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Weds 2 July 2008

My play UNSTATED for The Red Room opens at Southwark Playhouse tonight! I've done a blog about it for Guardian blogs here, plus a couple of interviews here and here.

If you want to come and see it you'll have to be quick - it's only on in London for 10 days, then doing a few nights in Manchester and Liverpool.

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Fri 27 June 2008

I've done an interview about UNSTATED with the lovely Natasha Tripney of Interval Drinks fame, you can read it here.

Sorry, I know it's a bit crap just to direct you over there, but things are still pretty hectic.

Anyway I've neglected blogging for so long now my site stats tell me no-one's reading any more, so what does it matter. I may as well be wittering at a wall.

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Weds 25 June 2008

Nice little article about UNSTATED in today's Society Guardian here.

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Thurs 19 June 2008

Alright, alright, don't get excited I can't stop. 

This is just to draw your attention to my forthcoming show UNSTATED for The Red Room, which will be opening at Southwark Playhouse next month, before touring to Manchester and Liverpool.  You can read all about it HERE.

Sometime when I get my life back I promise to stop by for a proper chinwag. 

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Sun 23 March 2008

This blog is currently dormant due to workload. But do check back now and then, I hope to revive it at some point later this year.

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Sun 27 Jan

As you might expect, I’ve been mulling over this whole Arts Council business recently.  I thought it might be interesting to put it into some sort of historical context, so I re-read the sections about ACE in John Carey’s lively and provocative 2005 book What Good Are The Arts?  What he has to say seems so relevant to recent events (in particular the publication of the McMaster Report with its re-focussing on ‘excellence’) that it bears reproducing in some detail here:

"In England, public policy has not favoured the view that the making of art should be spread through the community.  When the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, which later became the Arts Council, was set up in 1940, it had to choose between promoting art by the people or art for the people.  Should central government funding of the arts encourage us in using our ‘marvellous, long-evolved, specialised hands’, or should it turn us into passive art worshippers?  The Council chose the latter course.  The mandarin aesthetes among its members, headed by Kenneth Clark, who saw the arts as essentially a professional activity, prevailed. W.E. Williams, the Secretary General of the Arts Council, in his 1956 Report, made it quite clear that the Council envisaged art as enshrined in showpieces of national pride, precisely of the kind Hitler had planned to build.  ‘The Arts Council believes that the first claim upon its attention and assistance is that of maintaining in London and the larger cities effective power-houses of opera, music and drama; for unless these quality institutions can be maintained, the arts are bound to decline into mediocrity.’  The image of ‘power-houses’ is revealing.  Art is to be beamed out to consumers like electricity.  All they have to do is switch it on.  It is not something that arises from them and the cultivation of their abilities.”

Later in the book Carey goes on to examine the transformative power of creative activity upon the individual in a lengthy case study of the work of the art-in-prisons charity The Koestler Foundation.  He concludes:

"There is evidence that active participation in artwork can engender redemptive self-respect in those who feel excluded from society.  This may be the result of gaining admittance to an activity that enjoys social and cultural prestige.  But it seems also to reflect the fact that standards of achievement in art are internal and self-judged, and allow for a sense of personal fulfilment that may be difficult to gain in standard academic subjects.  The difficulty prisoners meet with when they try to pursue their artistic interests after release is a consequence of our inadequate support for art in the community, which stems from a belief in ideals of ‘excellence’, as reflected in Arts Council policy.  The contention that the money available for the arts should be reserved for ‘quality institutions’ such as the Royal Opera House, rather than being spread through the whole community, automatically relegates the public to the role of passive art-worshippers.  It is not a decision that would be countenanced in any other area.  The proposal, for example, that the money available for education should in future be spent only on the supremely gifted would immediately arouse opposition.  The idea that the arts are things that happen in ‘quality institutions’ seems to be essentially competitive.  It puts ‘achievement’ in the arts on a level with national sporting triumphs or scientific breakthroughs.  This triumphalist view of art seems to be related to the notion that high quality artworks are ‘monuments’ to the human spirit … [and] should be left to geniuses, and that ordinary people should not be encouraged to play any part in them."

Now of course, in recent years the Arts Council has become known for its box-ticky ‘inclusion’ agenda – which I’ve argued in other posts and in other people’s comments boxes doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me as it does to many.  But put into the context of ACE’s historical raison d’etre, it could be that this social agenda was an aberration.  What we are seeing now could be a sudden reversion to type in ACE policy.  The emphasis does certainly seem to be shifting away from artistic process and back towards artistic product, which is perhaps why companies such as the inspiring and much-loved community theatre company London Bubble are getting it in the neck (not that their shows aren’t brilliant, just that their community sensibility and aesthetic doesn’t fit the ‘product’ model when it comes to judging value).

