Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Theatre West: The A - Z of Writing

Ann Stiddard of Theatre West explains the company's approach to the latest season, supporting ambition, imagination and artistic talent in the South West.

Last December found Alison Comley and me, as co-Artistic Directors of Theatre West, luxuriating in the warm afterglow of a successful season.

Our Picture This project – where we randomly allocated photographs to writers to use as the impetus for new plays – had delivered not only five cracking productions and three script-in-hand readings, but also a really inspiring weekend where script extracts were read from plays by 40 writers from around the region.

There was only one problem – what now? As we are not a National Portfolio Organisation with regular funding, every one of our applications for Grants for the Arts has to have a new and different focus. We wanted a project that would build on the most successful elements of Picture This.

The ‘story’ of the whole project really caught people’s imaginations: from us buying the photos in Berlin to the writers pulling an image from a hat. Both writers and audience found this engaging, and its cohesion worked really well from a marketing perspective. The public readings of the short extracts also worked in not only giving the writers the opportunity to hear what was working, but also in engaging the public in the project at an early stage. Finally the social aspect - writing can be a solitary business, and our participants welcomed the opportunity to meet with other writers and to be involved in a common activity.

In addition we wanted a project that would span two years, to enable us to forward plan with funding in place. As a very small company (with precisely zero employees) the luxury of knowing that we have funding in place for two seasons cannot be underestimated. Not only does it free up time that would otherwise be spent planning budgets and filling out funding applications, but it also enables us to undertake a project in which we can work with writers who will benefit from a longer development time than we usually offer.

After a few false starts (and some genuinely awful ideas) we settled on The A-Z of Writing: a project that would use specific locations randomly allocated from the Bristol A-Z to give writers a starting point. There would be two groups: Group One working on scripts for 2012, and Group Two concentrating on plays for 2013.

In order to spread our net wide, we asked six organisations around the region to nominate writers who they thought would most benefit from this opportunity. This meant we would be working with a smaller pool of writers, but with the opportunity to develop some longer term relationships with them, improving the quality of our work.

We have worked on past projects with Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory Script Space and BBC and we were delighted to include this year Cheltenham Everyman’s Writers' Lab, the Writers’ Forum in Bristol and The Bike Shed in Exeter. In addition to those nominations, Theatre West included a number of writers who had narrowly missed being included in the last two Theatre West seasons. In total we approached 40 local writers and 29 of them took up the challenge.

A dismal May Bank Holiday Monday found most of those 29 at the Hen and Chicken in Southville, pulling ping-pong balls from three buckets to select a random square on a random page of the Bristol A-Z. They then set forth in pairs to visit their locations and make some short films to record their experience: all available to be viewed on You Tube. Our intrepid writers trudged the rain-sodden streets from Avonmouth to Withywood and from Inn’s Court to Blaize Castle, returning in various states of sogginess to a well-earned pizza.

Hungry Writers Lap Up Ideas and Pizza
At this point the writers went off to... well, write. Group One had six weeks to complete a 1500 word extract and a treatment for the play they’d like to write – and there was no leeway. On Sat 23rd June, 47 days after first visiting their locations, we were at The Brewery with a panel, a bunch of actors and an audience listening to a truly diverse group of scripts. The audience, actors and writers got to cast a vote for their favourite and a panel composed of me, Alison and representatives from some of our partner organisations had some long, hard discussions after each reading.

It was no easy feat but we eventually arrived at a shortlist of eight and these writers are now working with a range of support on their first drafts:

Timothy X Atack - Steady State
Steve Hennessey - Sleep Lane
David Lane - Rush
Joe Ledbury - Cake
Shaun McCarthy - Palm Island
Katherine Mitchell - Items of Value
Shiona Morton - AWOL
Alice Nicholas - Them & Us

After more readings in late August we will eventually choose five of these to produce and the other three will be performed as script in hand readings. The writers whose plays didn’t get through to the final eight have been offered the opportunity to submit short plays, which will be produced as curtain raisers during this year’s season.

The second group is also hard at it, each writer preparing (with some dramaturgical support) a curtain raiser to be performed during the season. Next year this group will go on to participate in a similar process as Group One – meaning another season’s work will have had its genesis with some people pulling ping-pong balls from buckets on a very rainy afternoon in Southville.

