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Friday 26 June 2009

Good grief, has it really been 6 weeks since my last post? I suppose I have been vaguely aware of the time passing, but in all honesty, I haven’t really had all that much to say. And I’m sure the last thing you’d want is for me to twitter on about nothing. The internet is full of that after all. Plus after my previous flurry of loud-mouthedness over adopting playwrights I’d hate for you to get sick of me.

But the good news is that there is now something to say. The launch of the Edinburgh Fringe 2009 brochure has released to the world my latest offering from Mulberry Theatre Company (the production arm of Mulberry School for Girls in east London where I have been part-time writer-in-residence for the past 3 years.)

Our latest show, The Unravelling, has already had a couple of press mentions (one in Lyn Gardner’s ‘pick of the fringe’ previews, and another from the ever-reliable Statler at View From The Stalls) which is always exciting and nerve-wracking in equal measure when the show has barely started rehearsals. There’s also a page on my own website about it here.

This is the third year running that Mulberry Theatre Company have performed a new play of mine at Edinburgh, and for various reasons – some to do with funding, some to do with the timing of Ramadan next year, and some general refocusing of the company’s operations – I can reveal that it will be the last time we perform at the Fringe for a little while. I know, it's a bit sad. But I’ll still be working at the school next year, but not doing Edinburgh will free up considerable time and resources for both me and the other artists-in-residence to do other projects with the students a bit closer to home (watch this space…)

Anyway, we now have a trilogy of plays broadly charting the teenage female experience in east London. As we’ve done every year, we’re going to publish this latest one as a script programme booklet for sale in the foyer, then maybe commission all three in one edition for use in the school (and beyond, if anyone wants them.) I’ve been writing my programme note for this latest one, and been looking back a bit at how they evolved and how they compare. I thought it might be interesting to share some of those thoughts on here. In many ways, each year’s show has been a reaction to the previous year’s, and explored a different way of working with this age group.

2007’s Mehndi Night was very much born out of the fact that 98% of Mulberry’s students are of Bangladeshi heritage. In giving them a completely open brief for the play, they chose to draw upon their immediate experiences as second and third generation Bengali women, negotiating the pleasures and pains of a cross-cultural identity, in particular the competing (and often contradictory) demands of family, faith and modern society. The politics of belonging were explored through the personal stories of four sisters and three aunties, the night before a wedding. I tried to do justice to these characters by inflecting their dialogue with dashes of lyricism, which are such an important part of both traditional Bangladeshi and contemporary east London popular culture. The result was a heartfelt family drama about a rebel daughter returning to the roost after years of going it alone in the wider world.

I was asked to speak about the experience of developing this play at Birmingham Rep’s ‘Generations’ conference on theatre-making for young people in 2008. It was a really fascinating day, with practitioners in this field coming together from all over the country. In one of the workshops after my talk an interesting discussion started. A young black actress from south London began, in a friendly way, to challenge my approach in developing Mehndi Night. Wasn’t it a bit of an obvious play to do with a group of young Asian women – saris, samosas and weddings? Haven’t we seen this before? She claimed that we were trading off the girls’ “exoticism”, and setting them up as ‘the Other’. Why couldn’t they just be artists, and tell stories about whatever they want? Why do they have to do a play about ‘being Bengali’? You wouldn’t do a play about ‘being white’ with a group of white kids.

These comments were meant in a generous spirit of interrogating the process in order to develop it, and she did have a point. The whole package of the play was perfect for Edinburgh; the girls marketed the show on the Royal Mile looking glorious in full saris, the venue was decorated like a Bengali party space complete with free samosas, and the audience really seemed to enjoy being welcomed into what was ordinarily a private space hidden from view behind another culture. The critics loved it too, with Neil Cooper at The Herald likening it to a “stylised latter-day Muslim take on Jack Rosenthal's Barmitzvah Boy, which captured the Jewish East End so well”. But that young actress’s comments stayed with me.

In my defence, I did point out that the girls had a completely open brief, and that idea for the play was a unanimous decision. But this was my first year at Mulberry. I’ve since discovered, in working very closely with many students there over the years, that this idea is quite often the idea they come up with when you ask them ‘What do you want to write a play about?’ Negotiating inter-cultural conflict, often explored through the prism of domestic inter-generational conflict, features large in their thinking. (Either that, or – somewhat paradoxically – extreme issue-based subjects they know little or nothing about, which they’ve probably gleaned from soap operas.)

However, I’ve since come to realise that one of the responsibilities of a professional artist-in-residence (in a school anyway) is to encourage students to go beyond the obvious choices, beyond simply being versions of themselves onstage, or parroting back cheap TV storylines. It’s about helping them to develop an aesthetic that allows them to be ‘actors’ in the fullest sense of being able to take on any character and any story that interests them, with integrity, and to offer meaningful interpretations of their own on the subject in hand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enormously proud of Mehndi Night and it still stands up as a great little play with genuine moments of insight and originality – and so far as I know it can still claim a theatrical first as an all-female Bengali play. But one of the joys of long-term community arts residencies is being able to refine your developmental process, so that you as an artist are stretched and developed just as much as the participants.

2008’s Stolen Secrets was very much a reaction to Mehndi Night, in that we decided to move beyond autobiography and encourage the girls to focus on any local stories that took their interest. To do this, we asked them to be our eyes and ears around east London, to harvest characters, lines of dialogue, scenarios and settings from the local area. We scoured local newspapers and kept an ear to the ground for gossip. Our designer Kollodi created a beautiful set of ‘secret vaults’ - boxes with a deposit slot, for anonymous secrets from students and staff, to be placed around the school. I went into English and Drama classes to explain the process and solicit contributions. We then took the best of this material and over several weeks teased out, imagined, added and fictionalised until we ended up with a set of five ‘urban fairytales’ about the hidden side of east London.

In order to allow the girls to play characters that were completely unlike themselves, the written style had to shift to place them as narrators on the world outside their windows. As such, a direct-address, ensemble storytelling style emerged – something I have experimented with in my work for Half Moon Theatre, but only fully realised at Mulberry due to the larger cast sizes available to me. The resulting series of short plays owed as much to performance poetry as theatre, while their darkly grotesque content drew upon a great tradition of using east London’s landscape to map the darker side of the human soul. But perhaps the most exciting discovery of last year was the beauty and immediacy of the physical storytelling aesthetic with which directors Julia Voce and Camille Cettina responded to the text – along with the girls’ own incredibly focussed performances which rose so proudly to this challenge. Both these directors trained at LISPA, which has a strong European sensibility and trains its student devisors in creating stage worlds in the blink of an eye with nothing more than a group of bodies on stage.