My dictionary defines ‘to excel’ and ‘excellent’ as ‘to be superior to or better than; to surpass others’ and notes its Latin roots in ex (‘out of’ or ‘from’) and celsus (‘on high’).  I don’t like the whiff of snobbery in the etymology of that word.  And I certainly don’t like it in the art which I pay for or consume.

Let’s hope that the Arts Council has learned something about art’s role in the community in the past 60 years, and outgrown the unpleasant and elitist post-war culture which engendered it.

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Tues 16 Jan

If any Arts Council employees with a conscience are reading this, can I just draw your attention to the rather marvellous www.wikileaks.org

Have documents the world needs to see? They protect your identity.

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Thurs 10 Jan

Separated at birth?

This made me smile: This photo accompanied an interview in today's Guardian with new Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, with the tag line 'The Lib Dem leader says he's no Cameron clone'.

The difference is most striking when you put them side by side isn't it?

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Wed 09 January 2008

Goodness me. What a firestorm to come back to. I leave the country for three weeks and the Arts Council goes mad and stabs everyone to death. I shall have to be more careful about leaving them unattended.

I've not got much to add to this debate which hasn’t been said elsewhere. I’ve done a bit of letter writing but won’t bore you with the text, you can imagine the sort of thing I said. I thought it might be more useful to publish the details of those in whose power it lies to fix this mess (with thanks to the brilliantly organised Bush Theatre for putting these together into a briefing pack):

In no particular order, they are:

Moira Sinclair
Acting Chief Executive
Arts Council England
2 Pear Tree Court
London
EC1R 0DS

Barbara Matthews
Director, Theatre Strategy
Arts Council England
14 Great Peter Street
London
SW1P 3NQ

Lady Sue Woodford Hollick
Chair of the London Regional Arts Council
c/o Arts Council England
2 Pear Tree Court
London
EC1R 0DS

The following Councillors and London General Assembly members also sit on the London Regional Arts Council and can be emailed as follows, if you’re writing in support of particular London theatre companies:

General Assembly:
Londonwide - Sally Hamwee - sally.hamwee@london.gov.uk
London Borough of Enfield and Haringey - joanne.mccartney@london.gov.uk

Local Authorities:
London Borough of Richmond on Thames - cllr.jcoombs@richmond.gov.uk
London Borough of Harrow - anjana.patel@harrow.gov.uk
London Borough of Hackney - guy.nicholson@hackney.gov.uk

You can of course also lobby your MP to raise your concerns with James Purnell at the brilliant www.writetothem.com

I’ve already had a message back from Sally Hamwee who seemed very open to hearing from both theatre professionals and ordinary Londoners in support of the companies under threat. This is by no means a fait accompli. Together I really think we can fight it.

Was anyone else at the meeting at the Young Vic this morning? What rousing stuff. Josie Rourke in particular I thought was inspirational. Peter Hewitt on the other hand came across as an irritable schoolmaster, berating his assembly. Though I had to admire his balls for being there at all.

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Wed 12 December

I'm abroad on holiday now until 7th January. Sorry not to have been very bloggy of late, I've been flat out on a new play amongst other things, so just too busy. Next year looks even busier if anything so I'm thinking of giving all this up for a while. Sorry, but you just don't pay enough.

Happy Christmas anyway.

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Wed 28 November

Writing plays, no-one can hear you scream.

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Thursday 8th November

It's my birthday today. (31 since you ask, and probably the last year I'll answer the question.) But good news on the play front: How To Disappear has won the Mark Marvin Rent Subsidy Award at this year's Peter Brook Awards. Big thanks to Blanche Marvin and the judging panel for bringing that elusive London run a step closer...

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Saturday 3rd November

Ask And You Shall Receive

An easy post for a busy time - a recommendation of a great resource for self-employed writers. For years I dreamed about some kind of fantasy research service on a cheap rate phone number, on hand 24/7 to help track down those tricky bits of knowledge which story writers of all stripes need to know on occasion, to give their stories the ring of truth. We're talking about things that go above and beyond the scope of Google, which might for whatever reason appear in your play; procedural issues in obscure professions, finer points of international law, the details of certain medical conditions, what a certain experience feels like, the range of opinions out there on a controversial issue ... the list is endless. Try as we might, writers of fiction can't be expected to know everything, and until recently, these gaps in our knowledge meant lengthy delays to the writing process while we rang friends, colleagues, tangential contacts, total strangers, set up interviews, visited specialist libraries or Googled ourselves into oblivion.

