Fin Kennedy

2012-02-09T13:43:00.004Z

New website

I'm a bit frantic on a new play right now, but just stopping by to say that somehow I have found the time to build myself a new website. Well, using a template provided by the rather brilliant Cargo Collective. But not bad for a 20th century boy. Take a look: www.finkennedy.co.uk

2011-11-28T11:32:00.005Z

On Parliamentary lobbying and the English Baccalaureate

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@finkennedy) may recall that I recently sought my followers advice for questions they would like me to ask MPs and Ministers when I attended the Performer’s Alliance Parliamentary Group reception at the House of Commons earlier this month.

The Performer’s Parliamentary Alliance is a lobbying group jointly set up and run by Equity, The Musician’s Union and The Writer’s Guild. I recently rejoined the Guild after a bit of a gap and was promptly recruited to the Theatre Committee, and hence also this event, on their behalf. Ostensibly it was to promote the Lost Arts website, launched by David Edgar a few months ago, but once you’re there you can nobble any of the MPs about whatever you like. The Guild forwarded me an interesting document in advance of the event, which contained various issues of concern. One in particular featured a note from the artistic director of a young people’s theatre company, which stated:

“The most alarming thing that is happening is the current government's moving from a point of view that access to the arts for young people is an entitlement and a right, towards it being considered a privilege and a reward for good behaviour … If this change in attitude is not addressed schools will just not programme in Young People's Theatre, or other art forms for that matter. The companies who survive this drop in audiences - and the numbers are very high for schools performances - will be thrown back on doing truncated Shakespeare and adapted set texts. All the new writing will go and the original play for young audiences will disappear … Aside from the affect on young people and the theatre companies who work to produce relevant and challenging theatre for them [which also incidentally supports the curriculum in many areas], there will be a significant loss of new writing commissions for writers, currently estimated at 30 original new plays per annum … the choice of subjects to be contained in the English Baccalaureate underlines this change in attitude.”

Like me, you may have heard about the English Baccalaureate but not really know what it is. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I did some further research, particularly among my schools contacts who are really upset about it. And rightly so, because it turns out the EBacc is really quite underhand and devious.

Basically, unlike the International Baccalaureate with which it shares its names (apart from which they are not linked at all) the EBacc isn’t a separate qualification. It is instead an additional award which students get given if they secure five A*-C grades in certain specific GCSE subjects. Relatively benign, you might think.

Think again. These subjects are as follows: English, Maths, any Science subject, any Language (including Latin and Ancient Greek), and a Humanities subject. The only subjects which count as Humanities are History and Geography. All important subjects, no doubt. But no Arts? No Design or Technology? What kind of future economy do they think they’re preparing students for exactly? One without computers? Or any kind of creative thinking taking place at all?

But here’s the really pernicious part. The DFES has instigated a wholesale change to the way in which school league tables are expressed, moving the goalposts so that schools are ranked first and foremost on how many English Baccalaureates their students attain. And they’ve done this retrospectively. And without any consultation of teachers at all.

What this means in practice is that schools in inner city areas which were previously high in the league tables (in particular schools that became Academies under Labour’s flagship education scheme) have suddenly dropped to the bottom of the tables because the rules have been changed. It’s educational gerrymandering of the most cynical kind. I’m reluctant to succumb to cynicism myself, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the EBacc seems deliberately designed to hit schools and students in deprived areas the hardest.

Anyway, I got quite angry reading up about it. If you’re interested you can read more here and here. (I also came across a rather brilliant short film about the wider problems with modern education on the RSA website here.)

Regular readers will know that I have been writer-in-residence in an east London state school for the past five years. I have direct experience of seeing the transformative effects of Arts projects on young people. So off I trooped to the Commons with my pet issue, all set for a bit of lobbying.

The Performer’s Alliance reception is apparently an annual do, held in the Terrace Pavilion, which is actually more of a semi-permanent marquee, right on the Thames side of the Palace of Westminster. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Someone at the Guild made me laugh by saying that it was basically wine and nibbles with whatever MPs want to turn up and that, historically, the way the Equity makes sure it is well-attended is to lay on a couple of sexy actresses. So after a hard day in the Chamber all the MPs troop down to have a gawp. I noticed Sam West and Jenny Agutter, who I suppose are both quite sexy in their own sort of way, and perhaps more importantly a happy sign that both male and female MPs are now being catered for in this enlightened day and age.

It was a large do with drinks and cakes, speeches, actors and MPs all hob-nobbing. This made it a bit difficult to navigate at first. There were some ruddy-faced Lords there who looked like they'd walked straight out of a Hogarth painting. One of them talked to me about Morris Dancing. The MPs were harder to spot. I did get chatting to John McDonnell, whose constituency includes Heathrow and who I happened to write to a few years ago about the case of a young Nigerian man being held in Harmondsworth Immigration Detention centre, who I interviewed as part of the research for Unstated, a play I wrote for The Red Room in 2008. He didn’t seem to remember.

I also met Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who looks about 13 years old in person. She was very friendly and approachable and used the word 'fuck' in ordinary conversation, so I liked her immediately.

Then the speeches started. Ed Vaizey, Tory Culture Minister, stepped up to the mike, followed by Harriet Harman, new Shadow Culture Secretary. Vaizey’s speech was quite funny. He’s actually quite a skilled orator, and spoke without notes about a variety of subjects under his portfolio, including measures to combat online piracy and a new scheme soon to be launched aimed at helping schools and arts organisations to work together. (I'm keeping an eye on that one for you, so check back soon.) Vaizey reminded me of Boris Johnson in the way he worked the crowd. He used this affable exterior to get in a few political rebuffs, pointing out that the recent ACE shake-up had funded lots of new companies too, and so the Lost Arts website should maybe be called Lost and Found Arts.

Harriet Harman then stepped up and made a somewhat haranguing speech about all the cuts. While I didn’t disagree with what she was saying, it was done in such a crass way, and so misjudged the tone of the event, I felt she actually managed to alienate most of what should have been a home crowd. Perhaps she is still finding her feet with her new brief. Or perhaps Vaizey had second guessed her by making such a measured and outwardly likeable speech that she came across as shrill and disingenuous by comparison. I’m fascinated by that sort of thing. It was all rather Jacobean. Or possibly Machiavellian.

Anyway, I made a beeline for both of them afterwards and nobbled them separately about the English Baccalaureate. I’d brought along a couple of copies of my play volume of the work I have done in Mulberry School, which I used as a prop to start a conversation about this work that was under threat, and the feelings of some of my teacher colleagues about the EBacc.

It was my first experience talking to people at that level, and I couldn’t help feeling I needed to work on my technique. You basically get about 30 seconds to make your case before you can visibly see their attention wandering, and their eyes scanning the room for other people they either ought to be talking to, or who can rescue them from you. My 30 seconds of blether didn’t really seem to hit home in the way I would have liked. In Hollywood, they talk about writers developing an ‘elevator pitch’, in the event that you find yourself in the elevator with a studio executive. You try and sell them your idea in the time it takes to get to their floor. I suppose the same is true of any powerful person. You have to condense everything right down, something I’ve never been very good at. Just look at the length of this blog post. Or of my plays.

Funnily enough, although I find Vaizey's politics abhorrent he was actually more pleasant in person than Harman, who seemed distant and uninterested. She even handed my book to an adviser right in front of me, who shoved it with a huge pile of other crap on a clipboard. I found that rather rude. Vaizey by comparison didn’t appear to have a single adviser anywhere near him, and moved through the crowd with ease, unhindered by anyone, save the odd Lord who came over to slag off Harriet Harman. He clung onto my book at least for the duration of our conversation. Analysed in theatrical terms, the subtext of both encounters was clear, and gave away a lot about how each character operates, not to mention their respective ideologies.

Overall I was left with the sense that these sorts of events are mostly about PR rather than actually listening to anyone. Perhaps I was naive to think otherwise. But then I never really expected them to cancel the English Baccalaureate after talking to me for 30 seconds. (Maybe Derren Brown could pull that sort of stunt off but, alas, I didn’t spot him there.) I don’t even expect them to read my book. It was a prop, and as such part of my own PR campaign – something by which they will remember me from the sea of faces they must meet and be lobbied by every day. Hopefully, when I follow up with a letter, they might at least be able to vaguely recall who I am.

As a writer, I’m far more comfortable lobbying in print than in person. I just can't stand the unplanned nature of live conversation, especially when the power balance is so skewed against me. I want to be able to script it. That way I will always come out on top.

So here is my follow-up letter to Ed Vaizey. Sorry for the long intro, but you need to know all that for it to make sense.

Now sit back, relax, and watch as the pernicious English Baccalaureate is cancelled before your very eyes. Oh yes. The pen is indeed mightier than the blether.

Dear Mr Vaizey,

Drama teaching in schools and the English Baccalaureate

You may recall that we met recently at the Performer’s Alliance Parliamentary Group reception at the Commons on Wednesday 9 November. I was the playwright who gave you the play volume The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping and other plays, written during a four-year residency in an east London school. I enjoyed the speech you made and was keen to know more about the forthcoming scheme you mentioned to facilitate links between schools and arts organisations. I would like to be kept up to date about its launch, if possible.

But I also wanted to get in touch to say a little more about Arts subjects in schools and the English Baccalaureate, which I mentioned briefly when we met. Many of my colleagues in Mulberry School, for whom the plays in the volume I gave you were written, are very upset about the lack of an Arts subjects being included in the EBacc. Like many in the state education sector they feel that the narrow choice of EBacc subjects undervalues the outstanding work they are doing in Arts and other subjects.

I’m sure your colleagues at the DFES didn’t intend this. But it does seem like an unfortunate missed opportunity to demonstrate your government’s commitment to and understanding of the quality and success of Arts subject teaching in British state schools, and what it can do for the articulacy, confidence, empathy and employability of young people.

I was struck by your own confidence, stage presence and sense of comic timing during the speech I saw you deliver (especially compared to Harriet Harman’s effort shortly afterwards). I couldn’t help feeling that you were lucky to have had an upbringing and education which instilled in you such sophisticated interpersonal skills. It makes sense that your own school, St. Paul’s, is noted for its achievements in the Arts, particularly Drama. The effect of this on the skilled professional you have become is abundantly clear. Of course, as a fee-paying school, St. Paul’s has the resources to back that commitment up.

As I’m sure you’re aware, most state schools don’t have resources on anything like the same scale. Moreover, in the inner city areas where I tend to work, most students don’t come from backgrounds where confidence, articulacy and a flair for debate are encouraged at home. Many are raised with low aspirations, low confidence and with barely a book in the house. The only place they can conceivably acquire these skills is in school. The EBacc subjects of English, Maths, History and Languages are of course important, but they don’t teach these skills. The Arts subjects – and most especially Drama and Theatre Studies – emphatically do.

I could give you anecdotal evidence about the student excluded from school, whose behaviour transformed after taking part in one of my shows, to the point where the school changed their minds about allowing her into the sixth form. Or of the student now studying Design at University after having worked on the set and costumes. Or of the student now earning a living teaching Drama in her old primary school after performing in Edinburgh with us. I won't list them all here – but I enclose an article I wrote for the school newsletter last year, catching up with some of the students who have taken part in past projects, and the effect it has had on them.

But don’t just take my word for it. A report out only last month, The Case for Cultural Learning by the Cultural Learning Alliance, cites study after study proving such startling statistics as the fact that participation in structured Arts activities improves children’s Cognitive Ability Test scores by an average of 16-19%; that students from low income families who study Arts subjects are three times more likely to get a degree than their peers who do not; and that this same demographic are statistically more likely to find and maintain employment – and even that they are 20% more likely to vote! (Unfortunately it doesn’t say for which party.) A copy of this report is also enclosed.

These findings are not because Arts subjects are soft or easy – a common slur made against them by those without the experience to know better. (Try telling Tom Stoppard his subject is easy, or David Hockney, or Benjamin Britten.) No, it is because the effect of the Arts on young people’s cognitive, interpersonal and empathetic skills have now been proven beyond doubt. The power of Arts subjects to improve lives and grades is being utilised by teachers up and down the country. Or rather, it was, until the English Baccalaureate disincentivised them to do so. It seems it is only the DFES which hasn’t heard about this extraordinary body of evidence.

The work contained in the play volume which I gave you has been hugely successful, garnering broadsheet plaudits and even a Scotsman Fringe First Award for a school theatre company in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. Extracts from the plays have just this month been included in a new teacher training compendium from Routledge, Playwriting Across The Curriculum. But since your government came to power we have seen fund after fund axed for carrying out extra-curricular arts work in schools – work that might one day allow a state-educated youngster from Tower Hamlets to stand on a stage and deliver a speech with the same wit and skill as you.

I don’t share the view expressed by some of my teacher friends that your party doesn’t care about these sorts of young people. But from the loss of Creative Partnerships and Specialist Schools, through to cuts to the Arts Council and local council culture support, both artists-in-residence and teachers of Arts subjects really are feeling squeezed from all sides. We are busy using our ingenuity and creativity to find other ways to continue our work (we were taught these skills in our state schools.) We also understand the arguments about reducing the deficit. But given the tiny fraction of GDP which state spending on Arts and culture represents, even when you take education Arts spending into account, it’s hard in our more despondent moments not to feel that there’s a cruel ideological element to all this.

Including an Arts subject in the EBacc is a golden opportunity to prove to us that this isn’t the case. With the squeeze on extra-curricular arts projects, the curriculum Arts subjects are now the only place left where underprivileged young people can learn the skills that have served you so well in your life and career. It would also demonstrate once and for all that you and your colleagues understand the value of ‘cultural capital’ in creating an articulate, confident, empathetic workforce who can think through problems creatively, whatever the future might throw at them. Maths and History will give them knowledge. The Arts will allow them to put that knowledge into practice in innovative and valuable ways.

The skills I am describing are hard to measure. But please don’t let this mean that they drop off the radar of priorities. As you demonstrated so well on 9 November, they are skills that empower an individual to succeed. They are every bit as important as the core EBacc subjects, and ought to be included alongside them in any education system which cares about the success of every child, irrespective if their background.

Yours sincerely,
Fin Kennedy

CC: Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt

2011-10-28T09:36:00.004Z

At this time of year, I am busy teaching on the Masters degree in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College. The following is a handout I put together for this year's students, elaborating on a theory I often muse about in class, and occasionally on this blog. It's the first time I've written it down though, so I though I'd share it with you here. As always, anonymous abuse can be left at your leisure in the comments box.

“Nuggets of Originality”
What they are and why good plays need them

A Theory: by Fin Kennedy

It is my belief that the best plays contain what I term “nuggets of originality”; that is, moments, ideas or even entire theses about aspects of human experience which contribute something new to the canon of thinking surrounding that subject. This is what gives great plays a ‘quality of mind’ that makes them stand out from the crowd and which, together with skilled theatricality, makes for the most satisfying experience for theatre audiences.

These ‘nuggets’ can take many forms. At their simplest, they might be a simple observation or witticism that one character makes to another, which encapsulates a truth about the subject in hand. Oscar Wilde is perhaps most famous for these:

“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
- An Ideal Husband, Act III

Sometimes, nuggets might lead writers to locate their plays in unusual places, and take their audience to a world normally hidden from public view, or previously unrepresented on stage. Consider the metaphorical thought that has gone into Shan Khan’s choice of location in Prayer Room (EIF/Birmingham Rep, 2005):

From the back cover of the play text:

There was a place where the Christians and the Muslims existed in relative peace. Everyone was more or less happy, except for the Jews – who were few and had to be thankful to their Christian overlords for the little space they were accorded. Then one day more Jews came, and it soon became apparent to them that they’d need their own space – but at the Muslims’ expense. The Muslims of course are fuming. The Jews feel they’re perfectly within their rights. And the Christians are trying to take a back seat and let the other two share the blame.

This place is a multi-faith prayer room in a British college.

However, nuggets might embed themselves even more deeply. They might be a theory which runs throughout a play, like a word through a stick of rock, and which in hindsight turns out to explain much of the play’s events, indeed perhaps even illuminating something about the human condition. Consider the closing speech of Lucy Prebble’s Enron (Headlong, 2009):

The huge crack along the wall of the building glows from behind and becomes the jagged line graph of the Dow Jones Index over the last century.

Skilling (to us) There’s your mirror. Every dip, every crash, every bubble that’s burst, that’s you. Your brilliant stupidity. This one gave us the railroads. This one the internet. This one the slave trade. And if you wanna do anything about saving the environment or getting to other worlds, you’ll need a bubble for that too … All humanity is here. There’s Greed, there’s Fear, Joy, Faith, Hope. And the greatest of these – is Money.

Nuggets of originality can also give birth to unusual character types, inhabiting contradictory or unexpected combinations of qualities, or representing on stage certain types of people for the first time. Consider Dr Diane Cassell, the climate change scientist in Richard Bean’s The Heretic (Royal Court, 2010), whose research leads her to question whether global warming is happening:

Diane I’m a scientist. I don’t ‘believe’ in anything.

Or Zain, the young, gay Muslim party animal from Alia Bano's Shades (Royal Court, 2009):

Zain Technically, the Qur’an says nothing about having a few Es.

Nuggets might go deeper, and influence the way in which an entire storyline plays itself out. Consider the idea in Mike Bartlett’s Artefacts (Bush, 2009), in which Iraqi father Ibrahim decides not to pay the ransom for his daughter being held hostage, to the horror of his wife and British daughter from a previous marriage, Kelly:

Kelly That’s what fathers do. Dad. That’s what they do. They look after their own.

Ibrahim Maybe your fathers do that. But important men, better men, look after everyone. They look after their country. They stick to what they believe.

In this way, an abstract political ideal manifests itself in the real world as a tangible action in the plot. In going against every natural parental instinct, it makes us question whether one’s country or one’s children are more important in the long run – and whether there are cultural differences here that inform the answer.

Fully embedded ‘nuggets’ such as these have evolved beyond mere nuggets, into fully formed theses. Sometimes, they even go so far as to break the laws of time, space and physical possibility to make their point. Consider the characters of Catalina and Joris in The TEAM’s Mission Drift (Traverse Theatre, 2011); two teenage Dutch settlers to America who do not age throughout the play’s entire 400 year span. Eventually, we come to understand that the couple are a living, breathing manifestation of the young, thrusting spirit of American capitalism itself:

Catalina (drunk, slamming the bar) How bout a round for all these poor souls?! May not look like it, but I own all this. THIS IS mine. This glass – the ice in this glass – the bartender who pours it, the bottle, the bar, who carved it, who painted it – I own you, these people, the money in their pockets their clothes their shoes how much they’re all worth – I decide.

What all this is really about is the playwright taking a view on the subject they are writing about, as an original thinker.

Where do these nuggets come from?
In a research-led process they can come from a writer’s reading, meetings and site visits around the subject they are investigating. Experts in a field or academic thinkers can often come up with uniquely original insights which might elude the lay person. These can be ‘harvested’ and woven into a play text to provide moments of lucidity, insight, revelation or plot twists.

More satisfying is for writers to use all this as inspiration, and rather than just harvesting magpie-style the glittering ideas from their research, to actually come up with their own original angle on the subject matter.

But their most sophisticated use involves not merely having characters regurgitate original thought dreamed up by oneself or by others. It is in fact when the playwright deploys her own creativity to use put such insights into the service of an artistic vision. At its best, theatre is a crucible of new ideas at the forefront of its society, and playwrights theatrical philosophers. Plays that achieve timelessness do so because they capture something fundamentally true about their society, or about the human heart, yet manage also to newly or freshly articulate that. They run that truth throughout the play like DNA through a body – informing character arcs, plots, subplots, locations - taking many forms but essentially echoing something fundamental.

It is at times like this when theatre burns brightest, and when it becomes indispensable to our species - because it advances our understanding of the world, and of ourselves.

2011-10-18T10:39:00.003Z

Amateur Theatre in the Age of Austerity

I've been rather busy lately, hence the absence. I'll do a proper update with news some other time, but here is something to keep you occupied in the meantime. Over the summer, I did an interview with Stage Talk TV, the cable channel aimed at the Amateur Theatre sector. My publisher Nick Hern Books arranged it, because it turns out my play How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found is in their Top Ten most licensed plays for amateur performance, which is great. A bit surprising, but great.