We hope that Theatre West fulfils a unique role in the region by marrying focus on the development of new writing with the opportunity to actually get work produced and put in front of a live audience with all the thrills and spills that brings. As we develop as a company, we want to continually raise the level of the work so that we contribute towards the bigger picture for new writing and really put the talent in the South West on the map.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Truth About Youth

Playwright Katherine Mitchell reports on a valuable new experience with young people at the Princes Trust

“Would you be interested in working as a writer/dramaturg on a Princes Trust project at Bristol Old Vic?”

Hell yeah.

My mouth kicked in faster than my brain. On the one hand: fantastic opportunity, encompassing several things I’d been wanting to try – working with young people, working at Bristol Old Vic, working with people who weren’t part of the traditional theatre (read “privileged”) culture, and working as a dramaturg.

On the other hand: I didn’t have any experience of working with young people, and I’d never been a dramaturg before. I immediately resolved to just deal with the inevitable Imposter Syndrome and dive right in, knowing I’d emerge at the other side stronger for having done so.

The Truth About Youth is a project funded by The Co-operative Foundation, partnered with various organizations. The aim is to take young people age 16-25 who aren’t in education, employment or training and engage them on a creative project that has at its heart the aim of challenging and improving public perceptions about young people.

With director Jesse Jones leading the group and Michael Melican (Mr Woodnote, check him out on YouTube) in charge of music, we had three weeks to put together a show with 10 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who had no professional experience of performing.

Before it started I begged David Lane for advice, knowing that he had worked on similar projects. David’s advice included:

·         Making sure to listen to everyone and value their contributions.
·         Keeping a record of all the material that gets produced.
·         The narrative might be about how we use the material to construct a journey for the audience rather than a conventional linear story.

From the start, Jesse and I were determined that the final piece should be driven by the young people; it should be their words and stories, not ours. My aim as writer was to not write, but to pull out the words from the participants, to find ways of creating a safe and experimental space for them to express themselves.

Another concern was to avoid making anyone feel awkward about a lack of basic literacy skills, but this turned out not to be a big issue. One girl preferred to dictate (and also not to read aloud), while others needed encouragement, unable to believe that their words and ideas were anything more than stupid.

It was often more appropriate for me to sit one-one-one and ask the right questions than to ask people to write on a given topic, although several members of the group wrote texts that were woven into the play. My frantic, messy handwriting kept these “interviews” informal whereas an audio/video recording might make people feel self-conscious, but this might be my personal preference; some might welcome the chance to record themselves.

When it came to writing exercises I learned that it was no good borrowing an exercise from someone else to throw into the mix unless I knew the reason why I was doing it. Sounds obvious, but duh! It’s all too easy to think “Well I’ll start off with that one as a warm up, then get them to do this, then that,” without thinking about why you’re doing it. The fact that it’s an exercise you did on a workshop once and enjoyed isn’t going to cut it in these circumstances.

The exercises that worked the best were those I’d created for the group and which fulfilled a purpose in constructing the play. Halfway through week two we realised we didn’t have any positives emerging from the group; cue Awesome, an exercise in completing sentences that all began with variations of “I’m good at…” (details here).

This led to what might be my favourite scene in the finished piece, what we called the reversed rinse-off; two groups of hoodied youths squaring up for a verbal fight, which then became a trade-off in compliments… You totally rock at facing your fears / You should be proud of how far you’ve come / You are unbelievably brilliant at flipping pancakes.

David’s advice about keeping a record of all the material that was being amassed was definitely a crucial piece of information. Pry those crumpled pieces of paper out of their sweaty paws before they leave the room, otherwise you’ll likely never see them again. Jot down what happens in the rehearsal room (as it happens), whether verbal or physical, song lyrics, suggestions; buy yourself a nice shiny new folder to put it all in because you are going to be drowning in little pieces of paper covered with various scrawled notes.

Scan the room for paper before you leave, and check the bin; someone else’s version of cleaning up might just involve dumping that messy pile of paper straight into the trash (oh yes they did). Trust me, I don’t have OCD (and the state of my house right now will attest to that) – but it will be worth it when you’re asked “Mmm…. Do you still have that lyric I wrote?” two days before the performance.

When it came to assembling the script, it was clear that the fictional scenes that had been devised were nowhere near as strong as the aspects where the young people were telling it like it is, whether through song, movement or words. I created a loose structure, following a through-line of emotion, a journey from self-doubt to burgeoning confidence.