No longer. Yahoo Answers is the answer to my prayers, and has saved me many a wasted hour.

Not that it's a substitute for doing proper research, of course, of which I am a great exponent. Nothing can replicate an hour's interview with a specialist in their field. But for those moments when you're sitting in front of a half-written plot line or scene, inspiration strikes and you think: I know! What if she was killed with a radioactive necklace!? BRILLIANT!!!! ... and then the sinking feeling as you realise that, however brilliant the idea, you know next to nothing about radioactive metals, where they're found, how they're transported, their levels of toxicity, their availability on the black market ... days of agonising research stretch out before you. Google results for 'radioactive metals' are overwhelming. The Wikipedia entries appear to be written in chemical symbols by PhD students with numerical tourettes. No-one you know scraped more than a C grade in GCSE Science.... but there, shimmering on the horizon, an oasis of specificity in a desert of bewilderment: Yahoo Answers.

Alright, sometimes it is full of pricks, and 8 out of 10 answers will be daft, rude or irrelevant. There's also an American bias to some of the answers, but this can be minimised by asking a question first thing in the morning UK time when they're all still asleep. But there are plenty of diamonds in the dirt and it's got me out of many a knowledge-vacuum-scrape recently. If nothing else, it's a great way to blow open an idea, anonymously if you want, solicit opinions, get directed to online resources you'd never have found, and sometimes even get talking directly to a specialist mind. All in under an hour, so if you decide not to run with that idea, no great loss.

Here are some of the questions I've been asking recently:

What kind of radioactive material is used in radiotherapy? If it was stolen could it harm anyone?

Could the internet as a whole ever be controlled or censored by private interests?

What is the opposite of terrorism?

Is there any chance my old mobile phones from 1998-9 could become antiques?

If I find ancient treasure buried in the back garden of the house i own, can i keep it?

Why have men evolved to be hairier than women?

Could Heaven and Hell get full?

How many human beings have lived and died since our species first appeared?

In Islam, is everything that happens though to be God's will?

Why did the urge for revenge evolve in human beings?

Of course, these are just the sensible ones. You can be as silly as you like - and yes, I did think about it, and no, I decided not to share those with you. (You're all under the impression that I'm a serious dramatist, after all). Suffice to say that a cold winter evening in can be merrily whiled away under a Yahoo alias. But you know what they say: Ask a silly question...

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Monday 8th October

Very busy writing and teaching again so no time to blog properly I'm afraid, but here's something to keep you occupied - I recently completed one of OffWestEnd.com's 9Q Interviews. You can read it on their website here.

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Friday 28th September

Great review for We Are Shadows on The Stage website here.

Depressingly, not much other press interest. Critics - you're missing a treat (if i do say so myself). You've got a month. Come on, surprise me.

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Wednesday 26th September

My latest play for teenagers We Are Shadows opens at Half Moon tomorrow night. It’s an interesting diversion for me and a very different play from last year’s Locked In – a high energy ‘hip hopera’ set in the world of east London pirate radio. We Are Shadows is a much quieter, more introverted play, and it will be interesting to see how teenage audiences respond over the forthcoming tour. There is a received wisdom that writing for this age group needs to grab attention rather than coax it, so we shall see if this is true.

The play takes its name from an inscription on the Masjid Mosque on Brick Lane, which in its time has been a Huguenot Church, a Methodist chapel and a Jewish synagogue. The inscription on its sundial, Umbra Sumus, Latin for ‘We Are Shadows’ is a fitting tribute to the imprint such changes have left on the psychology and fabric of east London, and the unique inheritance bestowed on each successive generation of young east Londoners.

The play itself is a series of stylised interwoven monologues for nine characters all aged 16 or 17. This form was initially a response to a request from Half Moon’s schools, and its own youth theatre, who were struggling to find monologues for characters of this age to polish up into audition pieces for college and other drama groups. But rather than simply dash off nine unrelated speeches I wanted to use the opportunity that this form afforded to expose some of the invisible links which connect people in areas of high density living. The result is a sort of solo La Ronde (without the sex) where the actions of one character have a profound effect on the life of the following character, whether they are aware of it or not.

