/ Don't hate the media, become the media.Jello Biafra

What more could be done to continue opening up creative spaces to new and emerging voices in theatre? 

 

This is an increasingly difficult question given the perilous economic climate. Everything has a broader cost implication. However, theatre as a medium runs the risk of becoming obsolete if it doesn’t incorporate new views and perspectives. A question I’ve been asking myself and writer friends around my age in their late 30’s is if they were in their early twenties coming up, would they turn their hand to dramatic writing or would they take the path of say Gary’s Economics or Ash Sarkar. Essentially, would they choose an option where they are able to present their perspective and world view with little to no overhead, reacting to modern events in real time. The beauty of dramatic writing is or should be that it exists in a more nuanced space than that straight to camera paradigm. But are audiences still seeking that from their art or politics? I don’t know. 

 

The paradox has been that as theatre became more diverse, it created a market where more people had a debut play but are less likely to have a follow up. Whereas in times previous, a smaller coterie of writers were able to fortify longer careers by having several plays that didn’t necessarily have to be huge successes every time for theatres to retain faith in the author. 

 

I think one solution is things like the Open Submission Festival. Essentially, lower stakes opportunities to showcase new work. Another idea could be producing more one act plays. An evening of three one act plays could be sold by placing new work by an established writer in the middle of work by two newer writers. That way there is a pull for the audience who might want to see a short thing by say David Hare, and it gives the newer voices a chance to be in rehearsal room and hone their craft by seeing their work in front of an audience. It removes the do or die pressure that comes with a full-play commission but means by the time the writer does get their big piece on, they are quite seasoned. It could also alleviate the retention problem that comes after the debut, because writers could write a shorter thing or a few shorter things to maintain that relationship with writing for stage. 

 

Do you recall the first piece of theatre you saw that gave you the bug? 

 

I didn’t grow up going to the theatre. I came into theatre mostly through reading play texts as a tool to improve my dramatic writing. I would say now that my favourite writers are more likely to come from the stage than any other medium. Arthur Miller’s Plays: Volume 1 is a collection I returned to many times, long before I ever saw any staging of his work. Jerusalem may have been the first modern play I saw that felt as rich as the authors I had come to through reading. I’ve seen a few productions over the years that have given me that same feeling and it’s really quite transcendent. It reduces me to a childlike state. 

 

What where the biggest challenges you faced writing Working Men?

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Time. 

 

I was working in social housing as a Quantity Surveyor from 8-4, so there was great difficulty in finding pockets of time to write it properly. I did a lot of reading around the subject at first. I’m not sure how much of that was procrastination, or because I wanted to understand what I was writing about in its entirety. To me it wasn’t enough to have grown up on a council estate or even to be working in that field. I read Estates: An intimate history by Lynsey Hanley, Municipal Dreams by John Broughton and Council Housing and Culture by Alison Ravetz. They provided me with a historical context. 

 

There was an internal conflict when it came to writing the characters. I was aware that there was a more palatable version of the play, but it wouldn’t have been truly reflective of what I was hearing and seeing while working on site. I knew the truth would be knottier and wouldn’t necessarily chime with what I perceived to be the current trends of theatre. Still, I had to go in that direction for the better of the play and just hope that someone understood what I meant.