Those of you who are sick of hearing about How To Disappear might want to stop reading at this point. To be honest, I'm a little bit sick of it myself. But it sort of won't leave me alone. I'm called on to talk about it in various guises, because it continues to have the most extraordinary afterlife. Its popularity with student and amateur groups is just the latest.

Anyway, I had intended to do a longer blog about what I think the enduring appeal of the play is, including some interviews with some of the amateur companies who continue to stage it. I will do that at some point, but I don't have time at the moment (with apologies to those of you who were kind enough to answer my questions - perhaps I will do something for the play's five year anniversary next year.)

Instead, here is a piece Stage Talk asked me to write, a message to the Stage Talk community. They asked me to write something to accompany the episode. I sent it to them and then I don't think they put it up. Or if they did I can't find it. Maybe it was a bit too long. Or too political. Or maybe they just thought it was rubbish. You can be the judge of that, and leave some anonymous abuse in the comments section if you like.

You can also watch the episode of Stage Talk in which they interview me here (scroll down to Episode 5). It is an hour long though, and I only feature for 8 minutes of it. But I found it interesting to see what else is going on in the amateur theatre sector, which is apparently bucking the recession and as lively as ever. That's great news for writers. (In fact, one of my other projects seeks to capitalise on that, of which more news another time.)

Of course, if you're too busy to watch an hour-long missive from the UK's amateur sector, then Nick Hern Books helpfully cut and pasted my section into their YouTube channel, and you can watch that here. It would be very naughty to do that though. You really should watch the whole thing.

Anyway, here is my mysteriously unpublished statement to the Stage Talk community. I hope some of them find it and read it here.

A note for the Stage Talk community from Fin Kennedy

Thanks to everyone in the Stage Talk community who has staged my plays or is thinking of doing so. It’s really heartening to see the work having such an active life after its professional premieres. It’s a strange feeling seeing worlds, characters and ideas that once existed only in your head go out there and take on a life of their own in the wider world. There is a line in my most well-known play, How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found, about the lead character Charlie, and what will happen to his old identity once he has cast it off and become someone else. A mentor figure, Mike, says to him: “Charlie will always be out there somewhere. Wandering the world. Alone.” The idea is that ‘Charlie’ as an identity will somehow cut the moorings to the physical body he was once attached to, and floats off into the ether, like a ghost.

I think about that sometimes when I get emails from groups producing this play, sending links to images of different Charlies in all his various incarnations. Charlie certainly isn’t alone any more, in fact there seems to be a whole army of him. The idea of ‘Charlie’ – and indeed the whole play he is a part of – has taken on a life of its own, beyond the writer who first invented him. That character, that play, and all the ideas within it, are in the theatrical ‘bloodstream’ now, completely independently of me.

It’s a surreal phenomenon, and one that I think is unique to writing plays for the stage. Novels, films and poems of course have their own afterlives, but not in the same living, breathing way as plays. In that sense, professional productions are just the tip of the iceberg. It is the amateur and student communities that judge whether a play makes it into the nation’s consciousness, and lives on. The amazing thing is that this process happens completely organically, like a natural democracy, operating by some sort of silent impulse towards a consensus, its mechanism unseen and unknown.

At a time when state investment in the arts has never been under such fierce attack, I take heart from this. It proves to me that theatre and creativity are in our DNA, as a species. Like other things that we strive for and are prepared to invest in collectively – good health, quality education, transport to connect us – access to culture also speaks to something deep within us, without which we are less complete. Human beings seem to hunger for stories – to hear, to tell, to re-enact. Theatre allows us to do this together. In doing so, we strengthen our communities, the bonds between us, and also our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

It is hard to make the case for continued investment in these things in an age of austerity. But as any well-structured play will show you, it’s when times get tough that characters come into their own. Sometimes they triumph, sometimes they fail. But by going on that journey with them, we all end up better equipped to take on the challenges in our own lives.

We may not have the same urgent claim on the public purse as schools or hospitals. But at its best, theatre provides the next level up – a reason to get educated and stay healthy. In the darkest days of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, when confronted with a proposal to cut culture to aid the war effort, famously asked: “Then what are we fighting for?”

Make no mistake, the arts in the UK are under attack from this government. But it is communities like Stage Talk that they will listen to – ordinary taxpayers, voters, and families across the country who love and value stories and culture. You probably already use your local theatre or arts centre. Please continue to do so – and to encourage others. If cuts are proposed, write to the council to see if there isn’t some way to lessen the blow. Lobby your MP about cuts to the Arts Council. Ask them to prove their commitment to the arts by asking them what will happen after this current austerity ends. Indeed, invite your local MP and councillors to your productions. Show them how your lives are enriched by the stories generated by state investment in the arts. It’s you they will listen to.

Keep up the good work.

2011-08-15T17:01:00.004Z

On alcohol, theatre and the Edinburgh bubble

[I’ve just finished writing this blog and it turned a bit of a lengthy reflection on this year’s Edinburgh experience. If you can’t be bothered with all that and just want some damn show recommendations – and who can blame you? I do go on a bit – then skip down to the next bit like this in italics.]

Getting back from the Edinburgh Fringe is a bit like waking from a dream. Looking back, your memories have a similar hallucinatory quality – snatched images from shows and late night bars, the noir-ish quality to the architecture and the light, and the way that time seems to have simultaneously elongated and truncated itself, so that you recall having fitted in way more than seems possible, yet the whole thing was over in almost the blink of an eye.

Alcohol has a lot to do with that, of course. This is partly the excitement of being on holiday (my only one this year), and partly to do with the general student-y excitement of the festival atmosphere. But then again, spending the day in a state of constant semi-drunkenness is how human beings traditionally deal with cold, wet climates (one of the reasons, I would hazard, that Islam has never had much success in cold countries.)

And my God was it wet. Torrential, biblical monsoons that turned your umbrella into a drumskin and sent rivers cascading along pavements, ruthlessly soaking into every crack and pinprick in your shoes, and dampening your trousers to the knee. All of which makes for a strange, if unique, theatre experience.

I’ve been to Edinburgh before, of course. For three years running between 2007 and 2009 I premiered a show there with Mulberry Theatre Company, and will probably do so again before I retire. But being there with a show is a totally different experience to being there with nothing but shows to see. When I was there with the Mulberry girls I was there to work, and felt lucky if I caught one or two shows during a week. The day is spent flyering, chaperoning kids, lugging sets, ringing journalists and checking newspapers. Last year was the first time I went as a mere punter, but that was a snap decision at the end of the month and lasted barely a long weekend. This year I did a full week, and properly planned ahead. This ended up translating into 25 shows in 6 days. I have just looked back and done a quick tot up, and I have to admit that I walked out of ten of them.

Last year I went right at the end of August, which meant most shows had settled in and the reviews were out. The flip side of this means that the runaway hits are of course sold out, but at least you have something to go on. Going at the start is more of a gamble, and I published below some of my recommendations based on some very loosely-educated guesswork. The flip side here is that the first two ‘official’ weekdays of the festival (not counting previews) are 2 for 1 days which makes taking those risks a lot cheaper. But then they are risks, and I ended up feeling pretty stung with some shows, even if I did get in for half price.

I have certain rules in Edinburgh. There are the obvious ones like bring some waterproof shoes and don’t forget to factor meals and journey times into your show itinerary. Carrying a small bottle of single malt on you at all times can also help – such as on the top deck of an open top bus for James Graham’s The Tour Guide. But the main one is about where you sit when you walk into that auditorium. I always, without fail, make sure I am sitting on the end of a row, even if it means a worse view. This is so that I can walk out.

I have a pretty low tolerance for what I consider to be poor theatre at the best of times, but in Edinburgh, I just don’t have the time to have any time wasted. I’ll be discreet, of course, and choose an appropriately noisy moment. But if a show hasn’t grabbed me within 10 minutes then I will almost certainly have left by 20, unless they pull something amazing out of the bag. Twenty minutes is easily enough to grab an audience and demonstrate that you have something original to say, or show. In fact, what I was struck by more than ever before this year was how precisely you can tell in the opening few seconds whether or not a show is going to be any good. Those key moments once the lights go up reveal straight away whether this is a company with a sense of stagecraft, who are in control of their material, who have a sense of space, imagery, atmosphere, metaphor; whether or not they possess a quality of mind and an understanding of the audience experience.

A lot of the companies in Edinburgh are young, experimental, or both – and of course it is worth cutting these companies a bit more slack and waiting to see where the show is going. But I was astonished at how often I felt disappointed by professional companies in this way, companies who I would have thought would have been a safe bet. Some even made it onto my Recommended list, which in retrospect is a little embarrassing. (Sorry if you wasted any money. I have edited accordingly.)

I think the background of the UK riots might have had something to do with this. It was strange getting this news through in glimpses between shows, and made many productions seem frivolous, disconnected or self-absorbed by comparison. If ever there was a time for theatre to have a sense of urgency then this was it. But then again, I have always had a yearning to see theatre more politically and socially engaged, and I’m not sure how much this hourly news-feed reminder of theatre’s general detachment from the world would have changed this. Maybe I’m the freak. As a theatre-maker myself I get irrationally annoyed when it’s bad. It really affects my mood. I feel personally affronted, like my art form has been degraded, and a sense of despair at the swathes of future theatre audiences this tripe is going to alienate forever. (Note: never go to the theatre with Fin Kennedy.)

Don’t get me wrong, I saw some great stuff as well, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. But after everything that has happened this year, from the ACE funding announcements, to some of the shocking vitriol that has been directed towards the very idea of state investment in the arts, along with the most incredible year for current affairs on pretty much every front, I get particularly upset when I see state-funded companies putting out what I consider to be sub-standard work – by which I mean dramaturgically and artistically incompetent as much as socially unengaged. This is not a time to be giving our critics ammo by putting on dull, sloppy or self-absorbed work.

Longstanding readers will know that I don’t do reviews. This is partly because I love my art form and want to keep the tone of this blog broadly celebratory (though I have admittedly fucked that up a bit in the last couple of paragraphs). But it’s also because, as a creator of the work myself, it’s impossible for me to criticise with any specificity without the subtext being read as sour grapes or self-elevation of some sort. That and the fact that it’s a small industry. And it’s nice to be nice.

So, I’m afraid, until my own ideas dry up and I turn to professional punditry for a living, that is all I am going to say about that.

But I noticed something else this year. And that is that some shows I had walked out of went on to get four star reviews and even sometimes award nominations. So perhaps I am the freak after all. Which raises an important question: Which of us is right? The professional critic or the professional playwright? Surely, we should both be in agreement? But therein lies a maddening fact about art. It’s a slippery bugger. Your best bet is to work out who you agree with, which takes time, patience and not insignificant expenditure and disappointment. But if you find a pundit whose tastes coincide with yours, hang onto them.

Which I hope is why you have read this far.

[Attention busy people: This is where the show recommendations begin.]

The good news is that the internet age has meant there are a lot more of those voices out there than there used to be. One of my best experiences this year was care of the West End Whingers, whose no-nonsense reviews continue to contain a critical honesty about the lay audience’s experience missing from many paid critics. (I even once agreed with the Whingers when they slagged off one of my own shows … reluctantly of course, but they had a point.) Anyway, The Seagull Effect turned out to be one of the most confidently theatrical productions by a young company I have seen in a long while, with a beautiful understanding of stage metaphor, and simple but striking effects. So that would be my first recommendation.

Others that are worth a look include Translunar Paradise, a beautifully simple mask piece about old age and loss. Dry Ice is a clever, lyrical, multi-layered insight into the reality of working as a stripper. The Table is a hilariously witty piece of adult puppetry, looking at existential despair from the perspective of a gruff, sweary puppet, if you can imagine such a thing. If only they had had the confidence to stick with that idea for the full hour... The Strange of Undoing of Prudencia Hart is a gloriously celebratory piece of mythic, Scottish folk-inspired ensemble storytelling told among the tables of a historic Scottish drinking hall – you even get a free whisky. I understand it’s firmly sold out but queue for a return if you can, it’s wonderful. The TEAM’s Mission Drift has now ended but not before they earned a well-deserved Fringe First for their hugely ambitious mapping of the spirit of American capitalism from 17th century Dutch settlers to present day Las Vegas – every bit as gloriously theatrical as I hoped it would be. I will certainly be keeping an eye on their future work. I Hope My Heart Goes First is a precociously confident piece of performance art from Glasgow teenagers Junction 25, not a play in any traditional sense but an incredible style for this age group to pull off. I left inspired at what can be achieved with young performers in my own work I do with them. What Remains was wonderfully atmospheric if ultimately inconsequential – as I am unwaged at the moment I got in for the cheaper rate, otherwise £17 a pop seems a bit much for such a slight piece. I also enjoyed Two Johnnies Live Upstairs, though it turned out to be utterly insane. If anyone can tell me what the hell the middle bit involving a science lab stuffed rabbit massacre is supposed to be about then I would love to know.

I had a good run of luck with non-theatre shows this year. Geordie comic Tom Binns has a brilliant concept in Ian D Montfort, the spirit medium who cold reads his audience. Much of it is a hilarious and knowing spoof of this world of course, but every now and then he plucks something deeply personal about an audience member out of thin air and you can hear the gasps. It’s an inspired combination. German stand-up Henning Wehn has a nice line in sending up the often mutually-troubled Anglo-German relationship – and I was interested to discover he had supported Stewart Lee in the past, whose new show takes reflexive meta-comedy to a whole new level. On the music and music-comedy front Alex Horne’s late night band The Horne Section skilfully combined improvised song and warm, gentle stand-up to hilarious effect. It made me wish I’d had time to see his solo show. And finally, human beatbox Shlomo delivered a belter of a performance, combining his own incredible mimcry of impossible sounds with a ‘loopstation’ recorder to build up the electro-grime version of an orchestral score – made all the more unexpected by hearing it all come out of the mouth of a sweet home counties lad of Iraqi-Jewish descent. At one point he even pulls off a full-on recreation of an eight piece Arabic-Klezmer band at a family knees-up.

Oh, and I can seriously recommend the Maple Manhattans in Under The Stairs cocktail bar on Merchant Street. Just don’t have more than one. Oh actually fuck it, go on then.

So that was my Edinburgh 2011. A drunken rainstorm of watching, wishing, wading, wassailing, whooping and walking out.

I enjoyed it and hated it so much I am even wondering if there’s time to go back for a quick weekend right at the end. If I do, what would you recommend?

2011-07-21T10:14:00.017Z

My Edinburgh picks

I've been meaning to do this for ages, but today seems like a good day. Maybe it's because I've been bashing away at a plot structure for a new play for weeks and I just can't face it again today. Maybe it's because I realise the Fringe is only two weeks away and I'm all excited and want to get in the mood. (Edinburgh is like Christmas to me; in fact, I far prefer it.) Or maybe it's because all my highlighted shows are scribbled onto about six different sheets of paper and if I lose them or spill tea on them between now and then I'm fucked.

But either way, I thought I'd pick out the shows that stood out to me as being worth a punt, and share them with you here.

There are some perameters and disclaimers, of course. Firstly, I'm only going to include stuff from the Theatre section. This is partly because that is of course my specialism; when it comes to Comedy or Dance then your guess is as good as mine. It's also because I only have about an hour set aside to do this, and if I included everything I'd be here all day, and I while I love you dearly, dear reader, I'm not sure that affection stretches to dissecting an entire 359 page brochure for you. The other limitation is that I'm only there for a week, so I have selfishly but I hope understandably only selected shows that are on during the dates I'm there. This is inevitably quite annoying, even for me. For some reason there seems to be quite a lot of good stuff on this year which only opens towards the middle or end of the Festival. (A loud 'Fuck!' emanating from behind the brochure announced these shows when the listings first arrived; sadly, that is all I will be able to say about them.)

I got the Edinburgh Fringe brochure through when it first came out and did that thing of holing up for the weekend with a marker pen and a pencil-drawn grid, working out what looks exciting, but almost more importantly, what fits into my limited time. I still feel that a huge oversight in the layout of the Fringe brochure is a table listing everything by time slot. One of the joys of the Fringe is just going 'Oh we've got a two hour gap, shall we see what's on?' - but you can't just flick to one page which tells you everything that's on at, say, 3.45pm that day. So I have learned to pick out everything in advance and list it separately by time order. (Perhaps this is a bit ASD of me. I prefer to see it as making the most of a few days. So no need to leave a comment, Mother.) And don't all email saying there's an App for that now, I'm sure there is but I don't have a Tw@tphone so that's no use to me.

The main disclaimer is that I can't personally vouch for any of these shows. I'm not a critic and I haven't seen any of them. This is entirely based on the 40-word write-ups, plus a dash of background knowledge about companies, writers or directors. There also a few drops of instinct, a sprinkling of inclination towards plays with a political edge or intellectual curiosity about them, plus several large glugs of unabashed guesswork. So don't blame me if the pudding turns out to taste like shite. The dubious joy of Edinburgh is getting one show that blows you away after seeing ten stinkers in a row.

That said, I've divided the shows into a few different categories below. Top of the list is my Must Sees, that is, shows I am prepared to book for in advance, and which may well sell out if I don't. These ones I usually know something about, or have seen the company's previous work. After that comes Recommended, if I can fit them in. These ones I'm almost as excited about but I'm pretty sure there'll be tickets when I get there, allowing me a degree of flexibility with my schedule. Next is Maybes, that is, something has interested me about them and I'll see them if I have a slot and nothing on the Recommended list fits in. Then last of all is Total Risks. These ones I know nothing about, but something in the 40 words has pinged my Spidey Sense. These ones I'll take a punt on if neither of the others work out, or for some other reason like I get handed a flyer for it with a ticket offer on it, or read a good review. That isn't to do down these shows at all - they've made my list after all - more that in the furious pace of Edinburgh I have had to prioritise somehow, so they may or may not get a look-in.

Finally, long standing readers will know that I don't do reviews. The politics of that as a theatre-maker are just too ugly. So I won't be saying any more about these shows once I've seen them. (If a show totally blows me away I might - might - tweet it as a recommendation, but that's all. Follow @finkennedy if you're bothered.) Apart from anything else it's a festival, I'm up there with my Mrs, and I just don't have the time.

So, without further ado, here are my list of Educated Guesses for the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Must Sees

Mission Drift at The Traverse
Long and, yes, expensive, but the epic sweep of this play really appeals to me. I'm hoping it might be like Nancy Keystone's Apollo at PCS, one of the greatest shows I have ever seen.

David Greig's The Strange Undoing of Prudence Hart
I have no idea what to expect with this, apparently it did a valiant job at Latitude last weekend but suits a more intimate space. Suffice to say that David Greig is probably my favourite playwright working today.

What Remains
Just read about it. How could you not go? It's in the Medical School Anatomy Department!

Stewart Lee
I know I said I wouldn't do comedy but I make an exception for this guy. I try and see him whenever he's on. Maybe I'm getting old and grumpy, like him.

Blood and Roses
Bit of a risk actually, as I know nothing about the company, but love the premise so I might book.

Dry Ice
Sabrina Mahfouz was one of the writers on my Mulberry-Tamasha scheme earlier this year. She's also an accomplished performance poet and live artist.

Recommended

The Dark Philosophers
Seeing lots of shows at The Traverse gets really expensive, so although I like the sound of this one I might wait for a review.

The Wheel
Ditto.

A Slow Air
Ditto - though David Harrower makes this a strong contender.

Show Me The World
Bridge Theatre Co are the graduate company of BRIT School. I went to some play readings of theirs recently which were very good. This one is about Facebook and online identities, written by Simon Vinnicombe.

Free Run
I like this sort of thing, though Lyn Gardner recently tweeted that it was all boys and the girl parts were a bit naff. Intriguingly, it is listed under Theatre rather than Dance or Physical. Maybe there will be a story as well as acrobatics.

You Once Said Yes
Another site specific walky one, though their write-up is a little boastful. I might see what the weather's doing.