The theme of The Shadow running through the play was in place very early on. In thinking about this image as a metaphor I first looked up a dictionary definition, and was surprised (and pleased) to find that there are about 20 entries for ‘shadow’. There is of course the obvious patch of shade caused by a blocked light source, but it can also mean a person’s ‘dark half’ or a spectre or ghost. ‘Shadow people’ and ‘shadow demons’ appear in many of the world’s oldest mythologies. It can also mean shelter or protection - ‘seeking solace in the shadow of the church’. It can be a premonition, ‘a shadow of things to come’. It can mean an exhausted or half-dead individual, ‘a shadow of his former self’. It can mean both a repressive dominating presence in one’s life (‘he overshadows you’) and an admiring positive youngster who follows you around (‘he’s your shadow’). As an image it litters our language.

As a symbol of the psychological struggles we face in our teenage years it seemed appropriate. You only have to open the papers for another story of teenage violence, be it murders, rapes and assaults or suicide and self-harm. This isn’t the totality of being a teenager of course, but it is this visible manifestation of when things go most horribly wrong that gets the media attention. I’m not a psychologist, but it seems to me that some crucial battle is happening here, as young human beings transform from children into adults. The struggle that takes place at this age against one’s own personal darkness, of whatever form, often dictates the outcome of the rest of our lives. Sometimes we overcome our shadows and sometimes we don’t. In the play, I wanted to show examples of both.

I’m very interested in why, as a species, we tell stories. It’s interesting that so many of the stories we tell are aimed at the young. I’ve just finished reading the extraordinary book The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. It’s a truly monumental piece of work that took him 30 years to complete. It not only examines each archetypal story form in turn (Overcoming The Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth) but then moves onto a fascinating analysis of what these forms - evident across all barriers of time, geography and culture – tell us about human psychology. It’s hard to do justice to the breadth of his thinking here, but in short, he concludes that almost every ‘dark force’ in a story is in some way representative of the human ego, and its destructive effects on individuals and whole societies if left unchecked. Booker asserts that the words ‘hero’ and ‘heroine’ contain the same etymological root as the word ‘heir’, and concludes ‘the hero or heroine is he or she who is born to inherit; who must grow up as fit to take on the torch of those who went before. Such is the essence of the task laid on each of us as we come into this world. That is what stories are trying to tell us.’

Facing our dark half, our Shadow or Ego, experiencing its power, and learning how to control it, is how we become fully human. We all have to go through this in one form or another before we can become fully mature and take up our place in an adult society. It is the responsibility of the existing adults in society to help their young people in this difficult process by providing safe spaces where this can take place, alongside empirical guidance and positive role models - as those who have come through it themselves and not only survived, but grown and prospered.

Theatres are one such space, and the stories we tell there are our maps for this journey. They are a humanist bible, available for study by anyone who wants to know the workings of the heart and mind of our species. Often they are cautionary tales, but just as often they are celebrations of the rewards that await those who prevail. They chart every possible outcome of this struggle, from the most triumphant to the most disastrous. We should tell them to our young people with honesty, with pride, and with love.

I hope that We Are Shadows might be one small contribution to this immense cartography of life.

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Tuesday 18th Sept

I've been badgering my MP again. It's remarkably easy with writetothem.com and hardly takes any time. He's a useless sod but I like to keep him on his toes:

Dear Nick Raynsford,

I'm writing to ask you to sign two forthcoming Early Day Motions on my behalf.

The first is EDM 1961 which asks that the proposed changes to the Legal Aid system get properly debated in Parliament. The proposal to reduce funding from an hourly rate which solicitors can claim for this work to a very low fixed fee per case, means that in practice most people will not receive the level of help that they need. I'm sure you're aware that Legal Aid clients are some of the poorest in the country and often the most in need of decent representation.

The second is EDM 1180 which calls on the Government to disclose to the House all representations it has made in relation to the oil law in Iraq. I am concerned that the involvement of private oil firms in drafting these laws will not act in the interests of Iraq's long-suffering citizens.

In previous correspondence you have said to me that you are not in the habit of signing EDMs as you feel 'the process has been devalued by excessive and trivial use'. In that case the EDM which you declined to sign called for the closure of the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), an unjustifiable taxpayer subsidy of private arms firms. As i expect you are aware, it has since been announced that DESO is indeed to close, so it has turned out that you were on the wrong side of that argument. I hope you will agree that the above two EDMs which i would now like you to sign are neither excessive nor trivial, and are also on the right side of the moral argument.

I very much hope that this time you will see fit to add your name to them on my behalf.