There’s an acknowledged fault line in professional theatre between the playwright-led, text-based camp and the actor/devisor-led, physical theatre camp. Some recent articles suggest that playwrights in particular feel aggrieved, alleging that the latter are more to the tastes of arts funders, and are in some way undermining the traditional role of the writer. The two approaches are often presented as mutually exclusive. I don’t really share this view, and this is mostly down to my work at Mulberry. If anything, in student productions at least, these approaches have seemed to be mutually complementary, indeed even symbiotic to the point where neither can survive without the other. Young people often think best on their feet, yet having a professional writer in the room makes the best of the material they generate by shaping it into narrative threads. They do the inspiration and I do the perspiration – then hand it back them the following week in the form of script, for them to play with it further, generate more brilliant ideas, and the cycle starts all over again. In this way the end product is always a genuine collaboration. I couldn’t do without them, nor they me. Taking an active part as a playwright in a three-dimensional rehearsal room devising process in this way has been one of the greatest joys of doing Edinburgh for the past 3 years. The room fizzes with characters and scenarios from their world, and mine, but also an imaginative plain which we both share. It’s really excited me to see what can be achieved when these two approaches work together so happily. I don’t know what you’d call it, but I love it, and it works.

This year, our approach was slightly different again, and built upon what we learned from Stolen Secrets. The most successful of 2008’s five ‘urban fairytales’ was one entitled Make n Mend, about a mother and daughter running an east London clothes repair shop. This setting was so immediately embraced by the students, and the industry so germane to the fabric (sorry) of east London, that we decided to take it and give it to the following year’s group as the location for the 2009 play – with only the minor tweak that it is a fabric shop as well as a tailoring service, with all those rolls of cloth from which to wring stories and stage effects.

Deciding on a location for the story is probably the single most important decision we have to make during our process. Everything follows on from there – character, mood, status, territory and almost all the possibilities for action. As I tell the group, the location is like a silent character in the play. It’s also the part that takes longest for an inexperienced group to settle on – and the element about which they are often least well-equipped to make an informed artistic decision. Make that decision for them, and they then have an arena which not only are you certain will work, but which they can still populate with all their own ideas for characters and storylines.

The Unravelling is in many ways an existential fable about the power of the imagination; the challenges it sets its performers and production team are certainly the greatest so far. It builds upon the previous two years in that it places a metaphorical ‘handover’ between female generations at the heart of the story, as Mehndi Night did. Yet it also uses direct-address storytelling as the means by which the characters summon their imaginative worlds from the apparent emptiness around them, and in so doing, discover their power – the legacy of Stolen Secrets. Perhaps most importantly, it takes the Mulberry Theatre Company aesthetic to a whole new level, and showcases the heights that can be achieved when artists with complementary backgrounds work together with a committed large cast, backed at the highest levels by the school. Perhaps this is something to do with having the added layer to the artistic process of being responsible for creating a piece of work not just for its own sake, nor for the adult artists to show off their skills, but for the good of a group of fledgling artists still in their teens, to whose ideas we must do justice. It is certainly testament to what happens when schools invest long-term in developing meaningful relationships between artists and students.

It feels like an appropriate story to complete our trilogy. In celebrating the nature of creativity and its power to change lives, the play is itself an apt metaphor for Mulberry School and its extraordinary theatre company.

The Unravelling runs at The Space UK @ Venue 45 from 10-15 August 2009. Book online here or call 0131 226 0000.

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Monday 04 May 2009

More on Adopt-A-Playwright over at Guardian theatre blogs, where they have commissioned an 'offical' post from me to respond to last week's criticisms.

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Saturday 25 April 2009

You might be interested to hear that Alfred Hickling on Guardian theatre blogs has posted a critical (and in my opinion, misrepresentative and cynically written) article about Adopt-A-Playwright, the scheme described below.

You can read his post, and some of the daft comments following it, here.

You can read my response below:

Oh dear. I can hardly let this sorry excuse for an arts blog go down in the Guardian archive unchallenged can I?

Alfred, you seem to have wilfully misrepresented and misreported this innovative and necessary scheme in order to laugh at it. Only you can tell us why you would want to do this (and I hope that you will, for it feels rather like you’re punching holes in the boat we’re all floating in.) But for now let’s take your points one by one...
The winner receives a free 10 grand ‘on spec’: Not quite. The winner is sourced via a process of nomination taking place over the best part of a year. They are then invited to apply for the scheme by submitting a previous full-length play, an lengthy proposal for a new play, a CV and assessment of where they are at in their writing career and how they would spend the money (it’s not just for time to write, they can spend some of it on workshops, readings, and hiring actors, directors and dramaturgs to develop the piece, if they wish.) Their applications are then assessed by a panel of established theatre professionals and a shortlist drawn up who are invited for interview. The panel’s assessment takes place over the best part of a week of meetings.

During this whole process, potential recipients are expected to demonstrate not only an innate playwriting talent, but also initiative in having produced their own work up to that point, genuine financial need, lack of any other funding from ACE or one of their clients, as well as meeting the criteria that either they or the subject matter they want to write about (or preferably both) represent the voice of a community from whom we hear all too seldom on British stages – anything from minority ethnic or religious groups, through to traveller communities, rural communities, or any number of subcultures, professions or other human experiences which don’t normally get a look-in as subject matter for your average stage play. The winner then gets the money in several instalments over the course of the year, and enters into a contract agreeing to deliver regular drafts. This agreement can be terminated at any time should its terms not be met.

You complain that the selection process lacks transparency. Your evidence for this appears to be the website’s use of punctuation. Let me reassure you that the ‘talent scouts’ are made up of staff from a variety of professional and fringe theatres, regular fringe theatregoers such as the reviewers for Resonance FM’s On The Fringe team, as well as the supporters and members of OffWestEnd.com’s various groups and schemes – including arts patrons and even (brace yourself) enthusiastic members of the public. The panel of ‘experts’ making the final decision in previous year’s has included: artistic director of Theatre Royal Stratford East Kerry Michael, playwrights Diane Samuels and Hassan Abdulrazzak, film producer Clive Brill, BBC producer Alison Hindell, Geoff Colman of Central School of Speech and Drama, major arts patron Joachim Fleury of Clifford Chance and myself. I’d like to think that between us we could spot a decent writer.

You also seem to be rather sniffy about patrons getting to meet the writers and socialise with them. I see no reason to sneer at this. The scheme is inspired by one of the most ancient forms of arts patronage, that of ancient Rome, where private patrons would gather round an artist they believe in and support their work with direct contributions. Sure, the patrons get something out of this - the satisfaction of engendering a new play (and hopefully launching a career) as well as the thrill of seeing the creative process close up in a way that traditional ‘angels’ schemes do not allow. The main difference with our scheme is that the patrons are strictly prevented from having any creative input, and one step removed from the selection process by trusting their panel of industry experts to make the right choice.

You acknowledge my original point that the existing system favours the wealthy, but you seem to see no problem with this. One of the commenters above also displays a rather cosseted ignorance in exclaiming that ‘Money to live on can usually be found.’ How great that there are some people for whom that is the case. This scheme is for the other 90% for whom money to live on usually can’t be found. When I was starting out I subsidised my own first play by giving up a full-time job and living on my credit card for three months. I racked up £3,500 worth of debt which it took me the best part of two years to pay off with more full-time work, during which i was unable to write anything further. I was lucky enough to get AHRC funding to do the MA Playwriting at Goldsmiths, and jammy again to get a Pearson bursary to be Soho Theatre’s writer-in-residence for a year. But after that it all dried up and I had to go and re-train as a teacher in order to make ends meet, before being plucked from obscurity once more by winning the John Whiting Award. I’ve worked ever since in inner city communities, teaching playwriting, writing plays for and about, and giving careers advice to (among others) east London Bengali teenagers, kids in care, teenage Mums and members of various youth theatres. I do this not out of a sense of worthiness but because I find these people interesting and want to get their voices and experiences on our stages. The commissioning system at present actively works to exclude them, along with all manner of other people. I don’t want to be part of a theatre industry, either as a writer or audience, where large chunks of the population are excluded from being able to tell their stories and have a stake in the nation’s cultural output. This is bad for art.