The Tour Guide
This sounds great, and it's high time I caught some of James Graham's stuff.

At the Sans Hotel
Profound or pretentious? There's only one way to find out.

(g)Host City
Downloadable, free, available whenever you want to do it - and featuring international artists. What's not to like?

The Table
An adult puppet show with an 18+ age restriction! Though it seems serious rather than filthy. I'm intrigued.

Whistle
Spoken Word company Apples and Snakes take on post-war Britain with a multimedia twist. I'll give that a go.

Maybes

2401 Objects
Analogue do some interesting things with projections. This would be in my Recommended section if it wasn't for their last show Beachy Head, which I didn't get on too well with.

Wondrous Flitting
Christ knows what this will be like. (Ha ha.)

Manipulators
Close up magic with storytelling. Hmmm.

I Hope My Heart Goes First
Glasgow teenagers take on the workings of the human heart. They sound like a young company on the up.

Go To Your God Like A Soldier
Physical theatre take on Afghanistan. Could be interesting.

Hotel Methuselah
Multimedia ghosts, apparently.

Total Risks

I'm getting a bit tired of putting all the links in now, so you'll have to look these up for yourself in the brochure or at www.edfringe.com You'll also have to try and work out for yourself why I've listed these. (Hey, it was while ago. And I really must go and do some work now.)

Biding Time
Dr Apple's Last Lecture
Drift
Eight
End Of The Line
Female Hitchhiker
An Imaginary History of Tango
The Infant
The Last Days of Gilda
Midnight Your Time
Museum of Horror
The Observatory
Oedipus by Berkoff
101
Penny Dreadful's Etherdome
Politically Incorrect
The Pretender
Release
Sideshow
Tales From Edgar Allen Poe
Thirsty
Thirty Two Teeth
Thugs N Tearz
Two Johnnies Live Upstairs
Viewless
We Draupadi's And Sitas
White Rabbit Red Rabbit
Wonder Bread
The Wright Bros
Young Pretender

Right, that's your lot. Don't blame me if you hate them. But do let me know if any of them turn out to be gems.

Maybe see you there.

2011-07-12T19:07:00.003Z

Looking back at the pilot
How new writing in schools might be about to take off

Last month saw an unusual set of play readings at Soho Theatre. Featuring school students from east London performing alongside professional actors, these mixed casts were also interacting with recorded video footage and animation. This was the culmination of a unique and exciting collaboration - the first glimpse of an experimental partnership between Tamasha and Mulberry School. As I sat in the audience in Soho’s intimate upstairs space, I felt the warm glow of seeing months of planning and hard work paying off – and that wonderful feeling when you realise that a creative project which, until that moment existed mostly in your imagination, has suddenly taken on a momentum of its own. It felt like the start of something really special.

In fact, it was barely six months ago that the whole thing was just a paper proposition. It was a rainy December afternoon when filmmaker Tanya Singh and I got together in a Kings Cross coffee shop to discuss putting in a joint application for Associate Artists at Tamasha. We’d been colleagues for some years, part-time artists-in-residence at Mulberry School, as their filmmaker and playwright respectively.

So when Tamasha advertised for one of each of these artists, we applied together, suggesting a pilot writer’s scheme in which eight playwrights would come into the school, receive training from us both, and then take part in sessions with the students coming up with ideas for short plays.

What this was all about, for me, was two things.

The first was evolving the work at Mulberry. My involvement with the school stretches back to 2004, and in that time we’ve founded a theatre company together, written and performed new plays at Half Moon Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Southwark Playhouse, won an award, received national press coverage and had a book of plays published. Mulberry is always seeking to create new opportunities for its students. When I first started it was taking plays to Edinburgh. Then it became offering apprenticeships in stage management or theatre design, filmmaking or radio – every year there was something new.

Forging a partnership with a professional theatre company like Tamasha felt like the next logical development. I wanted to bring a whole new cohort of playwrights into the school, with all the exciting new ideas that entails.

But secondly, it was about an ongoing interest of mine, increasingly to be found in the professional theatre industry, and that is about the relationship of professional theatremakers, particularly playwrights, to the society of which they are a part.

I believe the model is changing. I predict that the next few years will see a lot less of playwrights developing work on their own, isolated from the world around them. Too often this gives the impression that we are like poets or philosophers, abstract intellectuals observing the world without taking an active part in it. Playwrighting, for me, is a lot more down and dirty than that.

It involves leaving the house. It involves talking. It involves opening yourself up to new and sometimes scary experiences. Like the living, breathing art form it is, it involves empathy and active participation and embedding yourself within the world you are investigating so that you can truly understand the hopes, fears and dreams of your characters.

This is what Mulberry has offered me over the years, and it has been a real pleasure to be able to open up its doors to a new generation of writers.

Tanya and I were appointed in January and immediately set about planning and recruiting for our scheme. I was commissioned by The Guardian to write a feature looking at playwrighting in schools, linking it to other events such as the Bush Theatre’s schools season. There seemed to be something in the air surrounding playwrights and schools, and the article expanded on some of my aims for how our scheme might contribute.

To our amazement, nearly sixty writers applied. With some difficulty, we whittled this down to a shortlist of twelve, of which we recruited eight.

The standard of all eight writers was very high, though they had not necessarily had high profile productions at any major venues. One of the side effects of this recruitment process was a realisation of the sheer amount of playwrights out there forming a ‘critical mass’ of writers at a certain stage of their careers. Many have done all the new writer’s schemes, had readings and short plays on, and done everything literary managers have asked of them, but haven’t yet had a break in terms of a full production on one of the major stages. This is a side effect of the new writing theatre culture much discussed among playwrights. Corresponding with some of them during this recruitment process reiterated to me just how enthusiastic they are, and how under-used. They would be a great resource to tap into for some future movement.

It also made me aware just how much of this sort of schools - and community-based work was already taking place out there – though largely ‘invisible’ in terms of critical coverage. Moreover, writers engaged in this work tend to do so on an ad hoc, word-of-mouth basis; they are not centrally organised nor really all that in touch even with one another. There would appear to be potential here for some sort of structured network for writers engaging in this kind of work. I would hope that our scheme might be the first step down that path, and may one day end up offering these writers an institutional hub for their work.

Interviews for the scheme took place in January and February, the eight writers received a full day’s training from Tanya and I during February half term, and child protection training from the school the following week. They then had four after school sessions with a lively group of mostly Year 10 Drama students during February and March, with an optional dramaturgy and filmmaking sessions with myself or Tanya prior to their first draft deadline.

Each writer was asked to deliver a 10-15 minute play written for up to five parts which could be played by Mulberry students or recent alumni. Other than that, the brief was completely open, and writers were free to follow their own creative instincts and be led by the students’ ideas and interests.

There’s an interesting question here about how the playwrights’ role differs from that of a normal playwrighting process. The model we kept referring back to was the Edinburgh plays I have written for the school, and which were published last year in The Urban Girls’ Guide To Camping and other plays. Clearly, I am neither female, Bengali, Muslim, a teenager, nor am I from east London. In that sense a degree of self-effacement is required when writing plays for, about and inspired by the girls of Mulberry School. But just as clearly, rarely will a 15-year old, whatever their background, be able to offer a fully formed play idea to a writer that needs no developing. The trick, I find, is to take the spirit of what they are offering you in these sessions, and read between the lines to divine the hopes, fears, dreams and values that lie behind the copious material generated by your discussions.

You also have the legitimacy to aestheticise. You are the professional writer after all. They provide the raw material. You discuss with them ways in which it might be shaped, talking them through what the implications of each direction would be. Then, week by week, you bring something in. Each week it comes a little more into focus. You show it to them, check they’re happy, listen to their suggestions, make changes accordingly – even at times passing the whole thing over to them for a while to do their own work on. Back and forth it goes, until eventually you have produced a creative product of some sophistication, which neither of you could have created on your own.

All this was supported by a large stock of creative exercises I had passed on to the writers during their training, which I had developed over many years at the school. Some of the writers used these verbatim, some adapted them according to their own interests, while some invented completely new exercises in response. One of the real joys of the scheme for me was to be able to pass some of these skills on, and see how they were adapted, evolved and put back into use with a completely new set of writers and students. Tanya is producing a set of short films showcasing some of these exercises and featuring interviews with both the writers and myself. We’re going to upload them onto teachers’ websites where they will be available for download along with the exercise sheets they are describing. (Keep an eye on the Tamasha blog, we might put them up there too.)

Tanya’s whole multimedia offer was enthusiastically taken up by many of the writers, and seemed to particularly tap into some of the students’ interests. Indeed, more than one of the plays ended up putting new media at the heart of its concept. There was also some imaginative use of technology in exercises to generate creative ideas. For example, with Tanya’s help one of the writers spent a session getting the students one by one to record private pieces to camera outside on the balcony, the idea being that they were contributing to a time capsule about life in east London, that would be opened in the distant future. The resulting footage was then reviewed by the writer, much of which fed into her final play. (Unfortunately the time capsule part was just a ruse – though one the students were in on.)

Mulberry’s students really deserve some credit here. They’ve been such an inspiration to me over the years, and I could see them working their magic every week with our writers. All the writers spoke glowingly of their student groups, with one saying she had never come across such self confident girls, and another describing her renewed respect for the ideas and opinions of young people. They all described how useful it was to bring in ideas week by week and gauge their group’s reaction. One of the writers described the process as like writing for their ‘first audience’ each week, while another admitted to having been worried about not finding a story, but in fact finding the problem was she had way too many. All of the writers agreed that bringing in new work to share with the students each week, based on the previous weeks’ exercises and discussions, was key to keeping them engaged and moving things along. But in terms of the creative product this also allowed students to shape the play ideas at a formative stage, which is a real USP of the Mulberry model.

All the writers said it was unusual to have a scheme with them as writers leading the sessions, as opposed to the directors or actors. Those with experience of young people’s projects that were led by others said how easy it was to step back as the writer. Leading the session yourself allows you to be more reactive, to jump on something that’s said and tease out the point.

There is an ongoing question about how useful or practical it is to team writers up with actors or directors as co-tutors, to generate dramatic material through improvisations rather than paper-based exercises. This is something I’ve still got an open mind about. Three of my four full length plays for the school were created in this way with a co-tutor, though as noted previously many of the writers on this scheme preferred being allowed to lead their own sessions, and almost all stayed at their desks. This does involve more concentrated work from the students though, and sometimes a few ‘up on your feet’ exercises at the start can be good to get some of that energy out of their system. But I wouldn’t expect or insist that playwrights had the skills to lead these exercises. Some will, some won't. It does also have cost implications for future schemes if other tutors are involved. But it occurred to me afterwards that perhaps the writers’ training at the start could involve a session with a director, drama teacher, or youth theatre leader to give the writers a set of these sorts of exercises, to add to their toolkit. It’s always good to have a stock of drama games up your sleeve to fall back on.

One practical thing that worked well was pairing the writers up for the duration of the scheme. This was primarily a practical response to not being able to recruit a group of 4-5 students for each of the eight writers (this would have meant an unwieldy group size of nearly 40). But what it did mean was that the after school sessions had to be split into two halves, with one writer leading the first half while the other observes, and vice versa after a short break. All the writers said that being able to observe both how another writer works, and the students’ behaviour from a position outside that of session leader, was very useful.

In anticipation of a potential problem, I instigated a rule that creative ideas that came up in one half were the first refusal of the writer whose half it was. But in the end this didn’t really come up as a source of conflict. Both writers became quite happily involved in each other’s halves, and many spoke later about how great it was to be able to jump in. It didn’t ever seem like they were cramping each other’s styles.

Afterwards, some of the writers suggested a mid-way session without the students, where they can share their experiences with each other about what is and isn’t working. Unfortunately, the sheer demands of delivering a project like this week by week generally mitigate against having time for much critical reflection. We did some of this afterwards, of course, in an evaluation session, where some interesting debates began, for example around the usefulness of sharing a cultural background with the group that they are writing for and about and, relatedly, what the ‘culture’ of the Mulberry students actually was. One of the writers suggested that they were “not their religion or their ethnicity or their gender but they were just their age”, to which another writer strongly disagreed. While we did talk about these things individually over the course of the project, looking back we could have made some more focussed space for these debates, and maybe even recorded them somehow. As it turned out they mostly took place in the pub. Both Tanya and Tamasha’s curator Orlagh Woods pointed out that artists from other disciplines, such as visual or live art, much more routinely engage in these processes of self-reflection and theorising. Playwrights don’t so much, and I’m not sure why that should be.

Once the first drafts came in there was one in-class read through which took place in a timetabled BTEC and GCSE Drama class. We were lucky in being able to neatly tie this in to a module on professional practice which the students were working on anyway (this was a total stroke of luck – and the brainwave of one inspired drama teacher. Though we would certainly factor it into the plan next time.) Then there was just one more draft to go before the plays were rehearsed up for presentation at Soho.

The plays themselves were great. We had one about the death of a cousin, whose memory is artificially kept alive on recorded smartphone clips. We had another set in a near future dystopia where all stories were banned by the government. One was about a girl who mathematically conjures into existence her digital double, who proceeds to take over her life. Another was set entirely on Facebook. Yet others took place on a live TV chat show, or in a fantastical hospital ward that conducts operations to remove your responsibility. They really were a terrific range of ideas and styles.

We paired the plays up according to cast size, so that one cast and director could work on two plays. It was agreed to cast four professional actors, one per play pairing. This was not because each play required an adult part – many didn’t – it was felt important to give students the opportunity to work alongside professionals.

Tamasha did a great job of recruiting four young actresses who were all excellent role models for Mulberry’s students. The four directors were also good choices, and all had trained under Kristine at one or more of the Tamasha Developing Artists workshops. It was a good opportunity for trainee directors to put this training into practice in a schools environment. This combination of everyone learning something was absolutely in keeping with the Mulberry ethos of developing artists as well as students, and created a warm and mutually supportive working environment.

The writers had an open invitation to drop by whenever they could and some were able to. This was an important learning experience for them about what in their writing did and didn’t work once it was up on its feet, and some further changes were made in the rehearsal room. Kristine from Tamasha came in on the final day’s rehearsal and offered notes to the directors on what she saw.

There was strong interest in the Soho event and it was well-attended by theatre professionals. The Mulberry girls did us proud – some were actually so good that they had people asking after their availability! Alas, most have to finish school first. But one of the sixth formers was recruited for a reading at the Blue Elephant Theatre earlier this month.

I know from my own work for Half Moon Young People’s Theatre over the years that the ultimate test of any play is to go in front of a teenage audience. I hope any future scheme will find a way of doing this. It is an important part of the writers’ development.

There were some unexpected spin-offs from the partnership which give some indication of the range of possibilities which a future collaboration between Mulberry and Tamasha could contain. Tamasha’s Artistic Director Sudha Bhuchar has been in discussions with some Bengali parents sourced through the school, as part of a new play she has been developing. Mulberry was also host to a Tamasha workshop on careers in professional theatre, in which students heard about a range of careers in the arts including stage management, lighting design, costume supervision, and marketing.

Tanya has also been in contact with Sita Brahmachari, a Tamasha writer and Artistic Associate, regarding a possible creative writing and online multi-media collaboration around her new children’s novel, working with Mulberry students via English, Media and I.T. classes.

All this indicates a two-way aspect to the Tamasha-Mulberry partnership which could continue to benefit both organisations in the future. For example, Mulberry students could be involved in Tamasha through its productions and Tamasha Developing Artists programme and there are possibilities for Mulberry to host placements or engage artists in their ongoing school shows.

In their final evaluation meeting with us, the writers expressed delight at the confidence this scheme had imbued them with in going into schools and cultural contexts different to their own. Yet they were also hesitant – unsure about precisely how to go about creating those opportunities for themselves, from scratch, without the institutional support and access of a managed scheme like ours. Tamasha and Mulberry are uniquely placed to broker these opportunities for these and future writers, and to take the Mulberry-Tamasha working model out to other schools across London.

Conversations are ongoing between both organisations about exactly what form that might take. But watch this space. Our pilot scheme might be about to take off.

2011-06-06T12:43:00.002Z

I've done a Guardian Theatre blog about young people, technology and theatre. You can read it here.

It's all in aid of an event coming up this Friday at Soho Theatre, the result of the writer's scheme I have been running for Tamasha and Mulberry School.

Maybe see you there.

2011-05-17T11:50:00.005Z

Bushwhacked...

Well, that didn't take very long! Since I haven't been shortlisted, I can now share with you that I applied for Artistic Director of The Bush.

I know, it was a bit of a long shot, to say the least. What prompted me, and I don't think I'm betraying any confidences in saying this, was a message circulated via the Writer's Guild that The Bush had approached them to let them know that they would be open to receiving applications from playwrights. This seemed like an interesting and important development, so I thought I may as well take them up on it.

It was fun. I spent a weekend writing what was essentially my manifesto for theatre - any theatre, really (though I think The Bush is uniquely placed to take on many of my suggestions.) I thought: at least I can bung it on my blog if it doesn't get anywhere. And it didn't. So that is what I'm doing. I can only assume that its lack of success was down to a far more senior playwright than me having applied, which is quite an exciting thought. (It can't be that it wasn't any good, obviously.)

You'll forgive me if I don't reproduce the application in full. Apart from anything else that would make it insanely long rather than just annoyingly long. But you don't want to read How I Meet The Person Spec - that's just me blathering on about how great I am, and you know that already.

No, the real reason I reproduce this here is not self-aggrandisement. (Honestly - how can it be? I didn't even get through the first round!) It's more to share some of my thinking about where theatre is at in this country, particularly in the aftermath of the cuts debate. It's also to put some suggestions out there for how we - all of us, but particularly those running theatres - might respond to the current climate, and indeed even use it as a creative opportunity. So there's a range of stuff to follow. You probably won't agree with all of it. But I hope that you will at least find it interesting, and let me know what you think.

And if you do run a theatre, or if you have been shortlisted for the Bush job, then I hope you might even take some of these ideas on board. They are by no means copyrighted, and I would be delighted to see some of them get out there and take on a life of their own.

I tried my best, but now it is over to you...

Bush Theatre – Artistic Director

Why I am applying

This post presents a unique opportunity to lead one of the country’s foremost new writing venues into its next phase. At a time of great upheaval to arts funding, and even existential challenges to the value of state subsidy at all, the move into the old Shepherd’s Bush Library, along with ACE’s decision to keep the company within its portfolio, is a decisive vote of confidence in the Bush Theatre, and an acknowledgment of its importance to the local community. This move is a chance for the new Artistic Director to prove just how right that vote of confidence was. To achieve this, I would institute an unparalleled programme of community engagement which will build on the Bush’s greatest strength – developing intimate plays about ordinary lives, and how they are shaped by the society around them.

I would seek to direct this specialism towards making the Bush and its writers an essential part of their local area, in a way in which theatres much more commonly were, historically. By investigating local people’s lives, involving them in our processes and nurturing their own creative skills, the Bush could lead the way in showing how subsidised new writing can illuminate a community’s understanding of itself. It makes sense for a playwright – the theatre artist with whom all stories start, whose raw material is life itself – to be the one to lead this. One of my main policies would be to involve a rolling team of working playwrights in the key decisions of the company.

This opportunity comes at a time when circumstances have aligned within my own career for the vacancy to present an irresistible chance to consolidate a number of strands of my work. Various passions have come to fruition over ten years as a freelance writer and project manager, and are now seeking a new phase of their own. These projects are what I would variously term ‘investigative playwriting’, ‘embedded playwriting’ and ‘research and performance’ – and I will discuss in more detail precisely what they involve a little later in the application.

Originally, these practices began as passions explored in my own work as a student on the Goldsmiths MA Playwriting programme ten years ago. They then found their initial form as ad hoc freelance community writing projects for companies such as Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, All Change Arts and Almeida Projects. As my career developed, and I gained the experience and reputation to take things to the next stage, they became institutionally supported – most notably by Mulberry School for Girls in east London, with whom I have a long association as their writer-in-residence. This specialism developed to the point where I am now regularly invited to run workshops and speak at conferences on how to go about accessing communities and creating drama with, for and about them. This sharing of expertise has perhaps found its fullest expression in the Writing for Specific Audiences module, which I have taught on the Goldsmiths MA Playwriting course for the past five years. Two years ago, I instigated a partnership between Goldsmiths and the RADA Foundation course in Acting – with whom moves are underway to offer playwrighting training to local teachers, and schools tours of the short plays written by Goldsmiths students as part of their course.