Perhaps it sounds extravagant to suggest that this reflected their experience in the rehearsal room, but having watched them confront their fears and challenge themselves it seemed apt. I was blown away by the beauty, honesty and courage of the responses by the young people, whether verbal or written. To watch the final performance and see them all shining on stage, owning the material, made me feel like a proud mother. One young woman who had been struggling with a lack of self-confidence and panic attacks was still shining several hours later.

“You took what we said and made it into a play,” she said, and thanked me. Whatever else I achieve in the theatre, that’s a moment I’m going to hold on to.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Making Ends Meet - Payment for Playwrights

Shaun McCarthy responds to David Lockwood's Devoted and Disgruntled blog, exploring payment for playwrights, how theatres engage with them and what the future might hold.

As a working writer who is indeed a bit disgruntled, though very much enjoying the Bristol theatre scene as a punter (and the wider UK scene as an ACE Theatre Assessor, travelling to see lots of great work) my issue with the business is simple, but probably un-resolvable and certainly not intended to be freighted with blame.

The economics of new writing in this country simply doesn't allow for more than - what? - 200 - 300 playwrights nationwide to make a decent full time living from their writing. I did not attend the Devoted and Disgruntled gig because I was heading back to Europe to work (in drama education) the only place that currently employs me. I have not earned a penny from my theatre practice from any organisation in Bristol for a decade. I don't blame UK theatres for this, I know how they have to make their budgets work. 

Yet the theatre scene overall, West End and even top tier funded theatre, is in economic good health. There is money in the world of live performance, but not so much in new writing. Of course, wishing some form of trickle down subsidy for new writers who might go on make work to fill theatres is about as realistic as saying there is government money to retain housing benefit for the under 25s if we stop pouring money into an unwin-able war in Afghanistan. Funds are not instantly transferable.

To me, it appears that the theatre scene is, if not in all ways ideal, busy at most levels that I experience it. I have been to shows in Stratford, Bristol, London, Corsham (really!) and Newbury recently - all were sold out. (Did I just pick popular nights? I don't think so.) 

Bristol offers many great opportunities for writers to have new plays put on, and read, in venues that attract good audiences. Most of these chances to try out new work are unpaid. So, who can afford to spend six months writing a play for no money? People with working partners, surviving and wealthy parents, personal private incomes, the ability to exist on air or other jobs?

I have been fortunate enough in the past to have periods when I could write full time. (And I will do so again in the near future, so I am not bailing out of the new plays business just yet.) I know just how much being properly funded as a professional enhanced my creative practice, and made me a better writer for a theatre company to work with in production.

On the above point, and chiming with David (Lockwood's) comment about 'thanks but' letters from the big London new writing theatres, I was fortunate enough last year to receive G for A funding to write a play set on a building site. It was - me being an unreformed old leftie - an attack on right wing social and economic values and featured builders making casual racist and sexist remarks. (They were black characters by the way.)

Rod Dixon at Red Ladder theatre loved the play and did as much as his cash strapped company could to promote it to other theatres. Both Hampstead and the Royal Court said (of course) 'thanks but' but interestingly both picked up on the sexism and racism saying that of course people don't behave like that any more. Yes they do! Yes they do in the real world outside a funded theatre! I've worked on the buildings! I have recent experience of spending my days with a groundworks gang. (Don't ask.)

Perhaps, just perhaps, those people who can work their way up through unpaid internships to the literary departments of such big theatres don't have experience of the world of my play. Are we heading towards a theatre that, because it cannot pay all its creatives, will become the preserve of the economically cushioned middle classes? Limited, however unintentionally, to their view of the 'real world'? This anecdote is slim evidence, and I have stronger personal evidence the reverse: of companies like the Bike Shed who have made a brilliant theatre that is potentially receptive to all forms of new writing.

But just as in other areas of public life where we are retreating to an old school, class rigid system, I think this might be where large areas of theatre might drift off to if we are not careful. (I was in RADA last month – it looked and sounded like the final year of a private and expensive school. I am sure the students will all be great actors but they didn’t exactly reflect the full spectrum of socio-economic groups in the UK.)

