This is the first blog of ten that will appear between now and early July, as a public engagement element of a funded playwriting project supported by Arts Council England and the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.
Blog 1 first appeared in Lane’s List on February 16th 2015.
I think every writer will experience moments in their careers where they feel a ‘jolt’ in their process: a sudden focusing of will or understanding of craft; a moment where the pressure cranks up, or time threatens to curb creativity and as a result, new and bold writing emerges; maybe it’s sheer frustration or – in some cases – a slice of good fortune or self-made opportunity that allows you to truly move forwards in your practice.
I wrote back in November about my self-created (i.e. self-paid, self-protected and inescapably high-pressured) and then prematurely aborted writing week at a theatre, where the concrete advice I was finally given was to take a breather and simply apply for the money from the sources that could offer it – namely the Peggy Ramsay Foundation and Arts Council England – and attempt to ensure that I was in fact spending the deserved amount of time that was needed on my ideas, rather than hurtling through them at an unfeasibly rash rate of knots.
So with partners on board (offering space and advice but no ready cash to pay my fee), I threw an Arts Council bid together in a fortnight and sent it off, fingers crossed.
Last week everything finally came through and I now have seven paid weeks on attachment in a theatre to write a play that begins solely with what I want to write: no brief coming from above, no artistic policy hanging over me, no cast size to limit down (or to reach up to, as is so often the case with a lot of my young company writing), no process shaped by a statutory participatory element, no tiny budget on which to make do and hurry through, no specific audience age range, no source text to adapt, no collaborative processes to lead.
All of the above in some way characterise everything I’ve written since September 2008, which was the last time I sat down and wrote a play entirely speculatively with just passion and desire in my gut, when I had something I really wanted to shout about. And that play didn’t really emerge with a developed life until the beginning of last year.
So from mid-March until mid-July (with the slight interruption of other existing work, and the bigger joyous interruption of a month’s self-imposed paternity for a new baby on the 1st May) it’ll be just me, a room, my brain, a laptop, a bunch of flipchart paper and marker pens and a few meetings with a dramaturg to help me rein in and focus.
I have no more excuses.
And before this scheduled playwriting time begins, I need to spend some time getting into gear early: getting clearer about what and where I am now as a writer, what my voice is, what my desires are and how I want to go about writing.
I’ve written about serendipity in a process before, but I was fortunate enough to have recently received a place on a HighTide Playwriting Workshop with director of curious directive Jack Lowe, which took place on the 14th February at the Bristol Old Vic.
What was the first third of the workshop focused on? Knowing your voice as an artist.
Thanks, playwriting angels.
Jack had big questions for us to consider – most of which I’m still pondering – but I thought it might be useful to communicate some of his offerings here. They’re going to form a very loose framework around my freer thinking between now and mid-March, and I trust that they’re going to help shape some of my early instinctive choices.
We were asked to think about what might shape our unique ‘voice’ by considering our Past, Present and Future.
Past: what were your childhood and teenage literary and cultural references? What did you constantly re-read? What did you turn to for help or guidance? What frightened you and why? When did you read these books or engage with these influences and where – in your room? At school? In secret?
Present: what do you turn to now to locate yourself in the world? Which news streams or paper-based media? What music or lyrics? Which radio or television programmes? What are your publicly-known tastes and what are your guilty pleasures?
Future: who are you seeking to emulate in the future? What do you want your writing to become and where is it pushing out to? What are your aspirations for your writing and why?
One exercise had us in pairs seeking out methodologies for deciphering other people’s voices: could we find it by looking at family heirlooms, rootling through old schoolbags, scrolling through the ‘last called’ section of a phone, unpicking a social media stream…?
Other advice included a list of tasks and questions to consider before sitting down to write your next play, including:
1. What was the last play you wrote? Read it back, and try not to replicate. Push forwards.
2. The recent past of other plays: what’s out there? What’s been put on? Where do you fit?
3. Collecting visual stimuli– from abstract to photographic, what best expresses your idea?
4. Why?
5. How far is your writing showing your greatest strengths?
It’s a far from exhaustive toolkit, but these alone were enough to kick me off in the workshop and I can’t wait to revisit the past / present / future ideas over a few hours – really scrutinising the answers to see if I really know where I’m coming from, where I’m at and where I’m going.
I remember when I received my first ever paid commission to write (for a teenage audience in fact, in 2007) and the very pressure of the money radically changed my approach.
I thought if somebody finally felt I was worth the cash, I’d better ratchet up my process rather than randomly scrabbling around making stuff up on a whim. I did, and that play is still one of the best things I’ve written.
I feel like I’ve come back full circle eight years later: a sudden opportunity, paid time, my creativity being invested in on trust. It’s the beginning of a new journey, and it’s just the kind of jolt that my playwriting persona needs – a sit down with a coffee, a notebook and two solid questions from a man who looks undeniably like that dramaturg in the mirror who’s spent the last thirteen years asking lots of other playwrights:
What exactly is your voice, and why do you need to share this story now?