Yours sincerely,
Fin Kennedy

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Sunday 16th Sept

I'm pleased to be able to report that HOW TO DISAPPEAR has been nominated for a Peter Brook Mark Marvin Rent Award. If we win, we get £1500 to go towards hiring a theatre, which will bring us one step closer to bringing it to a London theatre near you (West End Whingers take note).

Fingers crossed, and watch this space...

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Tuesday 11th Sept

I'm pretty flat out (again) this month on a new play, so not able to blog as much as I do normally. But here's a titbit to keep you happy - the text of my little speech at the academic conference I went to last week. The panel I spoke on was called Fast and Dirty or In Deep: What is Creative Research? So that's why it focuses on research. For those of you that know me or my work, it probably won't tell you anything new, but for those that don't it might be an interesting summary.

It's not all that academic, it just sort of describes what I do, but I that seems to interest academics so that's why they shoved me up there. In fact it's your lucky day because this is an extended version - on the day I was limited to 10 minutes so there wasn't time to read the extract from Mehndi Night. There were three other speakers too and all sorts of interesting debates afterwards, but obviously I didn't write all those down so can't put them here. But sometimes they transcribe these things and put them online so if you're interested keep an eye on the conference website to see if anything pops up.

Anyway here's the speech. It picks up from Liz Tomlin's introduction of me, which mentions at the end that I'm a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths and Boston University:

"Thanks Liz. I’d forgotten about that last bit, it sounds very grand, like I stand and deliver lectures which I don’t do at all; they’re more workshops as my approach is very practical. But it’s lovely to be asked here today to such an academic occasion. The standard of speakers has been remarkably high and the quality of debate and ideas flying around so impressive that I feel rather humbled. I’m reluctant to over-intellectualise what I do, partly because other people do it better than me (many of whom are here today) and partly because I don’t feel there’s any great secret to playwriting. That said, I suppose part of me is also slightly nervous about analysing things in case I inadvertently kill something off important and can no longer do it.

But the fact remains that I am a very research-led writer. Someone recently described me as ‘method writer’ and before that someone else called me an ‘investigative playwright’. But whatever you choose to call it, every play I’ve written has involved an extensive research period, usually taking months, and usually somewhat obsessive. But this research has taken different forms, and evolved as my own craft has evolved, tempered and shaped by experience. Over the years I’ve crystallised my own ideas about the nature and purpose of ‘creative research’, and thinking back over this process in preparation for today, it occurred to me that it contains a sort of narrative of its own. So I thought it might be relevant to talk a bit about each of my plays in chronological order to show this process in action. The good news is that as I’m still a relatively young writer I’ve only done about four plays, so it’ll be a mercifully brief potted history.

My first play PROTECTION was about a team of social workers. My Mum is a social worker so I had the benefit (if you can call it that) of having grown up with social work as an offstage presence in my life, but I knew very little about what it actually involved, so I set off to find out. At this stage I was very influenced by the process which David Hare outlined in his book Asking Around, about researching his state of the nation trilogy at the National in the early 90s. It seemed necessary to immerse oneself in a world in order to pursue some sort of objective factual truth, and to undertake lots of interviews. That very much appealed to me at the time because in another life I would have been an investigative journalist, but it also seemed to provide a sort of crutch to bridge the gap between my inexperience and my creative ambitions. As an audience member I’ve always had a hunger to see plays which offer me unique insights into other worlds, and naturally these are also the kinds of plays I want to write. But in practice this has always meant writing about subjects I know very little about, and so a period of factual research has to come first. In PROTECTION this was very much about getting to grips with child protection law and quite dry procedural issues. But one recurring theme that this part of the process did unearth was the destructive impact which private sector management techniques were having in the public sector. Strategies originally designed to manage money and resources were being applied to people; social workers, clients, care home staff. This was to go on to become the political heart of the play.

Then the interviews with social workers added the next level. I spoke to idealistic trainees, cynical seasoned workers at the coal face, weary team managers, old school social workers approaching retirement, social policy lecturers and local government officials. I spent a day in a care home talking to the residential staff and meeting some of the kids. The worker’s personal stories about the emotional impact of such gruelling and often distressing work are what gave the play its emotional heart and lifted it above documentary. Their beliefs, impulses and struggles provided archetypal drives for characters, and imbued the play with credible motives for action, which then underpinned all my imaginative work from there on in. But another happy side effect to the interviews grew out of my obsession about typing them up word for word. For an hour’s interview this takes roughly four hours and is painful in the extreme, but its benefits are immeasurable. The act of committing to paper every nuance, hesitation, tangential thought, and grammatical quirk of an interviewee somehow ‘locked’ their way of speaking into my mind in such a way that I found I was able to reproduce it at will when I came to write dialogue. (This technique was to become invaluable in later plays when I was tackling inner city subcultures with their own pantheon of slang and idiosyncrasy.) So the three elements of factual, emotional, and linguistic research combined to create – I hope - an authentic piece of social realist theatre.