These are real issues which materially affect the face of our nation’s theatre professionals, and indeed the future of our industry. It was in explaining these problems to Sofie Mason of OffWestEnd.com that the idea for this scheme came to her. I admire her tenacity in trying to plug this gap. It’s in its infancy, but since the scheme’s inception and the British economy’s apparent implosion it seems that we are more in need than ever of innovative new ways to fund our art. Guardian blogs have recently been very supportive of London Bubble’s scheme Fan Made Theatre, and rightly so. I see no reason why they should be commissioning cynical articles like this that laugh at a similar and (arguably) even more ambitious scheme, with potentially far greater impact.

Finally, you suggest that a better use of the money would be to fund 10 writers for a month. But there are already plenty of short courses and schemes of this kind, and theatre companies often bung writers £500 or a grand as ‘seed’ money. I can tell you there’s a limit to how far you can develop a decent full-length play in a month, especially if you want to write about subjects more ambitious that your own love affairs. Investing a large sum in one writer is what theatres aren’t doing enough of, but is precisely what is needed if amateur writers are going to make the leap from occasional scribbling whenever they get a few weeks off, to full-blown immersive playwrighting where they can properly engage with their subject and craft, with access to a network of professional supporters and advisors should they need it.

A commenter above similarly notes that playwrights need venues and productions, and ‘a person in place who will produce their play’. Whilst this is of course true, it’s the second stage in the process. Surely writing the play in the first place needs to come first! Or else what is there to stage? Theatres don’t commission beginner writers on a concept, they want to see a full draft, and this is where wealthy writers have the advantage, and where the system is inherently unfair.

I note from your Guardian profile, Alfred, that you are based in York and regularly review plays in the north-east. It can’t have escaped your notice that writers from this region and the communities they represent very seldom make it onto higher profile stages, either as artists or subjects. This scheme aims to directly address this imbalance. Indeed, I also note that you yourself are a sometime writer (and director). You may well be eligible to apply for this scheme, and put all this Guardian blogging to one side for a year while you hone your craft. I’d encourage you to do so. It could be the start of a whole new career.

Readers who’d like to know more about this debate, and to read my full speech from which Alfred selectively quotes, should check the articles on my own blog here:

http://finkennedy.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-is-first-of-two-part-enrty-ive.html

http://finkennedy.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-makes-good-playwright-drumroll.html

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Sunday 05 April 2009

What Makes a 'Good' Playwright?

Drumroll please .... Here it is!

Yes, after teasing you for nearly a month it's finally time to publish the long-awaited Adopt-A-Playwright Talent Scout CRITERIA!

Those of you who have been paying attention will recall my previous post explaining my involvement in this scheme, and the speech I gave at its launch. Further info can be found on Sofie's site OffWestEnd.com here. The rest of this post will be a bit out of context otherwise, so if I'm already not making much sense then go and have a look at those links now. Go on.

No, it's fine. No, really. Me and the other readers will wait for you here.

Sorted? Right.

What follows is a further document I wrote at Sofie's request, in an attempt to provide the Talent Scouts for her scheme with a set of guidelines of what to look out for when they are scouring the Fringe for potential candidates.

The areas she asked me to expand upon were as follows:

1. What defines a writer 'in need'?
2. What constitutes a play of 'quality' or 'promise'?
3. What factors indicate a playwright of 'promise'?
4. What constitutes a 'different voice'?

These might seem like obvious or even stupid questions to ask. Surely we all know these things when we see them? Maybe. But like 'good acting' the exact specifications are notoriously hard to pin down. And for a scheme where people were being selected to be put forward to possibly be awarded thousands of pounds, it seemed not only fair but essential to try to draw something up.

This is my attempt. You'll see from the intro that I always wanted this list to be just a starting a point; a 'living document' to be argued over, edited, added to, rephrased and expanded. And what better place to do that than here, with all three of my loyal readers?

I hope this will keep you occupied for a while. I'm going to be away for a few weeks while I write the first draft of this year's school play for Edinburgh. I'll publish all suitable comments of course, but if i don't engage in prolonged debate straight away then bear with me. I am here, and I am reading them, and I love you all. Like Michael Jackson.

Adopt-A-Playwright

Talent scout criteria

What constitutes a writer in need? How do you define a ‘quality’ play? How do you spot a ‘promising’ writer? How can you assess whether they are a ‘different’ voice? Different to what? How do you know your endorsement as a talent scout isn’t tainted by your own filters of cultural background and personal taste?

These are some of the questions it is necessary to ask as part of a scheme like Adopt-A-Playwright, and with which I have been grappling for a few days, after somewhat unwisely volunteering to put this document together for Sofie Mason. The truth is that judgements of any artistic endeavour will always be largely subjective, and this document is no exception. Put together by one opinionated playwright, it is likely to be as full of contradictions and exceptions and personal opinions as my own taste in plays. Rather than a definitive guide, it is intended to be the start of a debate among the many professionals involved in this scheme. My aspiration for it is that it becomes a ‘living’ document, constantly being amended, updated and expanded by many different people, until we have a sprawling ‘bible’ of assessment criteria, as thrillingly diverse as its contributors, and as open to interpretation as any genuine Holy Book. Because while we are unlikely, if ever, to all agree on all the points in a document of this nature, our best guarantee of getting it right most of the time will be the diversity of backgrounds and professional experience among the people conducting the search. Because a scheme like Adopt-A-Playwright will only ever be as good as its scouts and judges.

Let’s start with the easiest one, In Need. The following criteria are largely Sofie’s, I have just tweaked them slightly.

A writer in need:

• Has demonstrated some initiative in writing and/or producing own work in the past;
• Lacks sufficient funds to continue writing;
• Relies on non-arts industry income to make ends meet (or non-creative employment within the arts, eg. ushering, office admin);
• Has not received significant funding from theatre company, Arts Council, or other arts funding body for their writing (in this context ‘significant funding’ would be more than £1000 in total over the course of their career);
• Is not from a family or community who are able to support them while they write;
• At the point of giving up without some break.

Now onto the hard stuff:

Quality

Note: Scouts should be able to distinguish between a quality play text and a quality production. They should be able to see the potential of a good play given a bad production, yet not be fooled by a poor play given a slick production. They should also be able to recognise the potential of a playwright who has not yet written their best work, but who shows promise in their early plays.

I would suggest that a play of notable ‘promise’ or ‘quality’ is one which demonstrates at least two of the following:

• Some understanding of dramatic writing as being about writing stage action as well as words.

• Some understanding of dramatic structure – characters actively pursuing an objective as the ‘engine’ of dramatic storytelling.