I don't have an answer for this dilemma and should have liked to have aired it at Tobacco Factory had I not had to take my writer's hat off and get on a plane to Luxembourg. (Luxembourg is not as bad as it sounds!). I have attended events similar to Devoted and Disgruntled where urgent issues about UK theatre have been discussed.

Cynically, I usually note that those most keen to promote and participate in these events are administrators and facilitators on salaries. Writers are increasingly rare attendees - probably because we are off somewhere outside of theatre earning a wage. I know I am not the only unpaid attendee who does this type of audit.

So while I feel there is a huge amount of great theatre being made and shown in the UK, I do wonder how the role of the writer is changing in many theatre environments, and whether it is heading in a direction that I feel happy about. If you have the reputation (and talent obviously) of a Jez Butterworth or a David Greig then the future surely contains chances for you to write the plays you truly believe in and find a theatre ready to produce.

If you’re one of the rest of us then you will, I think, look forward to many more ‘thanks but’ letters from the big new writing theatres, while getting invitations to compete to be commissioned to devise a play about X alongside a director (fine) and probably one or even more creative producers. At this point, for me, much of what makes playwriting a joy becomes functional: the writer as facilitator. I see the writer’s role being ultimately devalued by this process, while understanding for theatres this is probably the way forward on constantly shrinking budgets.

It’s not of course all doom and gloom. There is a middle ground; for example, Theatre West’s invitations to writers to creatively respond to the broadest of briefs offered to provide a general overall shape to a season. But such opportunities are few and far between.

So (again!) I ask playwrights who are working for free why they are doing it: where do they think writing without financial reward is leading them and the business? Is it at essence, acquiring the status of a hobby, no more than building model railways or collecting stamps?

Please share your answers.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Devoted and Disgruntled Roadshow - Bristol Reflections



The Bike Shed Theatre's Artistic Director, David Lockwood, offers his reflections on one of three South West stops on the D&D Roadshow.

We trundled up the motorway from Exeter’s Bike Shed Theatre and Kaleider at the end of June for the bright artistic lights of Bristol and the Tobacco Factory Theatre. This promised land is often talked about in Devon. What can we learn? How can we be more like it? Or should we be forging our own route?

Devoted and Disgruntled is an open space event for discussion by those who love theatre and wish it was better. For a city with a thriving theatrical scene, you’d assume Bristolians love theatre. Yet at the event on the last weekend of June, half of the forty-odd people attending came from outside the city. The reason? Bristol is sorted. Surely.

This seemed to be the consensus: Bristol is used to these sorts of discussions, a lot of artists are out making work (the event unfortunately coincided with the Up To Nature festival in Gloucestershire), there is a lot of devotion and not much disgruntlement. This is one interpretation.

But I think there is another.

Playwrights were a bit thin on the ground. It was wonderful to meet Martin Lytton from Cheltenham – a member of the industrious Everyman Writers’ Lab – and to see the ever-delightful Gill Kirk from Bath. We sat together in a conversation about political theatre, which touched on the ideas of whether it was acceptable to depress people when their budgets are already being squeezed. Saturday’s conversation was dominated with questions like this, darting around the issues, aiming to tackle timely subjects, such as artists not getting paid whilst others in the arts do. This is old news for the playwright, most of whom rarely get paid for their work. 

And then Sunday came round. A discussion about balancing permanence (buildings) and creativity (companies) drifted - via starlings - to the writer as collaborator and the initial devisor in a longer process. For Shakespeare, this goes back 400 years. For Martin Lytton and Gill Kirk, it may only be a few months. The age of the writer sat at their typewriter creating a masterpiece in which a comma may not be removed seems over. The argument put forward was that this period was a blip in a longer history of greater collaboration. 

I like this idea. I like having the writer in the room when I direct their plays. I like being able to ask them questions about their work. And I value their input in the realisation of the production. But Sunday’s conversation concerned me.

I worry that some writers feel excluded from the creation of theatre these days. There may appear to be a club in which theatre-makers get together and create things whilst writers send scripts to the Bristol Old Vic, Royal Court and Soho, receiving replies saying ‘thanks but...’. So the theatre-makers go to a Devoted and Disgruntled event, whilst the writers stay at home tweaking their covering letters.

Another conversation over the weekend: do titles matter? In recent years, theatre-makers in this country have had portfolio careers. The age of expecting an actor just to act, a director to direct, seems to be drawing to a close. And maybe we should expect writers to be more part of the process and less on the outside.