Things were very different for my second play HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND. If PROTECTION was a literalist piece of social realism, with a schematic research process, HOW TO DISAPPEAR was a nightmarish netherworld of skewed timelines and characters waking up dead. The research and writing process were to be the most emotionally harrowing I’ve ever undertaken, a process perhaps mirrored by the play also losing its way in the theatre industry before being plucked from obscurity by the John Whiting Award. Things started well. I knew I wanted to write a play about people who go missing, and I approached the National Missing Person’s Helpline, and the Met Police ‘Mispers’ Unit both of whom agreed to see me and were very helpful. But when it came to contacting some actual missing people, I found they were, understandably, a bit difficult to find. I asked the Helpline if I could advertise on their website, for interviewees who’d gone missing and come back. I asked the Met if they’d show me the Thames Ledger – a book recording the details of every corpse that has been retrieved from the Thames for the past 200 years. Both turned me down flat. The Met said to me ‘You have to remember that everyone in that book is someone’s husband, wife, brother or son.’ I’d encountered a moral issue here which wasn’t relevant to my previous play. Whereas with PROTECTION social workers were only too happy to speak to me, this was because I was shining a light into a misunderstood profession and to some extent fighting their corner. But with missing persons there was no getting away from the fact that I was, in effect, saying ‘Tell me your tales of trauma and breakdown so that I can go away and make money out of them’.

It was at this point that I had to make a leap – I had to fall back on my own imagination and trust myself to make it up. I see this now as a fourth form of creative research, what I’d term ‘empathic research’. It involves a lot of day trips to resonant sites within the play (Southend in the case of HOW TO DISAPPEAR) and standing looking at the sea listening to miserable music and trying to imagine wanting to throw yourself in. It involves visiting homeless hostels and arguing with priests about the meaning of life. It involves staring at blank Word documents for 7 or 8 hours before finally committing a blast of frustration and rage to the page from someplace only accessible when the writer is at as low an ebb as the character. It involves hearing that character’s name spoken in public and looking up for a moment because you think someone is talking to you.

As it turned out it is perhaps the most potent form of research for a dramatist, but it took me exhausting the other avenues before I was forced to rely on it to fill the hole in the middle of my play. But like emotional memory it’s also the most traumatic. It’s also of course, the most alchemical, and the form that least lends itself to analysis and explanation. It is the way in which playwrights access the metaphysical.

The last two plays I want to talk about are both for teenagers, and both went through broadly similar processes as each other, but which were different again from PROTECTION and HOW TO DISAPPEAR.

LOCKED IN was my play set in a pirate radio station and written almost entirely in hip hop verse. And MEHNDI NIGHT was my play written for Bengali girls as part of my residency this year at Mulberry School in east London. I have an ongoing and very fruitful relationship with Half Moon Young People’s Theatre in Limehouse, who have an interesting process which they take their writers through. It begins with writing up an idea for a play for 14-17 year olds as a prose treatment, then deciding with the director on a couple of 5 minute sections to write up as full scenes. These are redrafted a little and then used as a stimulus text for a project they run called Careers In Theatre. This is a taster day run for about 80 Year 11 students from across the Borough and involves them producing a play-in-a-day inspired by the 5 minute text. It is ostensibly about career pathways for students about to leave school, but it also doubles up as a fascinating way of test-driving early ideas with their target audience. In allowing the students free reign to create their own performance inspired by the text and not restricted by it, it allows a writer access to the imaginations of groups of young people who may be very different to oneself. It’s an extraordinary way of blowing open an idea and (although they might not realise it) allowing the young people it is for and about to make their own mark on the play at a formative stage. But it’s also like walking into a room full of living breathing characters from the play, because of course Half Moon want plays about east London teenagers, so the target audience and characters are one and the same. I suppose it is a form of experiential or collaborative research.

Developing MEHNDI NIGHT at Mulberry School with Bengali teenage girls took the principles of Careers In Theatre and applied them over a much longer period. A group of ten fifteen year old girls met once a week after school from January through to August with me and our director Jools Voce. The luxury of time in this case meant I was able to take my cue from the group in a much more meaningful way, and to ask them what they’d like me to write a play about for them. In this sense I was very much ‘their’ writer; we’d identify broad themes that interest them, Jools would devise all sorts of imaginative exercises to generate material along this theme, I’d then go away and shape their ideas into a rough story outline or sketch, then bring them back and read through them. We’d hear their criticisms and suggestions for changes, and repeat the process until we’d settled on one idea that everyone was equally excited about.