• Some understanding of drama as being about a process of change, and of characters having gone on a journey.

• Some ability to write original, believable characters with their own voice and perspectives on the world.

• A delight in the possibilities of spoken language in all its messy complexity; dialect, slang, subcultural lexicons, puns, double meanings and misunderstandings, language as liberator of some characters and jailor of others, language as power, language as a tool with which we define the world and our place within it.

• A ‘quality of mind’: an interest in using drama to offer some original insight into the subject in hand. A feeling, having left the auditorium, that you have been in the presence of someone with something new and important to say about the world in which you live.

• An interest in the poetry of drama, physically as well as verbally, e.g an ability to create resonant and memorable stage images; an awareness of metaphor; an ability to juxtapose dramatic action with dialogue; images and action creatively arranged not just for aesthetic pleasure but in order to actively comment on one another and add meaning to the overall story.

• Using lyricism or other non-naturalistic techniques intelligently, in the service of the overall play, rather than simply because it can be done.

• A play that has an emotional impact on you and moves you in some way.

• An ability to sustain these qualities over some time (ie. 45 minutes plus). Exciting short plays are often unreliable indicators of promise as the real test is in sustaining energy, pace, wit and form over a longer drama.


A promising playwright is one who demonstrates at least two of the following:

• An interest in pushing the form of drama beyond the traditional western sensibility of the three or five act structure and/or an interest in questioning or challenging the traditional barrier between audience and actor. However, neither of these should be for the sake of meaningless experimentation, but in the context of serving an overall narrative and creating a theatrical experience in which innovation in form facilitates new and fresh understandings of the drama’s content. Form should always be appropriate to content, and born out of it in some logical way. Formal experimentation should not be about ‘showing off’ but about adding new layers of meaning.

• Innovative ideas about staging, which cannot be attributed to the director alone, e.g. a script that responds imaginatively to a specific performance space, or an interest in merging text-based script writing with non-verbal, devised, or other performance media.

• Choice of subject of some relevance and urgency to modern world; awareness of current affairs in UK and beyond and the quality of mind to make an original and meaningful contribution to those debates.

• An interest in using theatre as an organ of democracy, to debate, stimulate and provoke audiences into discussion of difficult, complex or taboo issues.

• An interest in people and experiences beyond their own; an understanding that the writer’s own love affairs and family dramas are not necessarily of equal interest to a wider audience. (Or, if these well-trodden subjects are used, to offer a new and original twist or insight.)

• An interest in presenting audiences with places, characters and communities that have not been seen before in British drama, or seen too seldom.

• An interest in analysing and providing some critique of the channels of power in any given society which seal a character’s fate.

• An interest in undertaking research as a means to sourcing new material, and opening themselves up to new experiences.

• An understanding, however faltering, of the dramatic writer as ‘wrighter’ (ie. ‘wringer’ or shaper of reality) of a stage event. In this sense the role of ‘wrighter’ goes beyond ‘writing’ words and becomes the primary creative mind shaping the audience’s experience (e.g. pre or post-show scenes which take place beyond the main performance space, viral marketing campaigns involving teasers for the show, imaginatively engineering news stories in order to gain press coverage for the show).

• An interest in analysing and debating the ideas within their work and in the work of others, including taking on board audience feedback, for example through taking part in post-show discussions, writing a blog, or organising amateur writer’s groups.

• Takes an active interest in the wider theatre industry and can talk knowledgably and enthusiastically about recent productions or industry developments.


A ‘different voice’ means in relation to the usual backgrounds of the majority of writers receiving commissions from the mainstream new writing houses in the UK, and should comprise at least one of the following:

• Not articulating the white, male, middle class twenty-to-thirtysomething experience as the central tenet of the play’s story.

• Provides an insight into worlds under-represented in current British drama. This could include, but is not restricted to: minority ethnic or religious groups, non-western, working class, non-traditional lifestyles, so-called ‘closed communities’, communities newly-arrived in the UK, communities stereotyped or demonised in the mainstream media, rural communities.

• If the writer is not personally from the same background as the characters in the play, s/he should have some valid claim to be able to write about them with a degree of insight and knowledge, e.g. a significant period of research, or contacts with those groups who have provided access over a significant period.

• Note: ‘different voice’ does not mean solely different aesthetically, e.g. non-naturalistic writing styles, performance art or devised work. The ‘difference’ refers to the background of the writer, compared to the usual backgrounds of those receiving new play commissions, or the types of characters and experiences they are trying to give voice to.

• A ‘quality of mind’: an interest in using drama to offer some original insight into the subject in hand, which other media cannot.

Good luck!

[Comment]

Monday 30 March 2009

I'm not trying to tease you by postponing the promised second part of my post about Adopt-A-Playwright, but something else has come up with a more imminent deadline which I thought might interest you.

You may recall that in the aftermath of last year's Arts Council funding bloodbath, large-scale community theatre company London Bubble was one of the organisations to get it in the neck pretty badly, to the point that they were fighting for their life for months. I blogged about the whole sorry debacle here, and mused a bit on what it said about ACE's philosophy about who they see fit to make art...

Well, under the inspired leadership of Jonathan Petherbridge they're back from the brink (for now - they've got a 'transitional grant', whatever that means) and they've come up with a really innovative scheme to overhaul the way they develop and commission shows.

Entitled 'Fan Made Theatre' it's actually a similar concept to the way in which Franny Armstrong of docudrama Age Of Stupid funded her film (see post below).

The idea is brilliantly simple: for £20 (£10 concessions) you can buy a stake in the London Bubble's next production which will allow you to suggest your own idea for what you'd like it to be about. You also get to vote on the 5 shortlisted ideas, attend rehearsals, and attend opening night for free - which would normally cost you £15 alone, so in effect you get the whole lot for a fiver.

I love ideas like this. They genuinely seem to connect companies with their audiences, not just in a 'discount tickets and education pack' sort of way, but by giving them a voice in what is actually staged in the first place.

It's not a million miles away from they way I work with students at Mulberry School where we devise a play each year to take to Edinburgh. (More on this year's show in another post soon...) But, so far as I know, Bubble's version is the first time something like this has been tried on this scale, and brought out into public from behind the closed doors of the community rehearsal room. Doubtless it will be a steep learning curve for them, but it's a really exciting new model which I will be watching with interest.

I've bought my stake. You can read more, and buy your own, here.

[Comment]

Monday 16 March 2009

In a change from the advertised schedule, I’d like to beg your indulgence while I plug something non-theatre related for a moment.

Over the weekend I went to the London premiere of The Age of Stupid, an extraordinary new climate change docudrama by Franny Armstrong (the guerilla filmmaker behind McLibel) and starring the inimitable Pete Postlethwaite.

It’s a brilliantly simple premise – six documentary films about six different protagonists in six different stories about climate change are bound together by Pete Postlethwaite flicking through them; a lone archivist of humanity’s salvaged culture in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He is trying to work out the answer to one question: Why didn’t we save ourselves while there was still time?

It’s a uniquely affecting conceit that packages a familiar subject in a new and really quite humbling way, putting into stark relief all the petty excuses we make not to do our bit and start changing our lifestyles and lobbying our representatives.