In 2011 things have evolved yet again with my appointment as Associate Artist at Tamasha. Here, I am running a pilot playwrights’ training programme in collaboration with Mulberry School, with a view to creating a hub for training playwrights in this work, so they can start up their own projects in other schools around London. I will talk more a bit later in this application about what my vision would be for this work if it was to be placed at the heart of a theatre company like the Bush. But suffice to say that the combination of the Bush’s infrastructure, reputation, expertise and reach – along with its move to the Library – presents a thrilling opportunity to instigate what I confidently predict could become the next big cultural movement within British playwriting.

I should add that the community and writer training side of my work has not been at the expense of my own writing. I enjoy a thriving parallel career of mainstream play commissions and productions for a diverse range of theatre companies both in the UK and abroad. But ‘parallel’ makes these two halves of my work sound separate, when in fact they long ago became inextricably linked. My investigations of the communities I work with keep me fully connected with the real world and offer unparalleled inspiration for new play ideas to take back to the theatre industry. Shakespeare was familiar with this – that playwrights are totally of this world. They are the voices of their age and communities, not isolated artists pontificating about the world from afar – a model which seems to have become an unfortunate side effect of the structure of much of the modern creative industries.

It is reconnecting with this real world inspiration which I would like to address with my leadership of the Bush. How, in a post arts-cuts world, and at a time when state investment of the arts has never been under such fierce attack, can playwrights reconnect with the communities they are supposedly writing for and about? How can writers be supported in investigating experiences beyond their own, and represent those experiences with authenticity, legitimacy and integrity? How, in turn, can the surrounding community’s creativity be encouraged by having a world-class theatre company on its doorstep? What, precisely, are the taxpaying public getting for their subsidy? In short, what is theatre’s function in a digital, globalised society – and how can we make it essential once again, to our collective sense of self and where we are all going?

The Bush Theatre is on the cusp of an opportunity to revolutionise British theatre, by leading by example.

My Vision for The Bush

A man walks into a Library holding a crumpled scrap of paper. He approaches the front desk, hesitantly. The Librarian looks up and smiles.
‘Hi. Welcome. How can I help?’
The man pauses, unsure of quite how to proceed. He unravels the paper, on which a few short sentences are scrawled in blue biro.
‘I … I brought this. I heard you were collecting them.’
The Librarian nods. ‘We are. Thank you.’
She opens a door behind her, leading into some sort of vault beyond. The man catches a glimpse of shelves upon shelves stretching away ahead. The soft clamour of a thousand whispers catches him unawares.
‘It that…?’
‘Yes. That’s the others. Yours is just the latest one.’
The man frowns, and takes in his surroundings once more. The municipal doors are at odds with the play posters, the Librarian’s issuing desk incongruous next to the box office.
‘Is this a library ... or a theatre ... or what?’
The Librarian smiles.
‘It’s all three.’

The Library is the key. Allowing theatre artists to run the Library for local people will be the motor. Putting a playwright in the driving seat will determine the direction. Because this will not be an ordinary Library. It will not just house books, plays, specialists, and knowledge. In fact it won't be just a lending Library at all. It will be a borrowing Library, and a producing Library. A place where theatre artists not only stock the stories of yesterday, but actively invite new submissions, borrowing anecdotes, experiences and fresh ideas from the community around them. But it won’t just be a warehouse; it will be a forge, in which new stories are smelted every day, and the end results professionally staged for all to see. It will become an interface between dramatists and their immediate surroundings in west London. It will work as a collaborative process in which Londoners, young and old, rich and poor, are encouraged to bring in the raw materials for the specialists in the Library to work their magic. Those who have an idea for a play can bring it to us. They will be able to choose whether they develop the idea themselves under our specialist tuition, or whether they gift it to our collection, for our writers – and writers of the future - to browse and to do with as they will.

Perhaps they can't yet see the whole play, but instead have just a fragment – a hunch that something within their experience might contribute to a tale. An unusual line of work, a strange anecdote, a local rumour, a family mystery, an urban myth, or perhaps simply a desire to see someone like themselves represented on stage. They can bring us these fragments too. We will rinse them, polish them, place them into our collection, play them off against other fragments, see how they interact, hold them in different lights and see how they shine. In this way we will build a catalogue of inspiration for our writers, little pieces of real lives donated by the community which our theatre serves – sorted, indexed and filed away by our staff. Submissions could come from across media platforms, via voicemails, texts, tweets, wall posts, uploaded photos, audioboos, as well, of course, as emails. Perhaps they could take three dimensions in the form of objects; heirlooms, lost property, donations of a loved one’s possessions so that they might live on. We would display these fragments periodically, in collections curated by resident artists. Details of the donors would remain attached to each idea and exhibit, so that further investigation can take place if a writer becomes inspired.

Writers must of course bring their own ideas – that is what they do best. There would be nothing prescriptive about our approach. Writers can continue to operate in the traditional way should they so wish. But we will encourage them to at least have a browse of our Library of Life, just to see what they might find. You never know where it might lead them…

This concept, of building up this Library, is at the heart of my vision. The description above is just one way in which it might operate. As well as inviting submissions, the Library will of course house an extensive collection of plays and books on theatre history – but also books on other subjects of use to playwrights; politics, philosophy, economics, sociology, cultural studies. The Bush at the Library would become the first theatre company to take responsibility for the political and cultural education of its youngest playwrights. It would become a thriving hub of ‘living’ research – cultivating meaningful links with the great minds and thinkers of our time, for our writers to access during their research. We would broker introductions to specialists of all kinds at the cutting edge of their field; professors, philosophers, scientists, new media. We would host regular TED-style talks in our auditorium for writers and the wider public to listen and debate together, focusing on innovative new ideas that might come to shape our world. The Bush Library would become a centre for learning about where our world is currently at, and where it could be going. This constant spirit of enquiry is what will shape and inform our play-making process. Writers will be encouraged to come to us with requests for areas of human life they are interested in investigating, and we will do everything we can to gain them access to those who have had experiences the writer has not. We will offer training in interview techniques, seminars on the different forms creative research can take, and masterclasses on ways to extract drama from real life.

This is not a recipe for David Hare-style linear naturalism, nor for verbatim or documentary theatre. Writers will be encouraged to consider theatrical form in all its myriad possibilities and, where there is interest, will be teamed up with artists of other disciplines – composers, animators, dancers, MCs, sculptors. We will foster a spirit of blue skies collaboration, emphasising artistic ingenuity and formal originality in responding to the real world inspiration underpinning the plays in development.

Under my leadership, the Bush would dramatically expand its existing community programme, sending writers into local schools for medium to long term residencies. The company would form links with schools experienced in hosting artists-in-residence such as Mulberry, Thomas Tallis and Islington Arts and Media School, in order to offer supported training to playwrights looking to learn those skills. During their residencies, writers will not only research their own interests, but will teach playwrighting to both students and staff. The Bush Library will host regular short play festivals of the best of this new work.

But we wouldn’t stop at schools. The Bush at the Library will cultivate a wide network of relationships with local organisations who would like to host a playwright, and approach new organisations where a writer’s interests do not coincide with venues we have on our books. Writers will be encouraged to take up supported residencies wherever their interests take them - bookmakers, police stations, care homes, factories, restaurants, shopping centres, garages, timber yards, racecourses, private members’ clubs. They will investigate the hidden locations, characters and stories of London and bring their findings back to the Bush in their ideas for their main stage work. All organisations generous enough to host a writer will be repaid with the offer of a free Introduction to Playwriting course for interested members of their staff, and complimentary tickets for a staff outing to a Bush production. The best of the plays their staff write will be brought back to the Bush and presented in seasons of readings of short plays by local people.

No longer will our professional writers be told to ‘write what you know’. On the contrary, should they wish to they will be actively supported in writing what they don’t know – and guided and assisted in doing so with legitimacy and integrity. We will encourage this by paying more for plays which are more ambitious and which will take a longer time than the average to research and to write. On top of this commission fee, we will also pay writers an hourly rate for the teaching and community work they undertake as part of their ‘indirect’ research, for example as part of a residency. In this way we will equip our writers with proven experience and transferable skills, to help them make a living between commissions, or to take out to other theatres or on new projects they start up themselves.

The plays chosen for production would continue to build on what the Bush does best – from overtly political plays like Stovepipe, Little Platoons, or The Contingency Plan, to dark visions like Stitching or Bites, to more contemplative yet no less devastating personal stories like Artefacts, Adrenalin…Heart or Age of Consent. The common thread would be plays which aspire to make an original contribution to our understanding of what it means to be human and to live in the 21st century – either through taking up the baton of a national or international debate, or charting something tender and true about the human heart in its modern context. The difference would be the range of methods I would seek to open up for playwrights to access, understand and create these originals visions. Working in isolation would no longer be the default mode for our writers – though of course would still be there as one option, among many.

Under my leadership, the Bush’s productions would seek to place theatre as an art form at the cutting edge of articulating and shaping our sense of ourselves, while acknowledging the times of unprecedented political protest, economic upheaval, international conflict and technological change in which we now live. Along with my team, I would seek to take full advantage of the nature of live performance as one of the few areas left where we still gather en masse to consider issues of collective importance. As part of this, I would continue to seek out and develop artists from communities from whom we hear too seldom in British theatre. The Bush Library will understand that, at their best, both theatres and libraries can be organs of democracy.

Our writers’ key resource will first and foremost be other writers. We will appoint a rolling panel of working playwrights who will select and develop the work of other writers in the Literary Department, rotating perhaps every six months to fit the pattern of their own writing commitments. Playwrights will be actively involved in programming decisions, and in appointing and appraising the Literary Manager. We will build on Bushgreen to cultivate and facilitate communication among a national network of playwrights at all stages of their careers, and broker mentoring relationships, advice sessions, or script reading for younger writers by older writers they admire.

We will instigate a policy of publishing on the theatre website the names and biographies of everyone involved in reading scripts for the Bush. Those who are new to reading for us will be given formal training from a more experienced reader in dramaturgy, writing script reports and in feeding back to writers one-to-one. There will be opportunities for new readers to sit in on these meetings and shadow more experienced staff. Where we have the writer’s permission, we will publish script reports on the website, perhaps attached to the scripts on Bushgreen on which they are reporting, thereby highlighting examples of good practice which the writer has found particularly helpful. We will build on the Bushgreen technology to create a tracking system for scripts, not dissimilar to parcel tracking websites where, by entering a reference number, a writer can see how far through the theatre’s system their script has progressed, and when they are likely to hear back.

We will put in place a formal appraisal system for writers the theatre has worked with, involving debriefs for produced writers, and feedback sessions for commissioned and seeded writers which are a genuinely two-way conversation, and attempt to fully understand a writer’s intention before attempting to articulate a response. Written feedback will be collated and regularly reviewed.

We will facilitate networks and social opportunities for writers to meet directors and other potential collaborators, such as designers. We will ensure that there are at least two writers on the theatre’s Board at any one time. We will strive to guarantee every commissioned writer a minimum of £10,000 per play. Then we will open a welcoming café and bar open all day long in which we will encourage them to spend it. (They will get a 50% discount if they can show they are there to work on a play in one of our soundproofed booths.)

The Library will regularly host public masterclasses, Alan Ayckbourn-style – where well-known writers will speak publicly about their work, while actors perform key scenes from the writer’s best plays, interspersed with analysis, anecdote and observation from the writer him or herself. These will be open to the general public as well other theatre-makers. We will hold Paines Plough style ‘Later’ events, where writers read from their own work in an informal cabaret-style setting. We will offer free playwrighting classes to other theatre staff, from sound, to LX, to stage management, to directors, to front of house – so that our specialism becomes shared with all those collaborating with us. If writers express an interest in learning other aspects of stagecraft, such as directing or design, then we would endeavour to offer them training too, in a reciprocal sharing of skills.

We would make an open and expansive offer to west London’s young people, by founding youth theatres and young writer’s groups for different age levels, and encourage our professional writers and other theatre artists and technicians to engage with them. The youth theatres would be arranged as mini theatre companies themselves, with opportunities to learn technical theatre arts, stage management, administration and marketing, as well as acting and playwriting. Those ‘graduating’ from either of the senior youth groups will be seriously considered for professional parts or commissions on our main stage, if necessary in smaller parts alongside professional actors, while they learn their craft fully. We would support any of our young people in applying for formal training, and raise money for bursaries for them to do so.

Our Library would make contact with influential academics with an interest in studying theatre’s positive effects on communities. Those with whom I already have some relationship - such as Dr Tim Prentki, convenor of Theatre for Development at University of Winchester, Prof Helen Nicholson at Royal Holloway and author of Theatre and Education, and Amanda Stuart-Fisher, senior lecturer in Applied Drama at Central School of Speech and Drama – would naturally be a first port of call, but we need not restrict ourselves to them. We would host and support these academics in applying for research funds to conduct formal studies of the work the Bush is undertaking, and publicise and disseminate their findings as part of a growing body of evidence to make the case for the positive social, economic and personal impact of a theatre’s direct involvement with its communities.

But it wouldn’t all be about plays and playwrighting. The theatre’s Executive Director, General Manager and Accountant will be encouraged to undertake public presentations explaining theatre economics, where public subsidy goes, how it interacts with other income, and the reasons for key spending decisions. These talks will explain the front-loaded nature of the costs of theatre production, and the need for a theatre to be able to take risks. They will answer the public’s questions. This is not by any means designed to put these staff members on the spot, but to use their expertise to make a solid financial case for continued state investment in new writing – and to start to compile a body of evidence for use by the whole industry against its critics. We will publish these arguments for continued state subsidy on our website, hold copies in our Library, and encourage other theatres to submit their own examples to our collection. The collection will be publicised among and made available to politicians and local councillors sympathetic to our case, for use in debates and future spending negotiations.

Libraries have historically been at the cutting edge of new media; they were some of the first places to offer public internet access. Our Library will be no different, but we will extend this offer to explore new media in all its forms. Our Library will understand that new media no longer means sitting passively in front of a screen – we all now have geo-locative computers in our pockets, making the whole world a potential location for stories if used in the right way. It’s really exciting that the Bush already has a member of Non Zero One among their staff, and that this has led to a forthcoming co-production – we would encourage more links with these companies who use ‘subtlemobbing’ and other interactive forms of storytelling to make the world their stage.

We will encourage our writers and directors to investigate computer gaming as a source of immersive storytelling for a new generation. We will make links with renowned British video games manufacturers like Sensible Software, Eidos and Rockstar to explore new ways of developing stories together. They need us – their games look stunning but their scripts are often somewhat lacking. And theatre needs them – their immense popularity, commercial success and technical know-how dwarf anything we can offer. Ironically, both our sectors are often lumped together in discussions and figures relating to the ‘creative industries’. Yet we almost never talk to one another. The Bush Library would begin a conversation.

We will explore collaborations with performance companies like Coney and Hide&Seek, and make links with video artists like Simon Wilkinson, who has invented immersive worlds using goggle and headphone technology in which the user can still move about – the nearest thing yet to virtual reality. We will talk to directors like Ellie Jones, who seek to involve the audience as characters in the play, with their own tasks, objectives and moral choices. There is a whole generation now who are used to being the heroes in their own stories but theatre has yet to really engage with them. Our Library will find ways to do so.

We will also use new media to share our expertise with those cut off from us by distance, for example by uploading video recordings of the masterclasses described above. But we could also commission shorter, more self-contained video podcasts of writers demonstrating playwriting exercises they have devised, or talking more generally about their approach. These could be watched by beginner writers in other parts of the country, or abroad, or utilised by teachers as part of a creative writing class with their students. Free downloadable exercise sheets could accompany the podcasts, and those who have made use of them invited to submit the results. The best of these could perhaps be recorded separately and uploaded as postscripts next to the original films. A series of these films arranged in order, and looking at different aspects of playwriting - from Location, to Character, to Dialogue – could in principle make up an entire distance learning module which anyone with internet access could undertake, wherever they live.

We would also use new media to involve the public in the processes our playwrights undergo – for example by having the writer set up and ‘operate’ a Facebook account in the identity of a character from a play they are developing. Audiences would be invited to friend request the character, and then interact with their fictional lives through commenting on their status updates. The writer operating the character could try out storylines they are considering, writing in the character’s voice. They could even see if they could find a way to get people on the character’s Friends list to begin their own imagined stories involving the character. In this way audiences can take part in a writer’s process in a fun and accessible way, without imposing too much on the writer’s space and ideas. The writer would not be obliged to use any material suggested, but something interesting might come out of it for them, and if nothing else it would double up as a useful marketing tool for the play. In theory, if audience members get really involved they could even potentially come to feature, directly or indirectly, as characters in the play themselves…

In the spirit of a public institution, our Library will operate under the principle that the public are allowed to see every area of our operations. I would hold regular ‘open access’ days, where rehearsals, board meetings, set workshops, programming meetings, could all be visited. Obviously I would seek other staff members’ permission where appropriate, restrict numbers if necessary, manage movement within the building and/or operate a by-appointment system. But in principal nowhere would be off-limits. This is the public’s theatre as much as ours and we want them to see how it works.

As for my own writing, I would happily write plays for the Bush in the same way that a director would direct them. I have a couple of currently unattached ideas in development which could become Bush plays, though I would need a couple of months away from frontline duties to complete them. I could broker co-productions with any of the companies mentioned on my CV, either here or in the US. But I would not want my work to dominate any one season. A significant proportion of my work in recent years has been as a producer and facilitator of other writers, and I would seek to maintain that healthy balance.

During my travels in America, where I have had several productions, I have been struck by the different arrangements they have to the set-up of their theatres. An almost total lack of state funding has made them very entrepreneurial. There have been two immediate side effects to this.

The first, predominantly employed by larger companies, is to cultivate a huge list of loyal subscribers – season ticket holders who get a discount for buying a ticket to every show, all in one go. This commitment in advance stabilises the theatre’s finances for the entire year. One theatre I worked with in Portland, Oregon has 50,000 on their list. The result of this is that they have to put on eight-week runs of all their plays. This is because the first four weeks are entirely booked up with subscribers, so further weeks have to be added if the general public are to get a look-in. I can tell you, the royalties on a sold out eight-week run are astronomical! Perversely in this scenario, lack of state funding means playwrights earn a lot more money. So I would seek to put in place a subscriber system at the Bush, and to put on slightly longer runs to allow for this, and to try to earn writers more money.

But the second side effect of the American model more directly affects theatres of the Bush’s size, and that is that they are largely found in an outlying suburb, and often operate part-time. Most staff there are part-time and have other jobs to supplement their theatre work, particularly actors. Shows are usually only performed Thursdays to Saturdays, and most rehearsals start at 6pm and go on late into the night to allow people to fit in their day jobs. But – crucially – to get by, their day-to-day costs are funded largely by direct donations from their local community, over and above ticket receipts. They operate like local charities, and become good causes in local fundraising events.

The result is an extraordinary local feeling of ownership over the neighbourhood theatre. It really does become a feature of that suburb or district, a fondly-regarded and cherished local institution. These theatres have a relationship with their local audience quite unlike anything I have come across in the UK. Again, somewhat counter-intuitively, our system of state funding has the side effect of diluting the public’s relationship with their venues by putting several layers of bureaucracy between the tax take and the theatre’s public portion of their income.

Many of my proposals above are about trying to remedy that distancing effect, and reconnect people with the publicly-funded theatres in their city, over which they have the right to feel an ownership. In the first instance, I would like to acknowledge this with an inaugural season of free events – offered to the public as a Thank You for their continued support. I would like to publicly acknowledge the debt that subsidised theatre owes to its taxpayers, and to offer them something in return. The Thank You season. (Though I might do another few drafts of that name.) Part of this season would be a three-day conference in the new space, aimed at bringing together theatre-makers, community organisations, private firms, academics and all the stakeholders mentioned above. It would simultaneously launch the vision outlined in this manifesto, and invite local suggestions for how it might be improved – or even submissions for entirely new ways in which the Bush might engage with its public, in ways which we haven’t even thought of yet.