This became very much a project about identity and self-representation for the girls. As a group they were fully aware that they did not feature much in the mainstream media, and early on we encouraged them to take the opportunity of performing in Edinburgh as a way of speaking to a mainstream adult audience about themselves and their life experiences. I think out of all the plays I’ve written it’s the one I’m most proud of. It was certainly the most rewarding. It was such a privilege to be allowed into those kids lives and culture with such honesty and generosity of spirit. I don’t know what you’d call it as a form of research, perhaps a sociologist would call it ethnographic, but I can tell you its certainly the most fun, and feels effortless once its underway.

The story we came up with revolves around a mehndi party, a traditional Bengali celebration the night before a wedding, roughly the equivalent of a hen night. Half way through the festivities there’s a knock at the door and a long lost sister turns up, who had been banished from the family four year previously for going off into east London’s music scene and becoming a rapper. Her arrival splits the group in half and the rest of the play looks at whether the family will allow her to come back, and the various perspectives for and against what she did. Within this simple structure we managed to look at an array of issues facing third generation Muslim girls in the modern world – with a level of detail and emotional truth that I could never have accessed working alone.

I’d like to finish by reading the speech at the heart of play where Ripa, the long lost sister, speaks to the assembled women to put her case.

RIPA
First up I want to apologise
To Mum, Nilufa and all you guys
I hope you don’t think that I’m being unwise
Don’t wanna scandalise your mehndi
Want you to know I don’t mean to offend you

Four years ago we all know what I did
I selfishly followed my heart not my head
Defied your advice and went out on my own
Knowing the price that I’d pay was my home
I hurt you all bad and it’s been a long time
I know it won’t heal with a couple of rhymes

So I wanted a career as a pro MC
Cos there ain’t a Bengali what flows like me
Took my chances on my own in the music industry
Swear down, it was hard
Missed my family bare
But I paid it no regard
Pretended like I didn’t care
Grafted and prayed
Cos Ripa’s deep not shallow
Knowing no-one’s self-made
Man they owe it all to Allah
Yeah my faith’s for real
It’s as solid as my rhymes
And if rhyming’s unIslamic
That makes Arabic a crime

But I had this debate with Dad four years ago
Don’t want it all again it interrupts my flow
I’m back here tonight for my sister Nilufa
I’ve missed you big sister
And this is the proof
Been struggling now on my own for four years
I’ve missed you, I’m tired, my eyes hurt from the tears

But I’m older and wiser, I realise the cost
Of throwing this away, of the scale of my loss
Cos what is it in life that keeps us in place?
Like the anchor of a ship – it’s community, it’s faith.

Yeah I’ve had my bit of fun and now I see my life ahead of me
Turn to face the sun cos now it’s time to make a better me
And I ain’t gonna get it in the music industry
Cos Britain ain’t ready for a Muslim MC

Ain’t even gonna tell you what I did to get by
But I lived to tell the tale, I’m here, I survived
Now I want my own mehndi, marriage, feeling connected
Husband, kids, all the things I once rejected
I wanna grow up, settle down, have a few little Me’s
Cos when a man supports his wife is when a woman’s truly free
Yeah let the men do the work, pay the bills, get bored
Cos we’ve got a job that’s really more important
Raising the next generation
Cos if you educate a woman then you educate a nation
Passing on faith and wisdom
Showing there’s more than a place in the system

Yeah I want my Bengali identity back
Cos without it, I’m nothing, and it’s holding me back
Women performing? Yeah tell me about it
Want my sari and scarf, I’m naked without it
Wearing this, I’m judged for my mind not my looks
My words taken serious, like in some book

Mum all I ever wanted was to feel like your equal
You’ve had your life, and now I’m the sequel
I know that right now you’re feelin the friction
But I want you to know there ain’t no contradiction
You’ve always written me off as a dreamer
But what you’re looking at now is a modern Muslima.

After one particularly electrifying performance, the girls were clearing up and a rather earnest journalist came up to them and started grilling them about: What is it you’re actually saying here? That women should be in the home? That they should or shouldn’t perform? They debated the point with him for a while, but clearly still suspicious, he asked them if this was their work or if someone had written it for them. And about five of them in this big group just turned to him and said: “No, we wrote it.”