What I love about this film is that it’s so much more than a film, it’s the start of a grass roots movement. Not only is it as good as its word – making the whole premiere carbon neutral by holding it in a solar-powered tent in Leicester Square, publishing detailed stats on the carbon footprint of the filmmaking process, and issuing campaign packs to everyone who sees it - it’s also revolutionised the way films are funded and distributed. The entire £450,000 budget was ‘crowd funded’, i.e. raised from volunteer’s contributions, who hold a stake in the film’s future performance, and maintain full control over the distribution rights, meaning they can license it to village halls and community groups around the world for as little as they like. In terms of people power it’s up there with Obama’s campaign.

So unlike other films of this genre, the film isn’t the end product but the start - a tool to galvanise communities into an entire campaign, in advance of the new UN climate change treaty, due to be finalised at a meeting in Copenhagen in December this year (described by one speaker as ‘the most important meeting in the history of mankind’). All the science does indeed suggest that we have a rapidly narrowing window between now and 2015 to do something about this, after we will all be royally fucked, and nothing we can do from there on in will make the slightest difference.

The premiere itself was dramatic enough. Climate change Minister Ed Miliband was mightily stitched up on stage when he was unexpectedly confronted by Franny and Pete wielding a huge pledge card on which Pete wrote that he would hand his OBE back to the Queen, with a request to dissolve Parliament, if the government licensed the new coal-fired Kingsnorth power station. You can get a sense of his discomfort here.

The entire Age of Stupid website is dedicated to encouraging 250 million people to make a similar bloody great stink, and I’d urge you to have a look. The sales figures during this first week of the film’s release will dictate whether or not it goes nationwide, so please go and see it.

I don’t normally discuss personal politics on this blog, or digress into browbeating, but this is one issue I can’t stay quiet on. Those who know me will testify that I’m a quiet, pessimistic sort of greenie. I don’t go on about it much because I’m basically convinced that we’re all going to hell in an SUV, and that it will serve us right for being such selfish, greedy cunts. I’m as guilty of the hypocrisy as anyone, but I can’t help feeling that the honourable thing is to go down fighting.

Go and see this film. Apart from anything else it has a devastating thesis at its heart: Maybe we didn’t do anything because deep down, we didn’t think we were worth saving.

Amen, Franny. Amen.

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Sunday 08 March 2009

This is the first of a two-part enrty I've been meaning to do for a while, with big apologies to Sofie Mason of OffWestEnd.com for not having got round to it before.

Sofie is a bit of an inspiration - not only does she tirelessly promote fringe and Off West End theatre on her (entirely self-founded and independently funded) website, she's also an accomplished arts journalist, arts fundraiser, and, as of last year, inventor and administrator of the Adopt-A-Playwright award.

This is an innovative scheme which seeks to address an important gap in arts funding for new playwrights, which Sofie credits me with having pointed out to her during an interview I did with her for The Stage newspaper in 2007. Not long after, Sofie contacted me again to ask what I thought about an idea she had had: to rally a group of private arts sponsors around an individual playwright at the start of their career, in order to 'buy' the writer the time off from regular full-time work to allow them to write the first draft of a new play.

The scheme is now in its second year and onto its second writer and, so far as I know, looks set to run and run (recession notwithstanding). I've been meaning to blog it since its launch last summer, but last year was a bit of a right-off blogwise. Anyway, not being a proper journalist or anything I don't have to worry about date relevance and having a 'hook' to hang the story on and all that. The hook is that you'll be interested, so I'm going to tell you. I've mentioned the recession, what more do you want? If it's 'news' news you're after go and read Guardian theatre blogs.

Anyway. The idea is that it's a sort of medieval or even Roman style of theatre sponsorship, where individual patrons gather round a particular artist because they like and believe in their work. They can put in as little as £50 or up to £1,000 (though if anyone wanted to put in more I'm sure they wouldn't object.) The idea is to get the fund up to about £6,500 - roughly the same as the TMA/Writer's Guild minimum commission fee for a full length stage play. The writer gets the money in instalments to prevent them pissing it all away, and has to keep the patrons up to date with the progress of the writing process. There are regular private readings of sections of the work, to which the patrons are invited. Then at the end there is a full reading with a bigger invite list which can include people within the theatre industry who might want to commission the play.

The patrons have no editorial control and no creative input, unless the writer solicits it. They don't get their investment back and they certainly don't get a return on it (other than in love and general fuzzy warmness.) All future earnings from the play remain firmly with the writer. But they do get an up-close-and-personal experience of the creative process, which donating to a large organisation wouldn't afford them. And of course the chance to share in the glory should the play or playwright they invest in become a big hit.

The writers themselves are initially sourced by a team of 'scouts' - regular fringe theatregoers recruited by Sofie from her extensive range of contacts. They scour fringe performances over a year of theatregoing for potential recipients. A shortlist is then put together and submitted to a panel of professional theatre industry folk, including actors, writers, directors and producers. Applicants submit one previous full length play, one proposal for a new play, a CV and an assessment of where they are at in their career and how the award would help them. They're then invited for an interview to discuss their ideas further. The panel then make the final decision - the patrons themselves aren't involved in that bit, they just stump up the cash once the decision has been made. Separation of powers and all that.

Although I was due to be on the panel last year I had to withdraw due to workload, but I've been supporting the scheme in spirit, in so far as I can (I gave an interview to Jane Edwardes of Time Out about it and have generally been bigging it up as a Good Idea.) I also did a bit of a speech at the Award's launch, in which i expanded on some of the arguments i made to Sofie in the initial interview which sparked the whole idea. I've reproduced the speech below. It would be interesting to see how many of you share my analysis.

I also drew up some guidelines for the Talent Scouts, trying to nail down certain criteria which would constitute a Good Play and a Promising Playwright. I'll post these soon, because it would be interesting to get a bit of a debate going about that, and to add to the list. But I don't want to overwhelm your lunch break with too many Theatrey Thoughts all at once, so here, for now, is the text of that speech:

"Thank you all for coming tonight, it’s great to see so many supporters of such an innovative scheme. And big thanks to Sofie for organising such an enjoyable evening.

I’m a full-time playwright and teacher of playwriting. As well as writing my own plays I do a lot of work with aspiring young writers near here [Wilton's Music Hall], in a school on Commercial Road. Sofie has flattered me into saying a few words tonight by telling me that the seeds for the Adopt-a-playwright scheme were sown during a conversation she had with me last year.

It was part of some research Sofie was doing for an article for The Stage, in which she looked at the biggest barriers facing beginner playwrights. I told her that the biggest of these was overwhelmingly finding the time and headspace to devote to a sustained period of playwriting, in order to get a script into a decent enough state to be taken seriously by theatres.

Why is this something that should be subsidised? The answer is simple: the system as it stands is discriminatory. To be fair, this is through neglect rather than design, but the fact remains that the outcome is that the British theatre establishment is still overwhelmingly dominated by white middle-class male graduates – and mostly from south-east England. Now these people can of course produce great plays, and I speak as one of them. But I’m eager to broaden the backgrounds of our playwrights in particular because as storytellers, we hold a unique position. Everything starts with us. We decide which stories are worth putting a frame around. Whose lives are worth putting on stage. If the people who hold this responsibility are from a narrow and broadly similar background then so is their raw material for drama - the life experience on which they draw.