Clearly, there will necessarily be financial and logistical limits to the scope and depth of the programme we can roll out at any one time. In that sense at least, this manifesto is admittedly something of a wish list. It contains a wide range of ideas which could be explored to take the theatre to its next stage. I would be sure to proceed in a spirit of collaboration – bold collaboration, setting our sights high - but nevertheless taking advice from all members of the company, using their existing expertise to guide us in how best to achieve these goals. I would rather do some of it brilliantly, and build on this over time, than overstretch ourselves doing all of it superficially in my first year. But if given this opportunity I would absolutely commit to this for the long haul. I also recognise the immense success the Bush has had doing what it already does so well. Its mission to ‘discover, premiere and champion … singular voices that speak directly to life in the modern world’ would still remain at the heart of the company. My proposals would simply seek to help the company do this bigger, bolder and better – and to take their wider public with them every step of the way.

Finally, there is a bigger political agenda here. And that is to use directorship of the Bush to make playwrights and playwrighting essential to a society again. I desperately want to tackle the disgraceful negative stereotype given such widespread currency during the cuts debate - that we are all ‘corduroyed luvvies’, lazy artists taking state handouts and producing obscure, self-indulgent work while other taxpayers do the nine-to-five slog. If there is one thing that debate highlighted in no uncertain terms it was that theatre-makers have a serious image problem. As Artistic Director of the Bush I would do everything within my power to address this. Showcasing who we are, what we’re like and what we do would be a key part of this – ordinary citizens contributing tangibly and unpretentiously to a community’s well-being on numerous fronts. I would demonstrate in no uncertain terms just what publicly-funded playwrights can do for a society given the right institutional support.

I hope you will consider my application.

2011-04-21T09:26:00.006Z

I've received replies to my letter from the Arts Council.

There are two because I sent it (and the play volume) to Neil Darlison, London Director of Theatre, then realised I should probably also include Barbara Matthews, National Director of Theatre. Anyway, both have now replied and both have said they were happy for me to publish their responses, so here they are.

It would be interesting to hear your own responses in the comments box below. Let's try and keep it respectful and constructive, people.

From Neil Darlison:

Dear Fin

Thank you for your thoughtful letter.

There’s much to take inspiration and confidence from , not least of which is the clearly powerful impact you have had on the pupils at Mulberry College.

I’m glad you feel the Arts Council did a ‘good job under very difficult circumstances, because that’s what we have tried very hard to do. A 29.6% cut in our funding from government couldn’t be handled without pain and we’ve had to make some difficult choices along the way, which we recognise were infinitely more difficult to receive.

For the first time in the Arts Council’s history, we’ve used an open application process, with published criteria, to make our funding decisions. We asked applicants to show us how they would help meet our goals for the arts – goals the arts world helped us to shape. We believe this was as fair and open a process as it could possibly be and that the decisions we’ve made will mean more people experience and are inspired by the arts in the years ahead.

I’d like to respond to your concerns around our awareness of the new writing theatre ecology, and the cuts to Soho and the Almeida respectively.

I can say with confidence that we have a deep understanding of how work with schools ad communities impacts on the wider theatre ecology, including the career trajectories of writers and directors. While it is true to say that much excellent behind the scenes work never makes it centre stage, I think there’s been a noticeable shift in recent years which means more and more of it does, including at the theatres you highlight. (See for example the excellent response piece to Knot Of The Heart, Crawling in the Dark, which received a fully resourced production at the Almeida; or Clean Break and Synergy Theatre Companies runs at Soho presenting work created with and by those affected by the criminal justice system.) Furthermore, our investment in new writing over the past decade has helped raise the profile and find new audiences for new work, so that it now thrives above and beyond Arts Council funding through numerous small-scale companies and venues.

As I said, considerably less money meant some tough choices, but I want to reassure you that we have considered the needs of all theatre makers, including writers, in balancing our portfolio nationally – in other words, in getting the mix right. Investment in Theatre still represents 30% of all the money going into portfolio organisations but we did make the decision to fund fewer organisations, at a reasonable level at which they can still achieve their ambitions and thrive, rather than just survive. But we know any cuts to arts funding are challenging and we’ll be continuing our conversations with both the Soho and the Almeida, with the aim of reducing the impact of the cuts on their work, including their education and outreach work.

In answer to your request, yes, please feel free to publish this reply to you letter on your own blog, if you think people would be interested to read it.

With best wishes,

Neil Darlison
London Director, Theatre

And this from Barbara Matthews:

Hi Fin

Many thanks for your letter – and for the copy of The Urban Girl’s Guide to Camping – which was very generous of you. I am looking forward to reading it.

And thank you for such a wonderful description of the extraordinary work that you have been doing with Mulberry Theatre Company. I did not know the details of that project, but I and my colleagues are very aware of the very valuable work that is done by companies and artists, those that we fund and others, in schools.

I understand that you are worried about the apparent lack of importance attached to it and the consequences of grant reductions to Soho, Tamasha and the Almeida. Our relationship managers will be negotiating with them over the next months to agree what they will be doing in return for their grants – and I can assure you that we will not be overlooking their outreach work.

More generally, I do not know if you are familiar with our recently published strategic framework (sorry – but that’s Arts Council speak for you) called Achieving Great Art for Everyone? In it you will see a very clear commitment to improving the delivery of arts opportunities for children and young people. And I know that new writing is an excellent way of doing this. We expect to spend lottery money on achieving this over the next four years. Immediately, we have awarded grants to 10 “Bridge” organisations whose job it is to help schools to make better use of the opportunities that exist and to help artist and arts organisations to work more effectively with schools. Exactly how this will work is still begin discussed (they do not come into action until April 2012), but I will be doing my very best to make sure that theatre (including new writing of course) features strongly.

I know that it looks as though the landscape for writers’ development is looking bleak. But I am optimistic that that need not be so. There were many reasons behind the particular grant decisions, but it was certainly not an overall lack of enthusiasm for writer development. Another of our priorities is talent development and so we will be talking to many people, including writers, about what needs to be done. As we said when we announced our funding decisions, NPO funding is but one of our funding streams. We also have lottery money which can be used on a project basis. We intend to take a look at how we can use strategic funding initiatives to make a real difference to the development of artists across all artforms.

So thank you for taking the trouble to right to me. I appreciate it greatly. I hope that when I next meet up with writers you will be there!

Best wishes

Barbara Matthews
Director, Theatre

P.S. Very happy for you to publish this alongside your own.

2011-04-14T13:36:00.002Z

I've written a letter to the Arts Council, and sent them a little present. Here's the letter. (For the present, you'll have to follow the link and buy a copy for yourself. Sorry.)

Mr Neil Darlison
London Director, Theatre
Arts Council England
14 Great Peter Street
London SW1P 3NQ

Dear Mr Darlison,

New theatre writing in schools and the ACE National Portfolio

I’m writing to send you a copy of my play volume The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping and other plays, a set of stories from one of London’s least represented inner city communities, which I hope you will enjoy reading. The play volume itself has an interesting story behind it.

It began in 2003, when Soho Theatre decided to produce my first play. That year I was also appointed as their playwright-in-residence under the Pearson bursary scheme. This meant I had to take an active part in the life of the company, and Soho soon put me to work teaching playwriting to their 14-18 year old young writer’s group. It was a bit of a baptism of fire, but I had a great time and learnt some valuable skills. Quite how valuable I was about to find out.

When my second play, How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found, lost its way among London’s new writing theatres, I was forced to fall back on my own resources. Someone I had met on Soho’s script reading panel had just been appointed Director of Almeida Projects, the Almeida Theatre’s education and community wing. She offered me some hours as a workshop leader in Islington’s schools. Although I had taught playwriting in the comfort of Soho Theatre, I had never gone into the ‘lion pit’ of an actual London classroom. But the Almeida trained me up from scratch, and supported me fully in honing my skills in some of the toughest schools in the city.

I worked for Almeida Projects from 2003-6, on a variety of schools projects across the Borough, culminating in a schools tour of a full production of a version of Moliere's Hypochondriac for 11 year olds. This experience led on to a number of subsequent schools projects in other Boroughs, for other organisations, the most valuable of which has been a long association with Mulberry School in Tower Hamlets, where I have worked as writer-in-residence since 2007, and for whom the plays in the enclosed volume were written.

Mulberry is a pioneering place. Due to its catchment area, its student population is made up of 94% Muslim students of Bangladeshi heritage - not a group you hear from all that often in British theatre. I not only teach playwriting to students and staff, but write a new play each year for the students to take to the Edinburgh Festival. In 2009 we won a Fringe First award for The Unravelling, the first time a school has ever received one, while in 2010 we held our own festival, Silkworks, at Southwark Playhouse in London, the event for which Nick Hern Books published all our plays in this volume. We have just sold our first amateur licence, to a school in Canada, generating an income for both me and the school, while 2011 will also see the first of our students applying for professional acting training.

The work continues to evolve. This year, Mulberry Theatre Company has teamed up with Tamasha Theatre Company, where I am currently Associate Artist, to recruit eight playwrights to come and train under me at Mulberry. In June we are holding a scratch night at Soho Theatre, in the room next door to where I started in 2003. Mulberry students will be performing the short plays alongside professional actors. Two of the writers we recruited for this inaugural scheme, both 10 years younger than me, are currently working as workshop leaders for Almeida Projects, while yet others have had readings and workshops at Soho Theatre. These experiences were among the reasons we took them on.

You’ll be aware, of course, that I am writing in relation to these particular companies because both face a large cut to their ACE funding as a result of the NPO review. I know that this has been a tough funding round, and that overall ACE has done a good job under very difficult circumstances. But I do worry that the sort of work which I describe above is not visible to state funders when making decisions of the kind that ACE had to make last week.

The reason I have gone into so much detail is because in new writing in particular, there is a delicate ecology of ‘behind-the-scenes’ work in schools and communities which doesn't show up on the main stages, but which is no less valuable in terms of developing writers and audiences. This model can embed artists and theatre companies within communities, making them catalysts in raising aspirations among those communities and giving them a voice – all the more important during tough times when social problems are on the rise.

Moreover, this work is crucial in training playwrights as independent creative professionals, both as workshop leaders and project managers. This in turn allows them to generate writing-related work between commissions which excites and stimulates young people about the arts and provides an earned income for the writers. Ultimately, this makes playwrights more entrepreneurial and therefore less dependent on state investment.

Unfortunately, with 100% cuts to the National Association of Writers in Education, National Association of Literature Development, Writers in Prisons, North West Playwrights and Theatre Writing Partnership, the landscape for writers’ development is looking particularly bleak. It feels as if almost all the channels into the industry that existed when I first started out are being closed down. Increasingly, the mantle of responsibility for training playwrights, particularly in socially-aware work within communities, will fall to the in-house education teams of theatre companies. Yet it is this work which is some of the first to be threatened when theatre companies have to contract during tough times.

I am now in the fortunate position of being a mid-career writer with years of schools experience, to the point where I am now able to pitch project ideas and train other writers. But none of this would have been possible without the extraordinary experience I gained at Soho and the Almeida during those formative years early in my career. Large cuts to organisations like Soho and the Almeida endanger this work, and threaten to disenfranchise both inner city communities and young arts professionals.

If there is any way you could reconsider the decisions in relation to these companies then I would urge you to do so.

Finally, as a matter of courtesy I ought to let you know that I will be publishing this letter on my blog, www.finkennedy.blogspot.com. If you will allow me, I would also like to publish your response – though if you’d rather I didn’t I will of course respect that.

If you would like to talk more about any of this, please do get in touch.

Yours sincerely,

Fin Kennedy

Ps. Also enclosed is a feature length article on this subject which I wrote for the Guardian earlier this year.

2011-03-31T08:55:00.002Z

Those 100% cuts in full

So there was one important category missing from my list yesterday, which also, oddly, was missing from the original ACE spreadsheet too. And that was those theatre companies and venues whose funding has been entirely removed. Although I did include Shared Experience and Northcott Exeter, these were gleaned from press and Twitter coverage and weren't in among the other cuts figures. They probably featured in this main coverage because they were the highest profile names, or those which made the loudest immediate fuss. News of others seems to have been withheld, or at least announced last, perhaps in the hope that this might provide some sort of cover.

But I would argue that it's these smaller venues and companies that are the most worrying for playwrights. They tend to be venues in small towns, like South Hill Arts Centre in Bracknell, or The Point in Eastleigh, where there usually isn't any other cultural provision for miles around. They're also the most vulnerable to regional local authority cuts.

Venues and companies like those listed below make up a rarely visible 'roots system' in British theatre. They might not be the places that commission you directly, but they might be the place you see you first professional show as a kid, or take part in your first youth theatre (where I first tried my hand at writing.)

They also comprise a small scale touring circuit for companies like Half Moon Young People's Theatre who often commission writers at the start of their careers and who - crucially - tour high quality plays to young people around the UK, thereby recruiting the next generation of theatre audiences for us all. Half Moon themselves seem to have got away with 4.4% cut. But if the platforms in towns around the UK where they would normally perform their work are taken away, then their ability to share their work, not to mention some of their income, will inevitably contract further than that small cut suggests.

I've been quite lucky on this blog not have suffered from any trolls for a while. But with yesterday's post attracting over 1,000 hits in 24 hours, I know they might be lurking. The standard Guardian troll response to complaints like mine is 'Well, if those arts centres don't put on work which enough of their community wants to pay for in full, then why should we subsidise a minority interest?'

There are several answers to this.

The first is that these arts centres often serve communities that live nowhere near London and that aren't particularly affluent. They couldn't afford, unaided, to pay full market rates for these arts activities. The argument is often made about tax-funded arts provision 'taking money from the bus conductor's pocket to subsidise a middle class hobby'. This is a fatuous argument. Far more taxes are paid by wealthier citizens, who more often subsidise the community theatre in the bus driver's small town. He may not use it all that much, but his kids might.

The second is that these venues are often mixed art-form venues. They might run everything from youth theatres, to stand up comedy, to an art gallery, to a pensioner's sculpture class. Individually, these separate strands may not attract a majority of the community, so in the strictest sense may not be financially viable. But put together they comprise a huge hub of community arts activity, all of which will be affected if you hack away at the central grant. These communities have just as much right to creative expression and communal enjoyment of arts that engage them as citizens of the world, as their metropolitan cousins. In that sense, subsidy is redistributive.

The third is that just because you can't easily measure the wider effects of these venues on their communities doesn't mean they don't have any. That sometimes gets lost in our Whitehall-led culture of proven, measurable outcomes. I recently wrote to Croydon Council in defence of Croydon Clocktower and their proposal to withdraw its subsidy. I argued that, though I don't live in Croydon, when I go there to see a show I'll usually have a meal, a drink or two, get a taxi, maybe do a bit of shopping - none of which would enter the local economy without the chief draw of the show I was coming to see.

Then there's the local young people. I grew up in a small town and my god was it boring. It was so boring we used to vandalise things, harass passers-by and drive round town like dangerous twats. The nights I didn't do that was when I was rehearsing a show for my local youth theatre. When BAC was threatened with withdrawal of its council grant in 2007 I quoted this to the Tory-led council, arguing that if BAC closed they would spend far more on increased policing costs in their south London borough.

Then there's the elderly. Study after study shows that participation in the arts has a direct benefit on health, and can even stave off dementia.

Once, in an episode of The West Wing, that rosy fantasy about an impossibly liberal American government, I spotted a sign pinned to a filing cabinet in the background of a civil servant's office. It read: 'If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance'. Well, in the same spirit, 'If you think regional arts centres are expensive, you should try boredom.'

Anyway, those 100% cuts in full:

Companies
Nitro
Theatre Absolute
Quicksilver
Yellow Earth
Forest Forge
Foursight (Birmingham)
Trestle
Theatre is
Urban Strawberry Lunch
Fuse
Breaking cycles
Zinc
Moti Roti
Lanternhouse
Shared experience
Proper Job (Huddersfield)
Northumberland Theatre Company

Venues
Northcott Exeter
Greenroom Manchester
Riverside Studios
Chol Theatre (Huddersfield)
Little Angel Theatre
South Hill Park (Bracknell)
The Point (Eastleigh)
Newbury Corn Exchange
Nodren Farm (Maidenhead)

Development organisations
North West Playwrights
Theatre Writing Partnership
National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE)
National Association for Literature development (NALD)
Writers in Prisons

As ever, let me know if I've missed any.

2011-03-30T12:36:00.004Z

Cuts to the Arts - A List for Playwrights

Well, what an eventful morning. It feels like the whole theatre industry (not to mention the wider arts sector) has been holding its breath up to now, waiting in fear and anticipation for what this fateful day might bring, like a fucked up Christmas. Well now we finally know the exact size of the turds that Santa has left in our stockings.

It's been interesting following the live coverage on Guardian Culture, and seeing the announcements and responses as they trickle in. But, while it's been eye-opening to see what has and hasn't been prioritised across museums, dance, circus, literature and all the rest, what I've personally found difficult is getting a sense of how the theatre industry in particular has been affected, particularly what's happened to the individual companies I've either had a relationship with in the past, or who are on my radar to target with work in the near future.

Twitter alerted me to this. It's a spreadsheet of all the changes broken down into financial years, with further columns showing cash and real terms increases and decreases.

Again, interesting, and I did find out about the companies I wanted to know about. But bloody hell, it was a bit of a chore to wade through.

What I found myself doing was cutting and pasting all the theatre results into a separate document for ease of viewing, and to compare and contrast a bit. As a way of grouping them together, I arranged them all into Small Cuts, Big Cuts, Small Increases, Big Increases and New Clients.

Then, as I couldn't find this information in quite this form anywhere else (though I'm sure Lyn Gardner or someone will do it eventually) I thought I'd publish it on here.

Regular readers will know that I'm a big advocate of playwrights being a bit more proactive in approaching companies, brokering co-productions, pitching project ideas, applying for funds and generally freeing themselves up from the passive commissioning model and over-reliance on the Big Six new writing venues in London. Experience has shown me that unless you make it into the upper echelons of this profession you simply can't rely on those big companies as a way of making your living. This is compounded by the fact that a decade of (what looking back at least) seems to be half decent funding, has created many more playwrights who have undergone some kind of training than there are slots available to produce them. The more we can manipulate the circumstances for us to be able to do our thing, the more likely we are to be able to sustain a career without having to wait tables.

So, what follows below is a list of all the theatre companies listed in the ACE spreadsheet, grouped into the categories described above.

It does make for quite interesting reading. The most common figure seems to be an 11% cut. (All percentages quoted are from the column taking inflation into account over the next four years.) But this cut seems to have been mostly applied to medium scale companies like Tamasha, Kneehigh, Tricycle and Headlong. The bigger boys (National, RSC) seem to have taken a slightly bigger hit at 15%. Then there are some glaring slashes like the Almeida's brutal 39% or Out of Joint's crippling 27.9%.

Smaller increases seem to be less common, with a handful like the Young Vic, Live and Northern Stage getting single figure uplifts. But there are a surprising amount of very large increases, hugely elevating a whole raft of small to medium sized companies, and with a notable emphasis on the regions; Roses Theatre, Fuel, Travelling Light, Theatre In The Mill and Walk The Plank. Some I haven't even heard of before.

Then there are the new clients entirely, and there are a lot - 20 by my count - and most with significant amounts of new cash, £100,000+ a year in many cases. I'd encourage you to check them out.

I publish all this really as a tool for working playwrights looking to get an overview of how the biggest shakeup to arts funding, certainly in my working life, has affected the people who employ us. It makes sense to keep abreast of these things, and to bear in mind the economic realities for these companies as you go about considering where to target your work.