And that’s the greatest compliment they could have given me.

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Thursday 30th August

Alright, I'll come clean. I've been back for a while but just hiding. It's got to that stage again where things have backed up so much that blogging seems like a mountainous chore.

When this has happened in the past I've found it best to just wipe the slate clean and start again from where I'm at. After all, you won't miss what you never knew about will you?

So, it was back to work with a bump this week. Rehearsals have started for We Are Shadows, my latest play for Half Moon. The first day was as exciting as first days always are, helped along by the discovery of an excellent cast and brilliant original score intelligently put together by Leeds-based composer Ed Thomas, who also turns out to be a thoroughly nice bloke. I prefer to let the company get on with things without me in the early stages of rehearsals but I'll be popping in for the first stagger-through in a week or so.

Work is also well under way for my as-yet-untitled modern Jacobean play. A couple of heavyweight plot meetings this week with Matt Peover and Mark Bell have crystallised the story no end, and I'm now ready to pull together all our Jacobean pontifications on modern life into a treatment. (I'm quite schematic in this respect, and always have to map out the play before writing a word of dialogue, all the more so when it's a collaboration like this).

I'm also in the early stages of planning a couple of postgraduate modules which I'm teaching for John Ginman on the Goldsmiths Playwriting MA this term. My old course has gone from strength to strength and can now boast alumni in TV, radio and theatre, as well as having bagged a couple of awards. It'll be a new year and a new intake next month, so it'll be exciting to see who they've got. If you're enrolled, see you there.

Whilst we're on universities, I've been asked to deliver a short paper and talk on a panel at the forthcoming conference Between Fact And Fiction being hosted by Birmingham University. I'll be talking about the process of 'creative research' in relation to my own work, so I might post the paper on here afterwards, if it turns out to be at all coherent.

Then there's Mehndi Night. Ah, bless Mehndi Night. I love that show so much. The girls and Jools did such a brilliant job up in Edinburgh and the whole thing was a joy from start to finish. I think I enjoyed doing that play more than anything I've ever done - seriously. I suppose with professionals you expect them to do a good job, but when it's such young performers with so many variables involved then it's doubly brilliant, especially when you see them coming out of themselves and flowering as young adults throughout the process. The change in some of those kids has just been extraordinary, and reaffirmed all my belief in the power of drama to instill confidence, assert identity and cultivate growth and understanding between groups of people. Looking around the auditorium when they were in full flow was like being at a Bengali party with Scottish grannies, American students, and executives on lunch break all on the guest list. There were plenty of damp eyes in the house too, as the actors milked that heart-breaking little story for all it was worth.

To top it all, the press response was universally positive and we started to sell out towards the end of the run, and could easily have filled another week (though of course everyone was knackered by then so I think a week and a half was about our limit). I'm due a meeting at the school next week, as there has been talk of reviving the play down here. But we're running up against what I think it's safest to call 'cultural complications' in doing the play closer to home. I'm afraid I can't really say much more than that, but if we get to do any public performances you'll be the first to know.

In other news, I'm delighted to report that the brillaint Ellie Jones of How To Disappear fame has been made artistic director of Southwark Playhouse. Hooray! And as if that wasn't enough, the formerly threatened John Whiting Award (which rescued my career not so very long ago) has been saved by a consortium of theatres with the generous backing of the Peter Wolff Theatre Trust. So good news all round.

I think that's all from me for now. I keep meaning to get on the case with scouring autumn seasons so that I can publish a list of forthcoming recommended shows, but any advance tip-offs from those of you a step ahead of me would be very welcome.

[Comment]

Thurs 16th August

Having a bit of a rest, and spending some long overdue time with Mrs Fin.

Got all sorts to tell you about, but it's going to have to wait. I'm knackered.

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Fri 10th August

Can't stop, but just to say Mehndi Night has had some fab reviews.

The Guardian here
The Herald here
And Statler of View From The Stalls fame here.

So happy!

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Weds 7th August

No time to blog properly but just to say that Mehndi Night has been getting some great audience feedback on the DIY review facility at edfringe.com ... So proud of them all!

Guardian and Scotsman were in yesterday too... Fingers crossed.

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Weds 1st August

Here it is. Mostly ok, but you can tell it's Society and not Arts! (I did tell them I'd evolved beyond my David Hare phase...but I guess they need their angle).

And all publicity is good publicity with a show opening tomorrow.

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This blog's entries from July 2006 - July 2007 have now been archived. You can read them here.