One of the reasons I spend so much time working with communities in inner city London is to get round this problem. I get to meet people completely unlike me, and to whom I would never otherwise gain access. I try my best to immerse myself in their worlds, to absorb their language, hopes and dreams, fears and longings, and to do them justice in the stories I create. But I always worry that the end result will by definition come through my own cultural filter, and be less than satisfactory as a depiction of their truth. I would rather these communities were able to represent themselves.

Whether they’re a single mum from Peckham or a minicab driver from Tower Hamlets, there is one common reason why the system works against them: it places the onus of responsibility on the beginner writer to invest in their own play. They have to write unpaid, for some considerable amount of time, effectively on a speculative basis, in the hope that their efforts might be rewarded further down the line. Alongside a full-time job and all the other responsibilities of life, this is not a good system for producing great plays. It also means that only certain people will ever get to write plays: those who can afford to.

I’m not from a family with money. I’m middle class in the sense of having had cultural capital and the encouragement to pursue my creative ambitions, but the financial side of things was always left up to me. The greatest gift my mother passed on to me was resourcefulness; it got me a scholarship to study playwriting at Goldsmiths, and later won me a writing residency. But despite that even I almost didn’t make it. Only three years ago I had given up on ever being able to make a living in theatre; my second play had been turned down by almost every theatre in London and I had run out of money. I went off to re-train as a teacher. The same play then won one of the biggest awards in the UK. It was only that award, not dissimilar to the one you’re all here to support tonight, that rescued my career. This is why awards are important: they don’t have to worry about box office. They can invest in plays which make theatres nervous. But once a play or playwright is the recipient of an award, the risk for theatres is lessened. All of a sudden they have an award-winning product to sell.

Sometimes I wonder for every one of me, how many equally talented and deserving young playwrights fell by the wayside. It bothers me when some of the young writers I teach get excited about the possibility of doing this for a living. I think to myself ‘Can I honestly recommend this to you as a path to follow?’ And the answer is I can't. But is it really fair that only the wealthy or the lucky get to write plays?

As an audience member too, I want to see work from as broad a range of voices as possible, to reflect the world I live in as representatively as possible, and from previously unheard perspectives. At the moment the system (such as one exists at all) is geared up to ensure only a very narrow range makes it through. For me, theatre in a civilised society is an organ of democracy. It’s one of the few areas of collective self-examination which we have left. And like democracy, it isn't good for theatre when access to taking part in it is restricted, however unintentionally.

Sofie said earlier that this isn’t about box-ticking, and she’s right, it isn’t. It’s about fairness. We all support the subsidised theatre sector through our taxes so we should all have an equal stake in it. But more importantly it’s about representation of people and communities whose voices we hear too seldom. Apart from anything else, they are an untapped source of new and exciting stories for us all.

Sofie Mason’s Adopt-a-Playwright scheme is imaginative in its structure, elegant in its simplicity, and timely in its appearance. It’s an idea that feels like it has legs, and if successful, could go on to become a model for similar schemes up and down the country.

I recommend it to you without reservation."

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Friday 13 February 2009

Right then, I think six weekly posts are going to be about my limit. Thanks to all who commented on my previous musings and faintly existential crisis about what the point is of committing this drivel to the internet, but it’s nice to know that at least four of you have some vague interest in hearing it.

As it happens, I have more material than usual this month due to just having got back from America, where I was attending the US premiere of How To Disappear. It was great!

Not only was it the first foreign production I had been able to attend, it was also my first time ever to the United States. At the risk of sounding like an excitable adolescent who’s just lost his virginity, I have to say I absolutely loved it. I suppose like many Brits I had never got round to visiting before as I had always prioritised more exotic locations for holidays, and America feels so familiar because it’s there whenever you turn on the TV. But whilst you’re there, that odd sense of familiarity mixed with strangeness makes you feel a bit spaced out, like you’re in a film, which of course is how most of us experience America from outside, through drama. It was exciting and unnerving at the same time, like having taken a mild hallucinogen.

[Sorry, those of you who go to America all the time will have heard all this before. But indulge me, it was my first time.]

I was in Portland, Oregon – which lots of people told me was a great place to start as it’s one of the most cultured and liberal corners of the US. The whole city has such a relaxed atmosphere, lots of artists’ collectives and galleries with late night openings and play festivals and microbreweries and local organic food and a bookshop which took up a whole block. Everyone was so proud of their city, and not in an annoying small-minded way, but genuinely because it was such a brilliant place with such an exciting DIY can-do ethos, much like the people themselves.

There’s something very refreshing about the openness and honesty of Americans, and it really made me realise how, by comparison, our own culture is steeped in cynicism, sarcasm and world weariness. Now I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and don’t get me wrong, there’s times for being cynical and questioning about the modern world – not least for the humour it can generate. But what I loved about Americans and America was that everything is so much more simple over there.

I know what you’re thinking. Your cynical, sarcastic British mind is thinking I mean ‘simple’ as in ‘stupid’. But you see, that’s a sign of your world weary culture having turned you into a git. I mean ‘simple’ as in ‘straightforward’. Simple as in plain-speaking. Simple as in honest. Americans say what they mean and mean what they say. There’s no having to read between the lines, or catch an ironic tone of voice, or pay attention to raised eyebrows or knowing smirks or double meanings and ulterior motives. Things are much more as they appear over there. And you know what? It made me into a nicer person. Honestly. Because Americans are genuinely pleased to see you. All the time. And that was so infectious.

A typical conversation went something like this:

American: Hey, how you doing?
Me: I’m doing great!
American:Great!!
Me:Yeah!!How are you doing?
American:I’m awesome!!
Me:Yeah?!!
American:Yeah!!!!
Me:That’s awesome!!!!!!
American:Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me:I’ll have two coffees please.

And that was just in shops. Imagine how pleased the company were to see me.

[Those of you who don’t want to hear about the ins and outs of how great it all was should maybe skip the next bit. You have to remember that my Mum reads this stuff too.]

When I arrived in my hotel there was a hamper of local organic Portland produce on the bed, with a card and a signed photo of the cast. They’d already flown me over there, and paid for the hotel. That was just the start. There were dinners and lunches and drinks and more presents. At press night they made me stand in the auditorium while everyone clapped. The show got a standing ovation. A news report about it even ended up on Oregon’s state TV! (You can watch it here.) The whole experience was amazing. In fact I think I would go so far as to say it was awesome. I’ve certainly never had a British theatre company make such a fuss of me.

Portland Center Stage were the company producing my play, and it was totally fascinating to see how they’d interpreted it, entirely independently of me, and through their own cultural filter. The director, Rose Riordan, had done a stunning job - as well as being smart and savvy and an all-round pleasure to meet and hang out with; as I knew she would be ... I have a couple of spies in Portland who told me in advance how well regarded she is.

[Those of you who are bored of hearing about How To Disappear might want to skip to the end at this point, because I’m going to compare the two productions. Forgive me the indulgence but it was the first time I have ever seen more than one version of a play of mine, so I want to get it down for posterity. Hey, I’m a writer. This is how I order and digest the world.]