That isn't for a moment to say that we should no longer send plays to companies who have suffered - if anything it's important that we now rally round those venues like Soho who are a crucial part of the new writing landscape, and whose 17.6% cut is really going to hurt. If there is any chance of negotiating these decisions, then now is the time for those writers among us who have benefitted from those venues, particularly writers with any sort of profile, to step to their defence.

But in a spirit of pragmatism (and God knows I've had to develop a sense of that during my career) there are other opportunities for playwrights that this morning's news opens up. I really don't mean that to sound at all insensitive or exploitative of what is a horrible situation for many. In fact, this is a remarkably apolitical post for me. But you can get all that fire and brimstone elsewhere. This is about a genuine spirit of enquiry and trying to respond positively to what is a monumental rearranging of the power structures within our industry. Yes, be angry and upset. Yes, lobby your MP. And absolutely step to the defence of companies you know and love. But you can only do that fully if you're still able to make a living and don't have to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from. It's perfectly legitimate to take a moment to ask: What might Fuel do with an extra 203.5%, or Ochkham's Razor with their 173.2% windfall? Now is the time to start doing some serious research about these companies that up to now might have vaguely been on your professional radar, but who are now thrust into a whole new lease of creative life. Keep an eye on the statements they release, subscribe to their newsletters, see their latest show, then - after the dust has settled - get in touch. See if they'll read your new play. Seed a collaboration. Back you in approaching a school. Now is the time to pitch new and risky ideas, with these companies at least.

So, that list in full.

Note that for the purposes of my categorisations, I have counted anything less than 15% as a Small Cut, and anything 15% or over Large. This isn't to understate the effects of, say, Northern Broadsides 14.9% decrease, which will doubtless be very painful. But I had to draw the line somewhere.

Oh and finally, do make sure you do your research. Check out the figures in the full spreadsheet linked above. Remember that a 78% increase is proportional - if the company's ACE grant was only £10k to start with then it isn't like they're suddenly going to be commissioning left right and centre. Don't just dash off letters to all and sundry saying I told you to.

Right then. Here we go:

Small cuts
Colchester Mercury -11%
Eastern Angles –8.6%
Palace Watford -2.9%
Leicester Theatre Trust -11%
Northanpton Theatres
(aka Royal and Derngate)-3.1%
Nottingham Playhouse - 11.%
ATC -11%
Bush -11%
BAC -11%
Cardboard Citizens -11%
Cheek by Jowl -11%
Clean Break -11%
Donmar -11%
Duckie -11%
DV8 -11.7%
Emergency Exit -11%
Royal Court -4.4%
English Touring Theatre -11%
Gate -4.4%
Graeae -9.4%
Hackney Empire -11%
Half Moon YPT -4.4%
Hampstead -11%
Havering Theatre -11%
Headlong -11%
Improbable -2%
Kali -11%
Lyric Hammersmith -5.5%
NYT -11%
Oily Cart -1.3%
Orange Tree -11%
Polka Theatre -11%
Royal National Theatre -14.9%
Royal Exchange Manchester -11%
Stagetext -11%
Tamasha -11%
Complicite -11%
Theatre Peckham -11%
Tricycle -11%
Unicorn -11%
Theatre Sans Frontiere -10.9%
Contact -6.4%
Liverpool Everyman -4.9%
Nuffield Lancaster -1.3%
Octagon Bolton -4.9%
Peshkar Productions -11%
Unity Liverpool -0.7%
Pegasus Theatre -10%
Gloucestershire Everyman-11%
Kneehigh -11%
Miracle Theatre Trust -11%
Barbican Plymouth -11%
Salisbury Playhouse -11%
Sixth Sense Theatre for
Young People -11%
Bristol Old Vic -11%
Theatre Royal Plymouth -11%
Belgrade Coventry -14.9%
Big Brum -11%
Birmingham Rep -11%
New Vic Theatre -11%
Pentabus Theatre -11%
Talking Birds -11%
Forced Entertainment -14.9%
Hull Truck -8.1%
IOU Theatre -2.2%
NSDF -5.6%
Northern Broadsides -14.9%
Sheffield Theatres -10.9%
Stephen Joseph Theatre -14.9%
West Yorkshire Playhouse-10.9%
York Theatre Riyal -8.3%

Large cuts
Northcott Exeter -100%
Shared Experience -100%
Theatre Royal Bury St Edmonds -20.3%
Almeida -39%
Out of Joint -27.9%
Soho Theatre -17.6%
Talawa -21.9%
Theatre Centre -22.3%
Action Transport -37.8%
Nuffield Southampton -15.2%
RSC -15%
Harrogate Theatre -15%
Red Ladder -39.6%

Small increases
New Wolsey +0.4%
Oval House +14.4%
Paines Plough +5.8%
Spare Tyre +13.8%
Tara +10.3%
Theatre Rites +2.0%
Young Vic +5.5%
Live Theatre +2.2%
Northern Stage +8.9%
Burnley Youth Theatre +9.5%
Keswick Theatre by the Lake +11.4%
M6 Theatre Company +9.2%
Oldham Coliseum +5.8%
Chichester Festival Theatre +0.2%
Pilot Theatre +9.5%

Big increases
Hoipolloi +72%
Rifco Arts +57.5%
Arcola +82.1%
Broadway barking +52.8%
Carnesky Productions Ltd+23.9%
Company of Angels +20.3%
Deafinitely Theatre +22.3%
Fevered Sleep +16.7%
Frantic Assembly +17.8%
Fuel +203.5%
Julie McNamara
(aka Vital Xposure Limited) +51.8%
Kazzum 29.4%
LIFT 17.1%
Mimbre 26.5%
Ockham’s Razor 173.2%
Project Phakama UK +25.4%
Punchdrunk +141%
Redbridge Drama Centre +28.2%
Ridiculusmus +27.7%
Pacitti Company +34.2%
Red Room +62.8%
Told by an Idiot +26.9%
The Malting Theatre +270%
Theatre Hullaballoo +21.9%
Collective Encounters +61%
Quarantine Theatre +32.6%
Rasa Productions +32.6%
Ashton Group Theatre Factory +43.8%
Walk The Plank +126.5%
Whalley Range All Stars +20.2%
Portsmouth Theatre Royal+49.9%
Oxford Playhouse +20.3%
Watermill Theatre +27.8%
North Devon Theatres Trust +29.3%
The Roses Theatre +42.8%
Theatre Alibi +27.6%
Travelling Light +38.7%
Geese Theatre Company +27.9%
Stan’s Café Theatre +37.8%
Blaize Theatre Yorkshire +48.1%
Faceless theatre +166.3%
Freedom Studios +48.4%
Full Body And The
Voice Theatre Company +127.9%
Interplay Theatre +32.4%
Lawrence Batley theatre +17.9%
Mind The Gap +26.5%
Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah +21.6%
Theatre In The Mill +77.5%
Tutti Frutti Productions +79.8%
Unlimited Theatre +67.1%

New Clients
Gecko Theatre
HighTide festival
Corby Cube Theatre Trust
Red Earth Theatre
Blind Summit Education
Clod Ensemble
Coney
Mercury Musical Developments
Open Clasp Theatre Company
Zendeh Productions
20 Stories High
24:7 Theatre Arts Network
Blackpool Grand
Dreamthinkspeak
Propellor
Theatre Bristol
Tobacco Factory
Wildworks
Eclipse Theatre
Slung Low

Oh and finally, do let me know if I've missed any.

2011-01-26T01:45:00.001Z

I've got a feature in today's Guardian about playwriting in schools, on the back of the Tamasha/Mulberry scheme we're currently recruiting for.

Writers, you have 5 days left to apply!

2011-01-18T11:04:00.003Z

I have an announcement.

I've been appointed Associate Artist at Tamasha Theatre Company. It's a great new artist-led scheme which they were advertising for at the end of last year. They wanted a playwright and a filmmaker, and it was a pretty open brief which allowed us to say what we would use the opportunity to do.

Those of you who pay attention to these things will know that Tamasha is the UK's leading theatre company specialising in developing stories and artists from the Asian diaspora. Mulberry School, where I have been writer-in-residence for the past four years, also has a 94% British Asian student population due to its location in Tower Hamlets, east London.

So I put in a joint application with Mulberry's filmmaker in residence Tanya Singh, to run a pilot scheme linking up the two organisations between February and May this year. It seemed like a natural fit, and I'm really chuffed that both companies have decided to give it a punt.

My idea is to run an attachment scheme for playwrights, where about 8 of them will be recruited to come into the school and spend some time doing some focused sessions with a small group of students, alumni and staff, with a view to developing a 10-15min new play for performance at a Tamasha scratch night in May. The course will be overseen and dramaturged by me, as well as involving some sessions from Tanya on multimedia techniques and their potential for live performance. She'd also use film and media exercises to get students to document some of their home lives and bring it in for the writers to see. (Tanya's a bit of a genius at all this and I'm really excited she'll be working with us.)

The background to all this is about the next stage in the evolution of the extra-curricular theatre work going on at Mulberry. Each year we've added something new, and expanded our ambitions. The first year just taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival was enough. In 2008 we added stage management and design opportunities. In 2009 there were also radio and filmmaking apprenticeships, and we won a Fringe First. Then last year we held our own festival in London and had all four of the plays published by Nick Hern Books. What next?

I think that next is to start to broker some new relationships for the school with other writers, and also professional theatre companies. My ambition is, eventually, for Mulberry to become a 'training school' for playwrights who want to get experience working in this way. (God knows any formalised training of this kind is hard to come by - but in my experience it can massively enrich a writer's craft.)

The school is also having its own studio theatre built on site this year, and after May will be looking for writers to develop work on a longer term basis for its opening season. The theatre will be east London's newest performing arts space, so it's a timely point to start to open things up.

Anyway, this pilot scheme is, I hope, the first step in starting to achieve some of this. If you know any writers who might be interested, do send them in this direction. The official ad is going out today, I reproduce it below. (There is also a full brief and application forms available by emailing Tamasha.)

Tamasha Theatre Company in collaboration with Mulberry School for Girls in east London is inviting applications for 8 playwrights for a pilot attachment scheme running February - May 2011.

This is an opportunity to create a new piece of writing and develop practical workshop skills in a school environment.

The scheme will be overseen and dramaturged by Mulberry playwright-in-residence and Tamasha Associate Writer, Fin Kennedy. There will also be input from Tamasha Associate Filmmaker Tanya Singh, including the opportunity to develop multimedia performance ideas.

This is a unique opportunity to develop a relationship with both companies, learn some practical workshop skills from experienced practitioners, and develop a new piece of writing (10-15 mins long) for and about a specific inner London community. A small bursary and some training will be provided.

For the full brief and application forms please email admin@tamasha.org.uk or contact Felicity at the office on 020 7633 2270.

Open to artists from all cultural backgrounds.
Deadline for applications: Monday 31st January at 5pm

2010-12-21T11:50:00.002Z

I'm a co-signatory of a letter to the Guardian today from Artists of the Resistance, a newly-formed group that is part of Coalition of Resistance, a national body that is really gaining momentum. They've edited it a bit, so I reproduce the full version below.

You can read more about Artists of the Resistance, and find out how to sign up, here.

Artists of the Resistance

Len McCluskey calls for a "broad strike movement" to stop the coalition's "explicitly ideological" programme of cuts. (‘Unions Warn of Massive Wave of Strikes’, Guardian 19 December 2010) This will happen. Government cuts are decimating education, welfare, health, sports and the arts. We are told that they are as inevitable as the rain; that the only choice we have is between music classes for our kids or care for our elderly. We need both and do not accept that jobs, services and the quality of life have to be jettisoned for the greed of those who are asked to sacrifice nothing. Cutbacks in the arts mean that access will be limited to those who have the money to pay while many who work in the arts will lose their jobs. The closing of public libraries is the most obvious example. They are where literature, art and culture are available to everyone without charge. Some authorities are already selling them off, others are offering them to the ‘consumer’ on the principle of ‘if you want them buy them’. Massive increases in education fees and the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance are part of the same philosophy. Everything that is not immediately of use to the corporate agenda is to be placed on a ‘pay as you go’ principle. Meanwhile funding for theatre, film, music, dance and other arts projects is to return to the Victorian notion of finding patrons, drawn from the people and corporations who have their own agendas of how to define the arts. In the face of those who choose to exercise their power to destroy, we need to create. We urge all those who work in the arts to join us at 'Artists of the Resistance' in opposing the cuts.

2010-11-20T10:55:00.005Z

Hello again, remember me?

It's been a while hasn't it. I'm a bit older now, so you might not recognise me at first, but I'm still that writer whose blog you used to read. Thanks for popping back. Sorry if you're feeling neglected.

What news? Well, quite a bit actually.

The main project of the past few months has been working on the first two drafts of How Are You Feeling? a huge and crazily ambitious new site specific play for the Brighton Festival, to be performed in a disused hospital. I'm still in the middle of that, but after a large chunk of funding fell through you won't be seeing it now until the 2012 Festival (it was going to be next year.) The silver lining is that it'll be tons better for the extra time, and it might also mean we can set up some sort of afterlife for it outside of Brighton (if anyone knows of any not-too-derelict disused hospitals in their area, please let me know.)

I'm also about to embark on a really exciting project for Birmingham Rep, a co-commission with two other writers. I can't say too much about it at this stage, but suffice to say they are setting the three of us up as 'investigative playwrights' to research a fascinating and controversial area of recent news and formulate a creative response. More on that in due course...

What else? I'm talking to Half Moon Young People's Theatre, who produced Locked In and We Are Shadows, my first two plays for teenagers, about developing a third in the new year. There are also big plans afoot at Mulberry School, where I work as writer-in-residence. Building work is about to begin on their own brand new, on-site studio theatre, scheduled for opening in January 2012. After winning a Scotsman Fringe First with them for 2009's The Unravelling, and getting all four of our plays published this year by Nick Hern Books, we're debating what's next for the company. It's looking like 2011 will involve working towards a spectacular opening season for the new space, possibly involving opening the school up to a whole range of writers... watch this space.

Finally, the extraordinary (and unlikely) journey of How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found continues around the world with news that its third professional US production is going to take place next May, this time in Los Angeles! Most exciting is the news that the visionary director Nancy Keystone will be at the helm. Long-time readers will recall that I got terribly excited by her production of Apollo at Portland Center Stage in 2009, when How To Disappear played in PCS's studio. Well, we've stayed in touch ever since and it's looking like we might finally get to work together, and on her home turf.

I also recently helped judge this year's Adopt-A-Playwright award for Sofie Mason of OffWestEnd.com, for whom we appointed a very exciting winner. I'm not sure it's been announced though so better not say. I love that award though, it's going from strength to strength and becoming a unique annual feature on the theatre calendar. Sofie has also launched the Offies, the first ever set of awards for Off West End shows, which is such a brilliant and obvious idea everyone is wondering why it hasn't been done before.

Lots of other ideas and collaborations bubbling away in the background, but those are the ones I can share for now. I was hoping 2011 might be a bit quieter! Not a chance. (And I'm so used to this sort of pace now, it would probably do my head in if it wasn't like this. Here's hoping it doesn't kill me though.)

In the meantime, here's an interesting thing. I was recently approached by a website offering careers advice, to answer some questions about Playwrighting as a career. Some of them made me laugh because it was things like 'How far is it possible to progress within the organization?' and 'What is the most common type of problem/call-out/enquiry you must attend to?' - questions clearly written for 'normal/proper' jobs. But it was interesting to try and answer them in the context of writing for the theatre, so I reproduce them here. Let me know if you think I've missed anything.

What made you decide to choose to get into this sort of career?
It started as an interest in acting at school and in youth theatres, then became an interest in directing, before finally realising that the playwright is the person with whom it all begins, and who has the main creative vision. I’ve always loved language and stories, but in particular I love the messiness and idiosyncrasies of spoken language, and seeing a story played out live by real human beings in the same room, rather than reading a story off the page. I love theatre’s collaborative nature and the fact that even in this technological age it is still flourishing as one of the last remaining arenas where the British public comes together en masse to consider the big issues of the day and experience lives different to their own. I wanted to be a part of that. As my career has evolved I’ve also come to appreciate the freedom, flexibility and variety of a freelance creative working life. I love the opportunity to take part in a national debate, I love getting to investigate and research unfamiliar worlds, and meet new people who have had experiences I haven’t. I also teach playwriting and really enjoy training up younger generations of artists. And I don’t have to wear a tie or work in an office, that’s a real bonus.

Do you have a standard day or a standard type of `exercise'?
Every writer is different, but when I’m on deadline for a commissioned play script, I get up with the rest of the world and treat my writing day as a regular 9 to 5 shift, Monday to Friday. I have a spare room at home which doubles as a study, but in the early days I’d just write wherever there was a desk – in the kitchen or living room. I need quiet and can’t write anywhere public, though some writers seem to be able to. I structure my stories very thoroughly before writing a word of dialogue, so i will often spend some time putting together prose treatments and scene plans which i then pin to the wall above my desk to follow like a map for the story as I’m going along. It’s easy to get distracted working at home so you do have to be very strict with yourself, switch off your phone, don’t look at emails, have set break times which you stick to, things like that. If anything, when you work for yourself you can find you’re stricter with yourself than a normal boss, and it can be hard to switch off at the end of the day. Fear of missing a deadline and letting a company down, or of producing a sub-standard script which isn’t selected for production are great motivating factors!

However it isn’t all working at home. Quite often you’ll be out for meetings with Literary Managers or Artistic Directors of theatre companies (or Producers in TV or radio) discussing new ideas, chasing commissions, or discussing re-writes of existing scripts. Sometimes you’ll find yourself doing workshops on your play with actors for a day or two, to see how it stands up when performed, to help you decide what changes to make in the next draft. When you have a play in production then you might spend several days or even weeks in the rehearsal room with the director and actors, watching it all come together and giving notes or making last minute changes as appropriate. Other tasks might include proofing the publisher’s copy of your script before it goes to press, giving interviews to journalists in the build-up to your play opening, or even writing articles about it yourself. I also teach a lot and spend anything up to two days a week doing that, in schools and universities. It isn’t unusual to have two or three commissions and a couple of teaching jobs on the go at the same time, so you have to manage your time carefully and be a good multi-tasker.

What is the most common type of problem/call-out/enquiry you must attend to?
Most problems in this line of work arise within the world of a play you are developing, for example structural problems with a story. Sometimes there can be disagreement with a commissioning company about the direction a play has taken but these are thankfully rare – most theatre companies trust and support their writer’s decisions, though in TV they are more likely to interfere. If you get conflicting sets of advice about a play it is sometimes hard to know which is the right one to follow. The trick is to stick to your vision for the play and the story you most want to tell. Audiences have very acute bullshit detectors so your stories must always have human truth at the heart of them.

What do you like most about the job?
I like the freedom to write about whatever i like, and that I’m using my creativity and imagination all day every day. I love the world of the theatre and going to see plays all the time, as well as seeing my own plays come together in the rehearsal room and what incredible depth and insight actors can bring as they take a play off the page and bring it to life. I love sitting in the audience anonymously and sensing how something I’ve written is being received by those around me. I love stage images and metaphor, and the power they have to move an audience and make them see the world differently, or walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. I love how political theatre can be, and its ability to illuminate the great issues of the day through the prism of human stories. I love the variety of the work and the places the research can take me. I have a great hunger to know about the world and working as a playwright really feeds that.

What do you like least about the job?
Contrary to popular belief, playwriting is very badly paid. The Writer’s Guild recommended minimum for a full-length stage play (70+ minutes) is around £6,500. That might sound like a lot but when you bear in mind that might represent 6-12 months work then you quickly realise that you can’t really live on commissions alone. You’d need to take on four a year to even make the national average salary, which is an impossible workload for most writers. There’s also nothing legally enforceable about that amount so many theatres pay less. (TV does pay a lot more but the trade-off is that you aren’t trusted to write your own dramas without doing many years of hack work churning out soap opera episodes. Even then, TV writers give up a huge amount of creative control to producers, and can be replaced even on an idea which they had come up with.)