The risk, of course, is a confused mush, a jack-of-all-trades industry where the skilled writer is so busy making costumes and focusing the lights that they’re not fine-tuning the dialogue. But then, Shakespeare was also an actor and part-owner of his theatre.

One of the few rules of open space is ‘whoever comes are the right people’. I had two conversations in the evening of Saturday. One was with Annette Chown (actor, blogger, playwright) and one with Shaun McCarthy (playwright). One of them was at the open space, one wasn’t. One was devoted, one was disgruntled. You can’t change things if you’re not part of the conversation. Maybe the invitation needed to be more open. And, to get the best theatre, that invitation needs to be accepted.

As I trundle back down the motorway to Exeter, mentally exhausted from the discussions, physically exhausted from Shaun McCarthy’s hospitality, I’m left with this thought. In some ways, Bristol is sorted. In others, it is not. But it has set certain things in stone which are hard to break. Exeter isn’t sorted.

To borrow from Tony Blair (sorry): “The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us.” What should we do differently in Exeter? And how can we include writers in this process?

Exeter is hosting an open space as part of Devoted & Disgruntled’s roadshow on the 1st and 2nd September. Writers are welcome.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Why Wait? Writer-Led Company Inkling Productions Reflect

Tom Hunt as Theo in LABYRINTH

The group of us (fourteen writers) who did the last two-year Creative Writing for Performance course at the University of Bristol (graduating 2010) wanted to continue to give each other support in our writing. We’ve been meeting once a month for almost another two years with two produced writing projects to our credit and a third in the wings. I could probably write a volume on what we’ve learned but will try to be brief.

We became Inkling Productions after our proposal was chosen for the Barnstaple Fringe Festival a year ago. We suddenly had a play to write AND produce. For Loose Tongues (2011), five writers wrote six monologues and I volunteered to direct, inter-cutting the monologues, with help from group members, for the final play.  This went on to Tisbury Festival and a run at the Hen and Chicken in Bristol and is being revived this year for Exeter Fringe and a short run at the Cornerhouse in Frome with the support of Nevertheless Productions. Meeting people and making connections was key to these things happening.

Our second play Labyrinth (2012) was created in response to a request from an Inkling member for a stimulating performance piece suitable for The Dean: a Gloucester centre for brain-damaged people. The script was loosely written and then devised by the actors and director. The show was sold-out at Bordeaux Quay for our public Bristol performance and was a hit at The Dean. It will also play at Exeter Fringe, but we’d like to take it to care homes, schools and other venues (see production woes). Our third play Twisted Yarns is in the revising stage.

We learned by sitting in on rehearsals that our writing wasn’t so precious. With actors and a director questioning the text we became more flexible at writing for actors. Also collaboration is a good experience, but some of us want to get back to writing as individuals. As a director I learned it’s easier to work with two to three writers rather than five. As a writer, collaboration is smoother if there are fewer of you writing.

Fundraising is the most serious requirement of this endeavour. As a not-for-profit group, we pay subs each year for start-up funds. We’ve given what we earned with our productions to actors (after some expenses). We’ve had brilliant actors and to keep them, they need to be paid. I had a terrific professional stage manager for Labyrinth who made directing so much easier. Luckily the Bristol area has great talent who are willing to do shows for next to nothing. But I feel very badly that we can’t pay them what they deserve for their creativity, time and energy.

We learned we’re not a production company. We don’t have enough people who have the time to devote to all the parts of production: fund raising, publicity, rehearsal venue search, accommodation and transport if the play tours, and directing. But if we concentrate on writing, where does the production come from? We need a production group who would like to use our writing.

Our original purpose was to meet to critique each other’s work-in-progress. In the last few months we’ve returned to that, but much of our meeting is still devoted to production business: where to find housing for actors in Exeter? Who’s doing the flyers? Has anyone heard back from the latest fund-raising application?

But we do have two successful plays out there; we’ve begun to build a name; we’ve learned to use social media; developed a website, Twitter and Facebook pages. For rehearsals - after dark, cold or cramped spaces, university rooms, the hold of a boat - we’ve found a wonderful pub landlord who loves theatre and only reserves the right to his room above the pub on Monday nights (and his name shall remain a secret).