The US production was completely different to Ellie Jones’s productions in Sheffield and London. Both were slick and stylish, and benefitted from great casts and stunning lighting, sound and set designs. But the American version really was like watching an adaptation or a translation of the play. All the Americans I spoke to commented on how British it all felt to them, which of course it would – they did it all in British accents for one thing. The London and Essex place names naturally evoke a sense of the exotic for them, which always made me smile, especially applying that word to Essex. But to me there was something decidedly American about what they had chosen to highlight.

For example, much more of the play was directed out towards the audience – not just Charlie’s bits but many of Mike’s sections about the minutiae of exploiting bureaucratic systems. The effect was that it became much more about selling en masse the dream of escape and renewal - or the nightmare, as of course it turns out. Charlie’s big speech in the middle of Act One was much more nightmarish; unlike in Ellie’s version, where the rest of the cast were employed as an ensemble to act out the scenes as he describes them, Rose’s version stripped that right back and had Charlie speaking alone, with increasing desperation, as atonal sound effects and unsettling light flashes built up around him as his hysteria peaked. The difference between the two, looking back, was that Rose’s version emphasised the psychological intensity of Charlie’s breakdown, with the result that the play became much more a story of an individual man’s demons. Ellie’s interpretation, by contrast, emphasised that it was the world he inhabited that drove him mad. The physical language with which she illustrated this was perhaps more European in sensibility, whilst Rose’s lingered far more on Charlie’s loneliness and suffering – there was a good two-minute section after his speech where we watch him silently tremble as he binds his broken, bleeding knuckles in toilet roll.

An American friend I met up with out there said an interesting thing: ‘Americans are in love with individuals who push themselves to the extreme in search of themselves.’ This really seemed to fit with what I saw. Although Charlie doesn’t really have that many redeeming features, they liked him, and went with him, because he was the vehicle in which they could travel to vicariously explore their own darkest fantasies. They admired his pursuit of the truth about himself – even if that journey turned out to be ultimately meaningless.

In a way, the play had come home to roost, because the self-help books about identity change which I read while researching it (of which How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found had the best title – so I nicked it) were all American. There aren’t any British ones, so I had to read the US ones and extrapolate. But what was so great about them was that they somehow managed to link the whole dubious enterprise to the American dream, and the idea of ‘self-actualisation’, which is a much more significant tradition there than here. In changing your identity, they’d have you believe, you’re not running away from yourself but rediscovering and becoming who you really are.

[Those who are really bored should maybe call it a day here. I don’t think it’s working out. It’s not you, it’s me... I won’t mind if you want to start seeing some other bloggers. It might be for the best. I’ll still be in your browser history, maybe we should take some time out and see where we’re both at in a few months...]

The decisions about the set were great too. Both productions had chosen square-ish sets with lines going off to vanishing points, but whereas Ellen Cairns’s black walls brilliantly sloped to one side, suggesting a world off-kilter, Chris Rousseau’s clinical white box, criss-crossed with hard, straight lines suggested a world viewed through broken glass – and also a morgue. In this way the US production was more fatalistic from the outset, implying that Charlie is already in the morgue at the start of the play, and that everything from there on in is a fantasy. His fate is sealed before we even start.

(Are any chief examiners reading?Put this play on your syllabus, I’d write you a stonking education pack. )

There’s a slideshow of images here, and a great 'resource pack' the company put together with an amusing glossary at the end, translating all the UK-specific slang and cultural references. Whilst those of you who give a shit about things like critics can see what they thought of the show here, here and here.

I found out something else interesting while I was there. The play is on for 8 weeks (I know!!) and apparently the reason for that is because of the comparative lack of government funding of the arts in America. Companies have to be a lot more resourceful as a result, and go to great lengths to cultivate groups of subscribers (ie. season ticket holders who get discounts for booking for every show.) Although we do this in a small way over here, in the States it’s huge. PCS alone have 10,000 subscribers on their books! So the first 3 or 4 weeks of any run is entirely booked up with them. If the general public want to get a shot at seeing it then they have to come in weeks 5, 6, 7 and 8.But how great to have that long for a show to build up a head of steam! Over here the reviews have barely come out before the bloody thing has to close. I think we could learn a lot from that. Apart from anything else the royalties are so much better, providing greater security for artists which (dare I say it) may well encourage them to take a few more risks.

Talking of risks, I was lucky enough to be at PCS for the final week of Nancy Keystone’s epic Nazi Germany / NASA space programme / Civil Rights Movement drama Apollo, which had been 7 years in the making (7 years!) My god, what a show. It was a Complicité-style saga set over 30-odd years of American history, starting with the hunt for Nazi rocket scientists after the defeat of the Third Reich, how they were absolved of their crimes and granted US citizenship to come and work on the NASA space programme, through investigations and recriminations in the 60 and 70s – then, brilliantly, because NASA was based in Alabama, and cotton harvested by poor black workers in near-slavery conditions is an ingredient in rocket fuel, it drew a direct and provocative parallel between the treatment of the Jews under the Nazis and the recent history of black Americans. It was a stunning piece of visual poetry from start to finish, alive with big ideas, grand historical narratives, and breathtaking ambition. I loved every second of its 3 and a half hours. I was so impressed that a theatre company would invest over such a long time (7 years!) in a show like that, with 20 in the cast, a challengingly complex form, and a tough message for an American audience to hear. I can’t think of a comparable show or process over here (7 years!) The sheer scale and brilliance of it all made me a bit sad that we don’t take such risks any more (if we ever did).

Only in America.

I will definitely be going back.

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Thursday 18 December 2008

I’m back! Alright, alright calm down, don’t all shout at once. Let me get my coat off. One of you put the kettle on would you, I’m parched. Mine’s an Earl Grey, milk no sugar.

Ooh, it’s cold in here, did someone switch the heating off? And look at that dust! And is that … can I smell … mothballs?

Well, what a year it’s been. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my life. Where to start?

I suppose it all kicked off in October last year, with a 9-week turnaround to write a contemporary Jacobean revenge tragedy for Liquid Theatre. As regular readers will recall, that one had been in the pipeline for about 2 years, the result of a long ACE-funded research and development process. Well, now the four of us who worked on it have a stunning second draft of CHIMERAS, my first verse drama for adults, and an apocalyptic epic for our times. (Click HERE for a sneak preview.) We had a star-studded cast (including Ruth Wilson, Peter Polycarpou, Sylvestra le Touzel and Corin Redgrave among other luminaries – I think they sort of saw it as their charity work) anyway, they gave it a week’s workshop and invited reading at the Old Vic in April. Liquid Theatre are currently seeking co-producers for a 2010 tour (expressions of interest on a postcard please…)

Then I wrote my first radio play, CAESAR PRICE OUR LORD, for BBC Radio 4. That was great, I love radio, and will certainly be doing more of it. If you ever get the chance, go to a recording of one (best if it’s yours obviously); there’s a whole cavernous warehouse in the depths of the BBC Radio building in Manchester dedicated entirely to making and recording different types of noises. It’s brilliant what they can do. Mine contained the stage direction ‘The baby slithers out’. That stumped them for a while, but they ended up doing it with Fairy liquid on squidgy hands very close to the microphone. Amazing.