Playwrights also often aren’t treated with a great deal of loyalty by some theatre companies; too often companies are looking for the next ‘hot young discovery’ and don’t support existing writers through their second, third or fourth plays. That’s great when you are indeed that hot young thing, but that won’t last, and it can be very difficult to sustain a career after your first play. It also isn’t unheard of for companies to commission a play then decide not to produce it, which can be heartbreaking when you’ve put in all that work.

There’s also a trend nowadays towards ‘development culture’, which can involve endless meetings, workshops and rehearsed readings of a play. While these can be useful tools, they can sometimes be a way of throwing writers a bone – ie. a consolation prize for theatres to feel like they have fulfilled their obligations to you when in fact they should be giving you a full production. All these things are a product of playwriting being over-subscribed; there are simply more plays and playwrights than production slots available. It’s incredibly competitive and the sheer amount of writers vying to get their plays on means some places can get away with not treating us as well as they should.

What are the key responsibilities?
You must work to deadlines and deliver good quality, original dramatic scripts. You have to do a lot of re-writes and be open to various people’s critical feedback on your creative ideas, from dramaturgs (sometimes called ‘script editors’) to directors, to actors. These negotiations sometimes require a degree of diplomacy and knowing when to stand your ground and when to concede a point. Unlike novel writing, theatre is a collaborative medium and the end product is a three-dimensional production – what you write is essentially a ‘map’ for actors to follow, like an architect’s blueprint for a house; the house is the end product not the drawing of it. The same with a play – you are ‘wrighting’ action (ie. making it, giving it a real-world form) rather than ‘writing’ words. So you have to be open enough to working in these groups without getting too precious or defensive about your work and the ways it can change as it makes that transition. That said, you also have a responsibility to your own creative vision and voice, and not to compromise that too far. It’s what will make you stand out after all, plus it’s your name all over the posters and flyers.

I’d say there’s also a responsibility to know what other plays are out there, both currently and historically, and to keep up with current affairs so that you can locate your work within the culture in which you are operating, and hopefully contribute to that culture in some way.

But perhaps the most important responsibility is to your audience. You must have something interesting to say, say it in a unique way, and never, ever, bore them.

What about academic requirements? Any formal demands, eg- A Levels?
There’s no formal career path into playwriting, no ads in the back of newspapers, no job interviews and no formal qualifications required. The page is a great leveller – you can either write or you can’t. Most playwrights start off writing in their spare time for no pay and sending their work out until they are called in for a meeting at a theatre. In this sense your main qualification is simply the ability to put in the time to learn, usually through trial and error. You have to write good dialogue, tell a well-structured story, and develop an understanding of the possibilities of theatre as an artistic form. Obviously, formal qualifications don’t hurt, especially in Drama or English. A good grasp of modern and historical plays can be very useful for knowing what has been done before (it also helps to show you’ve read around when you do finally get those meetings with a Literary Manager or Artistic Director.) But this is equally something you could pick up from the theatre section of your local library, and regular playgoing. Some experience of performing, even amateur, can also provide some important insights. But the best training I ever did was probably working for a number of different theatres in their box offices, or front of house departments, or backstage. You get to see tons of theatre for free, but also how it’s all put together, and what sort of shows get produced and why.

Who is the longest serving member in your team/division?
Playwrights rarely work in teams (though this is more common in TV) but in theory it is possible to sustain a career for your entire adult life. The late, great Harold Pinter was working almost up until his death at the age of 78. Writing isn’t physically demanding, so as long as you retain your faculties and your work stays in vogue (that bit’s not as easy as it sounds, of which more later) there’s no reason why you couldn’t sustain a career over 50 or 60 years.

What is the starting salary and how does this increase over time with promotion?
See the question earlier for how badly paid playwriting is. You can count on maybe two hands how many UK playwrights make a living from playwriting alone (Alan Bennett, David Hare, etc.) The rest of us all do something else too. I personally make only about £10-12k a year from commissions, but nearer to £20k from a wide portfolio of teaching and lecturing, including working as a writer-in-residence in a London secondary school. But it’s taken years of hard work, knockbacks and tenacity to get to that stage and build up even the modest profile that I now enjoy. While it’s true that commission fees do go up when you move into the higher echelons of the profession, or you get incredibly lucky and get a West End or Broadway transfer, this applies to maybe 5% of playwrights. The rest scrape a living rather than make a living. You have to be incredibly proactive and entrepreneurial about chasing work, and also at fundraising to produce your own plays, or for a smaller theatre to commission you. Getting to grips with Arts Council funding applications, or leveraging research and development money out of private trusts and foundations is a big part of the job if you want to be regularly produced. You have to create your own opportunities. No-one goes into playwriting for the money, I’m afraid.

If you left this position, what else would you consider/prefer doing?
I’d probably be a university Drama tutor and arts journalist.

How far is it possible to progress within the organization?
The ‘organisation’ in this context I guess would be the theatre industry as a whole, because the freelance nature of our work means that playwrights will work with many different theatre companies over the course of their careers. Some writers are phenomenally successful and get several high profile productions a year, including abroad, while some will spend their entire careers making a lower profile living in smaller venues, community settings, or working outside London, or in a specialised field like writing plays for children. Some writers move abroad, or into TV, or academia. Some have another ‘main’ job and only occasionally write plays. A lot of it depends on where your priorities lie, and the sort of work you want to make, and for whom. Sometimes though, it is to do with the politics of the industry, or the vagaries of the funding and commissioning system, as much as it is to do with talent. Sometimes it’s about luck and who is in post at the point at which your script gets read, and whether or not you appeal to their tastes or fit in with their particular agenda. Some writers have a big hit and are never heard from again. Writers do go in and out of fashion, and the reasons why are often a mystery, even to the writers themselves. The only thing that’s certain is the uncertainty of it all!

What advice do you have for someone who is looking to get into this as a career?
See as much theatre and read as many play scripts as is humanly possible. Keep writing, no matter what. Develop an absolutely unshakeable belief in the quality and importance of your own work. Don’t fixate on the Big Five new writing venues in London (Royal Court, National, Soho, Hampstead, the Bush) – there are many more companies across the country that will produce your work, and often will take better care of you by entering into long-term relationships with writers they get on with. Research these companies and get in touch with them, it isn’t all about the glamour of the big London stages. Be proactive about creating your own opportunities. Make friends with some directors and actors and get them to read your work aloud while you listen. Apply for funding to put your own work on in a fringe theatre or found space – or cajole your unemployed actor friends to do it for free. If it’s good you might get noticed and asked to do something else. Look beyond yourself and your own lived experience for subject matter, especially after your first play. Enter every playwriting competition going (I was plucked from obscurity by the John Whiting Award for a play that most theatres had turned down.) Make use of the free script reading service offered by Soho Theatre and others. Get in touch with your local theatre and see what jobs they have going – even part-time shift work will get you in on a network where you’ll meet theatre professionals and hear about other opportunities. Keep up with theatre industry news (buy The Stage.) Read the Guardian theatre section online. Read my blog (www.finkennedy.blogspot.com). Acquire a patient and understanding spouse, preferably with their own income. Put off having kids. Get qualified in something else you can fall back on during the tough times. You’ll need it.

What are the most important qualities an applicant must should possess?
An ear for dialogue, a deep understanding of the human heart, and a very thick skin. And don’t take yourself or your work too seriously – if you can make an audience laugh they’ll listen to anything you have to say.

Any closing comments/thoughts?
Theatre doesn’t just take place in theatres any more, and many other organisations are starting to employ dramatic writers, particularly schools. See this blog post for more on these ‘invisible’ opportunities.

Good luck!

[NB: You can see this interview in its original context here.]

2010-08-25T14:10:00.001Z

Just heard the BBC are giving another airing to my 2008 radio play Caesar Price Our Lord. Those of you who missed it last time around can catch it this Bank Holiday Monday at 2.15pm on Radio 4, or for a week on iPlayer after that.

2010-08-04T13:37:00.003Z

The Urban Girl's Guide To Camping and other plays - now on sale!

2010-07-05T15:53:00.001Z

Those lovely people at Guardian Unlimited have kindly commissioned a piece from me about community theatre, in the build-up to Silkworks. Have a look here.

2010-06-27T10:46:00.008Z

Direct from the Mulberry School paper this term:

Behind the scenes of the Silkworks

2010 marks the fourth anniversary of Mulberry achieving its School Specialism in the Arts. As Mulberry Theatre Company, Mulberry Films and Mulberry Radio prepare for the Silkworks festival at Southwark Playhouse, London, the school’s playwright-in-residence Fin Kennedy caught up with some of the students and staff involved in putting on this unique event.

“It was amazing, it’s just like – wow. Everyone’s just so over the top!” Rebekah Yasmin smiles and laughs as she remembers her experiences of Edinburgh’s famously exuberant Fringe Festival. “I was 15 at the time, so it was a pretty big deal.”

Rebekah was part of the original cast of Mehndi Night, the first show Mulberry took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. She’s 18 now, confident and articulate, and a far fry from the shy 15 year old I remember. “I was quite quiet, but you had to communicate with loads of people, not just on stage but out on the street flyering. It definitely made me come out of my shell a bit more.”

Rebekah’s hard at work studying for her A-levels now, and aside from the confidence I think I can also detect a quiet politicisation. She talks about Mehndi Night with pride, and a sense of how unusual it was in the context of a festival like Edinburgh. “People that go [to the Edinburgh Fringe]may not know everything about our culture, so it was cool to get to go and represent ourselves, and how we see it as well, not how the media see it. It was true to life, an Asian show by Asian people.”

Mulberry Theatre Company (MTC) made a point of doing very different shows each year. So while Mehndi Night was very firmly set among the Bengali women of Tower Hamlets, 2008’s Stolen Secrets was inspired by East London’s landscape and the secrets it contained. Last year, The Unravelling used a local fabric shop as a way into a fantastical world, and won MTC a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First award. Tamanna Hussain, 16, who played one of the Narrators in the show, tells me more about the process of putting it together.

“We did a lot of work with fabrics in groups, and what you could make out of just fabrics on stage. That was really interesting. The one where we made the shape of the trees in Epping Forest, that was one we came up with by ourselves which made it into the final show. Camille [Cettina, the show’s director] really helped us but we also did a lot ourselves.”

Suhena Begum, 18, remembers the strict schedule required to pull off such an ambitious production. “I remember having to wake up early! I just remember, like, long rehearsals – having fun, but also very tiring. It was so much hard work, not exactly stressful, but just doing the same thing over and over again to get it right.”

Being away from home for so long is also not without its challenges. As Suhena tells me, “I got really homesick, I was crying a lot. At that time I was so embarrassed because I was one of the eldest! I got over it after a couple of days, and overall it was great, but it made me realise how much I love my family. I missed them so much.”

Both Tamanna and Suhena tell me about how the rest of the cast stepped in as a substitute family during those tougher moments. “We all got on really well and really relied on each other, definitely. I think that was one of the reasons we were able to do so well in the final show.”

But it wasn’t all about acting. An important aspect of any production is the backstage jobs, such as stage management and design. Nowshim Sharmeli Prenom, now 16, worked closely with The Unravelling’s designer Barbara Fuchs, whose team was key to the success of the show.

She tells me “I was behind the scenes making sure all the props were in the right position, so that everything would happen on time. In the last bit of the play, we had to come out with shadow puppets, so timing was very important.”

Nowshin was also involved in the design and making of the set and costumes. “I learned how to cut the fabric for the dresses that we made. I was good at cutting, and I really liked working with Barbara and learning about dress-making.” As the title might suggest, there was a huge amount of fabric involved in the show. “I worked mostly on the big zombie fabric, I had to stitch furs onto it. It was really hard work because it was such a massive fabric, eight metres. I think I broke the needle of the machine several times!”

But in the end it all paid off, and might even have influenced Nowshin’s future. “I’m thinking of taking design further as a career. In the summer holidays I’m looking forward to doing a fashion course at Summer University and I might get a job in an architecture company for two weeks.”

Both Mehndi Night and The Unravelling are being revived for Silkworks, the school’s own festival it is holding at Southwark Playhouse this year. Nowshin, Tamanna and Suhena can't wait. “I’m looking forward to rehearsals and seeing all the cast again,” Suhena tells me, “Also getting into my character – playing the Mother again.” Performing closer to home also gives her the chance to put together her own invite list, which seems to be growing by the day, “I want to invite my Mum, and my brother. My sister’s seen it at least twice already so I think she’s bored of it. I’m gonna invite a couple of cousins. My friends, definitely…”

But this festival will give the school the chance to show off more than just its successes in theatre – Mulberry Films, Mulberry Radio and the school’s art and catering departments will all be contributing. I caught up with Tanya Singh, head of Mulberry Films to hear more about what they’re planning.

“One of the groups that I’ve been working with all year are making a new piece especially for the festival, showing on a loop on video monitors in the foyer area. We’ve started looking at some surrealist films and thinking about dream imagery. Personally this is something I’ve been wanting to do with them for a while, think about installations, so it’s a great opportunity.”

There will also be daily screenings of Mulberry Films’ very own documentary of last year’s Edinburgh success, filmed and edited by the students themselves.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mulberry Films will also be involved in developing the multimedia aspects of this year’s brand new stage play The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping. “We’re working to create some film as part of the overall design of a play, rather than a separate standalone piece.”

Urban Girl, as the new play has come to be known, is yet another new approach for MTC. Developed with a dedicated committee of Mulberry alumni, former students now in their 20s, meetings took place over 6 months to try out various ideas and storylines.

Chaired by MTC’s director Luke Kernaghan, these meetings were by turns lively, heated, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. “It felt as if we were one big family,” remembers Dipa Khatun, 20, “sitting around a table during dinner, discussing what's been going on in our lives.” Shunita Rahman, also 20, agrees, “All the stories and ideas were like little mosaic pieces. Each week we'd be eager to know how they were going to be arranged, it was very exciting.”

The play that came out of it is about four old friends from school who go on a camping trip during the University holidays. But they become lost in the middle of the forest, and a burning secret comes out which threatens to destroy their friendship forever.

Committee member Najiba Sultana, 21, says “The play represents Asian girls without it being derogatory to our culture in any way. It emphasises that we are a part of a larger community and that affected by similar things as other people in different cultures.” Nasima Begum, 23 agrees. “It challenges certain stereotypes that people have about the Bangladeshi community.”

What was interesting about working in this way was that the meetings were also a weekly space to carve out time to reflect, in the midst of the committee members’ busy modern lives. “It made me realise that there are some things in my life I take for granted,” Shunita tells me, “But that actually I'm so blessed with what I have, and more importantly, I'm happy with the person I am.” She continues, “I also realised that I'm much more confident than I thought I was and sharing personal experiences can help others reflect on their own lives.”

And that, perhaps, is the point of the arts themselves. In an increasingly isolated modern world, where most of our time is spent in front of a computer screen, coming together to share in one another’s lives is a rare and precious thing. It is the nearest thing we have to walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Rebekah Yasmin’s advice for this year’s new cast of Mehndi Night sums it up: “Give it your all and don’t be shy. Some of the characters, like Shulé the nosy neighbour who I played, they’re the characters you love to hate, but you have to portray them in a way that makes people hate you but love you at the same time. Because they’re still human, and they are like they are for a reason. A good play can show you why.”

Mehndi Night, The Unravelling and The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping play as part of the SILKWORKS Festival at Southwark Playhouse, 14-17 July 2010

Box office: 020 7407 0234 / www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Join the SILKWORKS Facebook event page here.

All the plays will be published in July by Nick Hern Books as part of the forthcoming volume The Urban Girl’s Guide To Camping and other plays

2010-06-19T09:47:00.006Z

Find out what has been keeping me so preoccupied all year... Tickets are now on sale to the SILKWORKS Festival at Southwark Playhouse, 14-17 July.

2010-03-23T17:11:00.008Z

Ok, so this is a bit of a cheat, but it's something I've been meaning to publish for a while.

Lately, I've been approached quite regularly by new (and new-ish) playwrights, seeking some advice on how to make ends meet betwen commissions, and how to generate the sort of teaching and community work which I do quite a lot of. In particular, there seems to be a growing mass of new playwrights who have done all the right things - the young writers schemes and attachments, the meetings with literary managers, the pitches, the first and second drafts written at evenings and weekends, the fringe shorts nights, the Arvon weeks away - but who are stuck waiting for their first proper break, and becoming increasingly frustrated at being unable to use their creative skills while they wait.

In fact, there is a wealth of proactive things which playwrights can do to make a living, which doesn't involve waiting tables, and which will not only generate some cash, but will get them 'out there' engaging with the world in new and exciting ways that will almost certainly challenge and stretch them as artists (and people), and generate a tonne of material for new plays. Regular readers will know all about my work at Mulberry School. For me, this sort of work not only pays the bills (though the creative freedom in not having to chase commissions 24/7 is not to be overlooked) but it also provides me with an extraordinary 'nursery' of new ideas, in which to try out new dramatic forms, and to get to know and develop characters who are totally unlike me or any circles in which I move. But the ways in which you can get into this work are at best opaque, or accidental, and at worst completely hidden and inaccessible.

This weekend I was asked to speak as part of a panel at a Spread The Word event at Deptford Albany on precisely this subject: How To Make A Living As A Writer. It was an important subject to address, but one which gets discussed all too seldom, and on which it seems strangely difficult to find any practical nuts-and-bolts advice.

To that end, and because I knew a 90-minute panel wouldn't be nearly enough time to say everything I wanted to, I put together a detailed handout for the writers to take away. I'm reproducing it here because I hope it will be of interest, and useful, for some of you in the position described above. (And, selfishly, because if I stick it up here then I will have an online page with everything I know on this subject to which I can direct all the writers who keep contacting me, which will save me having to write it out afresh every time...)

So, here it is. If you want to add any advice or experiences of your own it would be interesting to hear about it in the comments box. Together we might be able to produce something really comprehensive which will help writers take control of their incomes and careers.

Making A Living As A Playwright
Advice from Fin Kennedy

Playwriting is notoriously badly paid. At the time of writing, the Writer’s Guild ITC minimum fee for a full-length play stands at just over £6,500. This is the minimum recommended rate, though there is nothing legally enforceable about this and many theatres pay less. (They also tend to assume ‘minimum’ means ‘standard’.) Given that you’re looking at anything from 12 months to three years between concept and production, you’ll quickly see that this isn’t any sort of way to make a living. So what can you do in the meantime to use your skills to make ends meet?

There are a number of options – though the advice contained here is by no means exhaustive, and it may well spark off your own, better, ideas. I hope so. It also tends to look at the community and education sectors simply because that is where my experience lies. There are undoubtedly opportunities to be had (or created) in the commercial and private spheres, but I have never had them, so can't really advise. Drop me a line if you come across any though, I’d be interested to hear about them.
This handout also assumes you have proactively made use of all the existing and well publicised opportunities on offer by theatre companies in London and elsewhere – in particular new writer’s courses and free script reading services. Soho Theatre and the Royal Court have tended to pioneer these, but many theatres now, even fairly small ones, have something similar on offer. Get in touch with your nearest one and see what they have going on in this respect.

I’m also assuming you’ve sent your most current work to all the usual suspects – the Bush, Soho, the Court, the National, Hampstead – if not, what are you waiting for?

However, it’s an unfortunate (and rather cruel) side effect of the success of the new writing scene, and some years of half-decent funding, that there are now more playwrights that have had some sort of training than there are production slots available, with result that lots of people like you are in a ‘holding pattern’ having had readings and short or fringe plays on and everyone having made the right noises but no big commission yet. It’s a tough one. More often than not it comes down to luck, and the right ‘gatekeeper’ being in place at the time you send in your script (ie. someone who shares your tastes or ‘gets’ what you are trying to do.) So the first piece of advice is ‘keep trying’ – remember the Beatles got turned down by 23 record companies. But keep writing too, it won’t do you any good to pin all your hopes on one play, and theatres will want to see that you’re turning out new material and not a one-trick pony.

