of mine’s just a done a bit of research to discover some of the blogs/websites playwrights find most interesting or helpful.

So, in an example of the blogosphere eating itself, I thought it might be useful to quickly re-post here…

-Lyn Gardner’s Guardian blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog
-Chris Wilkinson's Noises Off column/twitter feed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/series/noisesoff
-Aleks Sierz' blog: http://sierz.blogspot.com/
-BBC Writersroom: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/
-Spread the Word (for Londoners): http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/index.php
-Dan Rebellato’s website: www.danrebellato.co.uk
-Playwriting UK page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Playwriting-Network-UK/116625928420542
- the many theatre websites – especially new writing companies (Theatre503, The Bush, The Arcola, Soho, The Royal Court, etc…)

From the West End to revolution...

In my MA playwriting class on Wednesday, we discussed Jez Butterworth’s play ‘Jerusalem’ and the extent to which it could, or couldn’t, be considered a radical text. As part of that conversation, we looked at the significance of the place of performance: although originally a Royal Court production, it’s now a sell-out West End hit. Although I’m a fan of the play, I asked why a story with such a subversive or marginalised central character should be so easily embraced by the mainstream (in a way that the residents of Dale Farm, for example, were not). Is there actually something conventional about the play - formally at least - that encourages us to engage with it from a position of safety? Is the character of Johnny Bryon romanticised; is there an element of voyeurism or ‘tourism’ at work? Such a debate has been made fascinatingly more complex, however, by the news that one of the Occupy the Stock Exchange protesters is now staging ad hoc readings at the foot of St. Paul’s. Here’s a link, via Jez Butterworth’s publishers, to ‘Bill’s’ incredible blog documenting these guerrilla performances:

http://nickhernbooksblog.com/2011/11/11/jerusalematstpauls/

Still on the West End, I also wanted to mention ‘One Man, Two Govnors’, which has recently returned to The Adephi. I wasn’t looking forward to this much, but it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable productions I’ve seen for ages – and perhaps the best farce I’ve ever seen. What impressed me in particular was the level of skill on display: the physicality, the comic timing, the improvisation, the music. Human beings love displays of virtuosity, and plays that embrace that can be a joy to watch. This thought also reminded of an old writing trick for building audience/reader empathy: if you want to make an audience like one of your characters, write the scene in which they do something they’re genuinely good at…