Then I wrote UNSTATED for the Red Room at Southwark Playhouse, a bit of an experimental multimedia devised piece about immigration and asylum. The research for that was pretty full-on. I visited a Nigerian refugee under lock and key at Harmondsworth detention centre, and heard how he had been beaten up by guards for leading a protest (in the UK I mean, we don’t think of this stuff as happening over here, but it does.) I wrote a Guardian theatre blog about it, and briefly became involved in the campaign to release him, but the Home Office nipped that in the bud by fast-tracking his deportation. He was in fear of his life in Lagos. I haven’t heard from him since.

During all this I was of course still doing almost three days a week at Mulberry School as their writer-in-residence, teaching playwriting to students and staff, and writing them another play for the Edinburgh Fringe, STOLEN SECRETS. The girls ended up getting a rave four-star review in The Scotsman, and as ever I got all proud and a bit paternal.

My 2006 play for teenagers, LOCKED IN, won the runners-up prize in this year’s Brian Way Award and was revived by Half Moon Theatre for another national tour (there’s a myspace page for the show here – I love the interactivity with the audience, maybe all shows should do this?).

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND received its New Zealand, Australian and London premieres, the London run beautifully directed at Southwark Playhouse by the ever-wonderful Ellie Jones – with whom I also embarked on a new project for the 2010 Brighton Festival developing a play to take place in a spooky disused hospital… Watch this space.

HOW TO DISAPPEAR’S American premiere at Portland Center Stage in Oregon is now booking and I’ll be heading over there in January for the opening – my first trip ever to the US of A and just in time for that nice Mr. Obama’s historic inauguration.

As if that wasn’t enough, one of my earliest projects for Mulberry School, EAST END TALES, was published in a Methuen anthology of ensemble plays for teenagers this year. It’s a great collection, the first of its kind, and all the plays are really worth a look whether you work with teenagers or not (you can read more here).

On top of all that I’ve been doing regular talks, seminars and workshops for Goldsmiths College, Birmingham University, Central School, Birmingham Rep, Boston University … the list goes on.

Oh, and I moved house.

All of which I hope goes some way towards explaining my prolonged absence. I would apologise and say it won’t happen again, but I can’t promise it won’t, and besides, the theatrical blogosphere seems to have mushroomed recently, so there are plenty of other interesting folks to keep you stimulated, entertained and informed. I barely feel part of it any more.

Which leads me onto the two main questions I wanted to ask today: First, I am hopelessly out of touch with theatre blogs and bloggers, half the sites on my links list are inactive and I basically need a re-education about what’s out there. Can you help? Please send me your own suggestions for what you consider to be the best theatre blogs. I keep up with Guardian blogs of course, and the ever-wonderful West End Whingers are going from strength to strength. But apart from that I seriously need to get up to speed with the shifting terrain. Maybe you write a theatre blog of your own, if so send me the link, I’ll check it out and if I like it add you to my new and revised links list.

And my second question is very much linked to the first. Given the exciting explosion of online theatre chat, What Is This Blog For ???

Perhaps those of you that are better read than me can tell me: where are the gaps in the existing online theatre coverage? What is and isn’t being covered? Which perspectives are over- or under-represented? Where can I slot in to the teeming pool of cyber thesp thought?

Because it’s a bit shit really if this blog is just going to become an announcement board for my latest shows, which it has this year. That barely justifies its existence and doesn’t make it any different from the News section of my website.

Ideally I would like for it to be a forum for fairly in-depth articles about different aspects of the industry, but if my 2009 workload turns out to be anything like 2008’s then that won’t be remotely possible.

So I wanted to ask you, my dear readers (both of you), what would YOU like it to be?

Remember that I don’t do theatre reviews. Apart from the fact that I no longer live in London and don’t get to see nearly as much theatre as I used to, as a fellow theatre practitioner it’s nigh on impossible to criticise your peer’s work without pissing people off. And then there’s the awful, inescapable, invidious, emasculating assumption that any negative remarks are written with the subtext that you are saying ‘I don’t make these mistakes, my work is better than yours’.

So I don’t do reviews.

But what can I do? Is there even a place for theatre blogs written by actual theatre practitioners when we are so neutered in what we can say about each other and each other’s work? Perhaps we’d be better off maintaining a mysterious silence, communicating only through our cryptic scripts. Most theatre blogs nowadays seem to be by enthusiastic theatregoers, all critics of varying ranges of experience and professionalism, but who stay well away from artistic practice themselves. Is that just an inevitable side effect of the form of the blog? Is there any room or even any appetite for a blog by a playwright? Are you interested in hearing about the process from an inside perspective?

Because it does feel slightly narcissistic to bang on about my own work in post after post, but at least I know I’m not going to offend myself. But even semi-regular posts about plays I’m working on require a fair amount of commitment if they’re to be worth reading, which is hard when you’re busy creating the work itself. So it would be nice to know there is an appetite for it. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe the tumbleweed will waft through my comments box and that will be that. Or maybe one of you will come up with a suggestion that reinvigorates this whole tired enterprise.

The choice, as they say, is yours. I could even take requests. (Now there’s a thought.)

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Sunday 19 October

I've done an audio interview with theatre critic Aleks Sierz for the website TheatreVoice.com.  It's in two halves, the first on the development and journey of How To Disappear, the second on new writing in general and more on some of my work for teenagers for Half Moon Theatre and Mulberry School.  You can listen to both halves here.

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Friday 03 October

I thought leaving London would mean life calms down a bit - fat chance! Only just got time to direct you to Dominic Cavendish's preview feature on How To Disappear before dashing off again ... sorry.

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Monday 01 September

Can't stop - frantically househunting - but wanted to let you know that two of my plays are being revived this autumn and currently booking. HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND will be on at Southwark Playhouse in October, directed by the ever-wonderful Ellie Jones who was in charge of its original sell-out run at Sheffield Crucible last year. You can read more and book tickets here.

On top of that Half Moon Young People's Theatre are reviving my first play for teenagers LOCKED IN, and taking it on another national tour. The original cast from its 2006 tour will be overseen by the brilliant Angela Michaels, another one who did a great job first time round. Read more or book tickets here.

I've never had a play revived before, so expect some thoughts at some point on what it's like second time round. That is, as soon as I've paused entire my life, put it into boxes, transported it 70 miles and unpacked it again.

I hate moving house.

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Weds 13 August

STOLEN SECRETS has got a 4 star rave review in today's Scotsman! Very chuffed. You can read it here.

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Weds 6 August 2008

STOLEN SECRETS, my latest play for Mulberry School opens at the Edinburgh Fringe this coming Monday 11th August, and runs until the 16th August. It's already been featured in Fringe previews by Lyn Gardner here, and View From The Stalls here.

Read more about the show here, or book tickets here.

Sorry, I know this blog has turned into not much more than a billboard for my latest productions, but that's the kind of year I'm having. Can't complain and all that, but I will try and get back to blogging more about, you know, stuff, just as soon as I get my life back.

In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the shows.

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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.

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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.