That said, there are some other, less obvious things you can do to improve your chances and make yourself proactive rather than waiting for theatres to get back to you. In no particular order I would recommend:

Raising your own funds to write a play
Ring up your local Arts Council office (www.artscouncil.org.uk - they’re organised by region) and ask for an appointment with a Theatre Officer, to talk through your position and what funds you might apply for (Grants for the Arts is the usual one). Theatre Officers are there to give away government money to artists and it’s their job to advise you on how best to get your hands on it, so make use of them! Even if they can’t help you right now they can advise you on what to do to get into a position where you are eligible. One good way of upping your chances is to make friends with a literary manager (or literary associate/assistant) in a theatre company in a position to commission you, even a small one, and ask them to back you ‘on paper’ or ‘in principle’ in an ACE bid to raise a fee for yourself for some research and development money. This doesn’t cost a theatre anything either in terms of money or time, as you’ll be doing all the legwork.

There’s also the Peggy Ramsay Foundation (www.peggyramsayfoundation.org) a private trust which exists exclusively to give money away to playwrights – read their website for more. They are also very approachable and you can ring up the main man Lawrence Harbottle for an informal chat about applying – though they will probably also want to see evidence that you are working with a company who might end up producing it. Anything like this you can do to raise your own fee but keep a company on board without it costing them anything will help get you into a good position. Then once you’ve got some funding you suddenly have a play that someone has invested in already which in turn makes it more attractive to a theatre company to produce... and on it goes. It’s about getting the ball rolling yourself.

If you’re trying to initiate funds for a community or education project then it might be worth investing in a CD-ROM copy of Funderfinder (www.funderfinder.org.uk). This is a searchable database of all the current private trusts and foundations operating in the UK and what they fund – with a brilliant questionnaire interface at the start in which you fill in details of your project in order to bring up a shortlist of the applicable trusts. It costs about £120 but if you’re working with an organisation they might cover this for you. It’s worth noting that it’s a lot easier to raise your fee as a writer through making it part of a community or education project than it is to raise a fee to go away and write a play on your own. Writing a successful funding application is another skill in itself of course, but if you go down this route God knows you’ll have enough chances to practice. Remember to always ask for feedback on unsuccessful bids so you can learn where you are going wrong.

Finally, if you or the group you want to work with have any sort of minority status don’t be afraid to play on it in these applications. Sorry to be cynical about it but it will increase your chances of attracting funding. There are various pots of public money, and private trusts, set up to encourage various minority groups into arts activities, be it on the basis of ethnicity, disability, youth, deprivation, region etc. If you live in a deprived inner city area (or want to work in one) - mention it. Equally if you’re out in the sticks in an area overlooked for arts activities – mention that too. Even being over 26 years old can be considered as being at a disadvantage these days as you’re beyond the cut-off age to be eligible for most new writer’s attachment schemes at theatres! Be imaginative (but don’t take the piss or it will undermine your application.)

Research schools in your area
At the end of this document are some links to a few different organisations and the sorts of projects they do. Some are small (like All Change) and some huge (like Artists Taking The Lead – a cultural Olympiad project), while some are education wings of theatre companies (like Almeida Projects). It depends on the scale of what you want to take on and how much prior experience you have.

But don’t just look for organisations actively seeking out artists – with a bit of research you can always approach some ‘on spec’ with a project outline that might interest them. For example, I am currently part-time writer in residence at a state school in Tower Hamlets with a Specialism in arts and media. Specialist Schools and Academies is a government scheme where schools get extra money to spend on practising professionals from that field to work alongside kids and their teachers. Specialism exists in Arts and Media, Science, Sport and various other subjects. Obviously Arts and Media ones are your best bet, but be imaginative about what you could pitch. I once taught Evolution and Natural Selection to a Year 11 Science class by getting them to write a play about Darwin’s life and all the arguments he had with religious people. To write the play they had to get to grips with detail of the arguments.

Check the full list here to see if there's a Specialist School in your area:
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/specialistschools

If there is, call them to ask who is head of School Specialism then drop them a line. With schools you will have to link your project to the curriculum in some way, and especially the literacy agenda. If you can find out what exam boards your local school uses then you can read the curriculum and try and make it fit in with that, especially if you can find out which plays or novels your local school uses in its English classes. With schools everything has to be shown to be linked to raising students' grades, they aren't big on 'soft outcomes' (such as increasing self confidence) though you might get lucky.

If you’d feel safer doing all this under the umbrella of an organisation, there is an interesting outfit called Creative Partnerships (www.creative-partnerships.com) which brokers relationships and initiates projects between artists and schools.

Other areas of the public sector
I once ran a ten-week playmaking project with kids in care for Hampshire Social Services. It was ostensibly all about careers and preparing them for leaving care by introducing them to the arts as a potential employer (they didn’t just have to act, there were technical and design opportunities too.) I did have a personal 'in' as my mother is a social worker, but it ought to be possible to pitch ideas to your local authority independently so long as you research the right name to present an approach to. That said, each Local Authority is differently structured so will have its own names for the various job titles I'm about to quote you, so you'll need to develop a nose (or a charming phone manner) to find out which one applies in your area.

First of all it isn't social services any more but “Children's Services" and the 'Area Director' (or similar title) will hold the budget for projects. However, individual care homes can commission projects directly, and where I worked in Hampshire there was even a 'Participation Officer' for children looked after (CLAs) who ran a youth theatre club and various other artsy projects for kids in the care system. The head of your local fostering team might also have funds to spend on that sort of thing. With social services you'd need to aim your pitch less at literacy etc and more at 'empowerment' of young people, increasing confidence/articulacy etc, and in particular to helping them take part in decisions that affect their lives. Soft outcomes are much more of a goer here. But be prepared to meet some vulnerable and disturbed young people – be sure that the social services team supports you at every stage and has a presence in the room. They shouldn’t treat your class/rehearsal as a dumping ground while they have an hour off (the same goes for schools too.) I’d advise doing projects like this with one or more other artists (I usually do mine with a trained actor/director with some workshop experience.) You should also factor in lots of planning time with the school or social work department to develop your workshop ideas – they will have the expert eye and know the kids, and are well placed to advise you what will and won't work. Don’t be afraid to suggest a modest charge for your time for planning meetings like this, they can really add up over time.

Beyond social services local councils often have a 'Youth Arts Officer' or similar who can advise you about community or young people’s arts activities in your borough and may even be able to help you in applying for funding to get something off the ground. Go onto your local council website and look for a department called something like 'Recreation and Heritage' or 'Community and Culture', it ought to come under them. Tower Hamlets council even has a page on their website listing trusts and foundations with a stated interest in funding projects in east London. Browse your local council’s website or give them a call to see if they offer similar advice.

You'd be surprised how much discretion councils have to commission artists, but they hardly ever advertise the fact. Ask for an informal meeting to talk through some ideas (be proactive in devising some – they will be looking to you as the creative in these situations.) But pretty much any public sector organisation might consider an arts project if you assess their needs and what would interest them. I recently heard about a poet who had a residency in a hospital, because research showed that keeping people's minds active helped them recover quicker. Elderly care homes might think the same. Prisons too often have very active workshop programmes to re-skill and rehabilitate inmates (though I've never done this - if anyone has a link to a relevant organisation do leave it in the comments box.)

Finally, remember that all public sector workers are overworked and underpaid so keep your letter brief and only send longer details if they request it or call you in for a meeting. You might also have to chase them for a response to your initial approach, even if they're interested it's the sort of thing that will get forgotten about in a school or social work department where the main thing is crisis management! Send a letter, call, call again, before you give up.

Education departments of theatres
Many professional theatre companies have education departments these days to encourage younger audiences and do follow up workshops in schools on plays the students have seen. The staff in these departments are usually workshop leaders with years of experience and good links to their local communities. If you can get in with them you’ll have a ready-made network of opportunities. If you have no experience in this area you might have to offer to tag along as an observer (for free I’m afraid) for a few sessions, but if you’re genuine and they think you’ll be safe to unleash onto the kids then it might be sooner than you think before you’re added to the pool of workshop leaders and getting a few paid hours (all the more so if you’re a playwright with these skills, you’ll more often find actors in this role for obvious reasons, but playwrights can bring expertise in lyricism, structure and storytelling which can really appeal.)

Remember that these departments usually do workshops related to whatever is playing on their main stage at the time, so before approaching them make sure you’ve seen plenty of their work and can talk knowledgably about it when you meet them. Theatre education departments will also produce ‘Education packs’ which are guides for teachers containing classroom exercises and other practical ideas for running workshops with their students on a particular play in the theatre’s repertoire. You can ring up and ask to be sent these, or they are often available to download for free on the theatre’s website. You’ll quickly get a sense of the education team’s work, and pick up ideas for your own workshops. (An example of an Education Pack can be found here.)

Education departments do brilliant work in their own right and will often train you up from scratch, plus they’re an excellent ‘back door’ into the biggest companies. You may well end up writing stuff for the kids, either in schools or as part of a youth theatre they run, which could get seen by the artistic director and lead to further work.

Develop a talent for writing for teenagers
It doesn’t have to be all workshop leading and jumping about being a fish. If you can develop an ear for writing teenage dialogue you may well find yourself in demand. Write a short play at first, polish it a bit, then send it in to a young people’s theatre company near you (this is different to a youth theatre – young people’s theatre companies are usually publicly funded and staffed by full-time professionals, though many will have youth theatres – made up of local kids putting on plays for fun - as one part of their work.) In east London Half Moon and Theatre Centre are examples, though there are many such organisations around the country.

These companies not only run attachment schemes for writers, but commission and tour work all over the country, plus they do a whole ton of ‘invisible’ work in schools and youth theatres which you can get in on. Working for them as a workshop leader will often lead onto an attachment to develop a new play, once you have a bit of experience of the kids they’re looking to target. If you don’t have anything specifically for teenagers then write something short and send it in. You could ask them to send you copies of previous teenage plays they have produced so you can have a read (plays for teenagers are rarely published – though Methuen’s Six Ensemble Plays for Young Actors is worth a look - and not just cos I've got a play in it...though there is that obviously.)

Remember that with any project working with vulnerable groups you'll need to have an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check - though the organisation commissioning you to work with them should cover the cost if you don't already have one. You’ll have to ‘fess up to any criminal convictions I’m afraid, though minor ones in the distant past are sometimes negotiable at the organisation’s discretion.

The other thing is that they're likely to want to see some sort of track record and references. If you have any teaching experience at all, even voluntary or classroom assisting, it will stand you in good stead but if you keep getting knocked back it may be a case of finding an organisation that does the sort of work you want to do and offering to volunteer as an (unpaid) assistant on an existing project for a while, before you'll be let loose on your own. It's a pain but consider it a loss-leader on future work, you'll meet tons of contacts that way.

Work as a script reader
Offer to work as a script reader for theatres you admire (or even for ones you don’t). This involves reading the many unsolicited plays they get sent and writing a short report, sometimes for the theatre, sometimes as advice for the writer. If you have no experience you might have to do it for free for a while (and even when it pays the pay is low) but the point is it’s a great link with a literary department who will get to know you, plus you will meet all sorts of other people on the up, from directors to actors and producers, all of whom you might be able to hook up with. You will read some truly awful plays but this too is a learning experience and is the first step to learning how to teach playwriting (as well, of course, as learning how to avoid making those mistakes yourself).

Enter every playwriting competition going
I was plucked from obscurity by unexpectedly winning the John Whiting Award in 2006. The winner usually gets it after being produced, but I read the small print and realised that this didn’t have to be the case, so I nominated myself and applied. Other competitions to look out for are the Meyer-Whitworth award, the Bruntwood prize and the Verity Bargate Award – though there are others (invest in a copy of The Writer’s & Artist’s Yearbook for full listings, as well as advice on agents and producers.)

There is a writer and theatre academic based at Exeter University called David Lane who runs a free email mailing list which lists opportunities like this that come his way – including calls for plays by fringe theatres and student groups (usually unpaid but not always). I won't publish his email address on here as he'll get inundated with spam, but drop me a line if you want it.

Visit BBC Writersroom
If you know anything about script writing you’ll probably already have done this but just in case: www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom It’s the entry point for writers for the entire BBC, there’s tons of advice for new writers as well as ways to submit your script. I’d personally recommend targeting BBC Radio – they are the single biggest producer of new plays in the entire country, and they are all very nice supportive people (unlike in TV). If you can make a personal connection with a radio producer it can last a lifetime. Obviously you need to start listening to some radio plays so check out the Radio 4 afternoon play (on iplayer if you miss it, or it’s on around 2pm) or ask the writersroom to send you some on CD. The money’s not fab but the possibilities of what you can do on radio are incredibly exciting.

Keep an eye on the musical chairs
Buy The Stage, the theatre industry newspaper, and keep an eye on which artistic directors and literary managers come and go in which theatres. People new in their posts are useful because they might want to make their mark on a new job or company by taking a risk on a new or untried writer. Pay attention to any pronouncements they make about what sort of work they’re looking for (e.g. Dominic Cooke made a speech about looking for plays about the middle classes when he came in at the Court, while Nick Hytner at the National is on record as saying he wants a decent play about Islam, especially by a woman.) Might any of your work fit in with these stated interests – or can you write something in response? Drop them a line personally, congratulating them on their new appointment and asking if they want to take a look at this play you’ve got knocking around...

International connections?
Do exploit any international connections you have, especially if you speak another language. You might be able to get into the UK theatre through the back door if you can get produced abroad and show that your play is a success. Don’t be afraid to approach theatre companies yourself if you have links to that country, you might be surprised how keen they are. The British Council also do a lot of work with UK artists and tour UK work abroad. Check them out.

Bushgreen
Sign up and publish your plays on line for free - www.bushgreen.org – a great new initiative from the Bush Theatre with a lot of interest from the wider industry.

Don’t give up
I know all the new writing courses are aimed at young writers but don’t worry about getting too old – the older the better to write plays, in my opinion. It’s about life experience and there are too many flawed first plays by 21 year olds out there. Plus if you have a day job and aren’t about to go bankrupt then what’s the hurry? That said, do keep churning out ideas – each idea will be better than the last and it will show potential producers you’re not stuck flogging one or two plays which are past their sell-by date.

Finally, a word of warning...
Remember that you are a writer first and a teacher of writing second. It is easy to get sucked into teaching, there’s always work to be had and every year brings a new cohort of students, eager to benefit from your wisdom. And you do get used to the regular money. But remember you are only a teacher of playwriting, or a playwriting mentor, or a writer-in-residence if you are also being professionally produced. They are two sides of the same coin, and can complement each other wonderfully, but if the balance starts to creep beyond 50-50and the teaching starts to eat into your time to write, then you need to look again at your portfolio and reconsider how you’re dividing your time...

That’s kind of it. Best of luck with it all. With the community stuff in particular, if you can make it work it's one of the most rewarding things you will ever do, and it will make you a better artist and fully in touch with the world. I see it as getting out there and meeting characters for future stories…

Keep me posted about how you get on, I’d be interested to see if any of this advice bears fruit.

Links
All Change Arts - An example of a cross-arts organisation producing small to medium scale community arts projects.

Almeida Projects - Education wing of the Almeida Theatre, though most theatres will have one.

Artists Taking the Lead - Although this fund is now closed, it's a good example of the sort of large scale project funds being made available around the build up to he 2012 Olympics. Hey, I hate the Olympics too, but if the money's on offer you may as well do something with it (though I entered this fund and didn't get anywhere...but then I do slag the Olympics off on here now and then so maybe they heard?)

Other useful organisations
Literaturetraining.com - does what it says on the tin
Awards For All - Small grants for community arts organisations
Grants for the Arts - grants for individual artists to do their thing
NAWE - National Association of Writers in Education
Artsjobs - Jobs and opportunities

Good luck!

2010-03-04T20:46:00.003Z

Frigging hell, I've now got busy again!!

But 37 is quite enough for me, bless you all for dinging my doorbell so many times. I feel like a hapless suburban householder during a local outbreak of knock-and-run. All I need you to do now is form a picket line outside my house for a few days to prevent all emails, teaching deadlines and writing deadlines from getting through for a while...

I will blog properly soon, I promise. But as you know I don't do throwaway posts (well, apart from this one) so it takes a bit of time to formulate my thoughts into the structured narrative of wisdom which you, my 37 blessed disciples, undoubtedly expect and deserve.

Watch this space.

2010-02-01T19:50:00.003Z

I'm BACK!!!!!!! But the real question is: Is anyone still there?

My site stats say I'm still in double figures, but after the comment on my previous post linking to that Chinese arse site I have to wonder whether that figure isn't somewhat inflated by those people that have been hacking into Google.

Anyway, I could tell you about all sorts of stuff, but it would be a bit of a waste of time if no-one was there. But in the past, when I've put out a call asking my readers to make themselves known, and for your suggestions for what you'd like to see me blog about, then the tumbleweed has whistled through my comments box. It must be because you're all very shy. (It can't possibly be because I don't have any readers.)

So I've had an idea.

See that poll function thing on the right? I've finally decided how to use it. If enough of you click Yes then that's how I'll know it's worth bothering to write an extended post. (I haven't decided how many is enough, but to be honest, I'll be amazed if it gets above 10.) Think of it as a doorbell. If enough people ding it I might just come out.

By the way, if it rockets up to 30 or 40 within a day or two then I'll know it's you, Mother, pressing it repeatedly.

Right then. I'm going back to bed.

2009-10-19T14:21:00.001Z

As you might have gathered from the gap since my last post, I'm taking a break from blogging for the time being as I have a new play to write. I've got Arts Council funding so it's suddenly serious.

I hope to be back in the New Year. In the meantime, Merry Christmas.

2009-08-23T11:11:00.006Z

Some pics from Edinburgh...

2009-08-17T13:34:00.003Z

We have two more lovely reviews for The Unravelling, both of which really capture the beauty of the girls' performances:

The British Theatre Guide here, and the hard-working and ever-reliable Statler of View From The Stalls here.

Got home late yesterday after an emotional full-company meal the night before (such a lovely do, all the kids get personalised speeches and gifts) so having a well-earned rest for a while, but what a week. We were turning people away in the final sell-out shows and could easily have filled a month-long run. It's really exciting that this has happened to a state school in one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK - such an endorsement of the work (theirs as much as mine) and raises everything to a whole new level, potentially opening all sorts of possibilities for where we go next (e.g. I found out at the awards do that getting a Fringe First means you are automatically shortlisted for further awards to take the show to New York or Adelaide! Watch this space...)

If Carslberg ran schools, they would be like Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets.

2009-08-12T07:44:00.003Z

Review for The Unravelling in today's Scotsman ... if you're in Edinburgh all I can say is you'd better book quick! I'm so pleased for our girls, they've worked so hard for this...

Theatre review: The Unravelling
Published Date: 12 August 2009
By Sally Stott
THE UNRAVELLING

THE SPACE @ VENUE 45

TO SAY Fin Kennedy and the Mulberry School for Girls are one of the best writer/education partnerships there is doesn't do them justice. To say they're one of the best companies at the Fringe comes closer.

Mulberry isn't a stage school, it's a normal comprehensive – such bright fresh perspectives and truthful performances couldn't really have come from anywhere else. The young people, who are predominantly of Bangladeshi heritage, provide a strikingly fresh and imaginative view of their cosmopolitan London home. Kennedy then uses this beautifully to weave together a fairytale version of their reality: a fantastic place where Tower Hamlets is a 'magical land', the Tube is a gateway to the underworld and you fly to the top of Canary Wharf and watch the sun go down.

As with last year's Stolen Secrets, the set is stunning, created through reams of coloured fabric that becomes the walls of houses, skin of monsters and the very thing that binds characters and stories together.

For the abundance of companies who seem to think you can't have a decent backdrop without a decent budget (and so consequently have none at all), then prepare to be proved wrong by Barbara Fuchs' beautifully integrated design.

With so much fabric around it's appropriate that the piece is set in the shop of a seamstress. She's a vivacious character who specialises in telling tantalising stories where the next chapter comes with the next purchase. Her three daughters – an emo, a wannabe and a princess – think she's a bit tragic. But when some shocking news threatens to blow their world away, they must learn to appreciate their mother before they lose her altogether.

As the rolls of fabric are unravelled, stories are unfurled, taking our characters on a journey from childhood to the brutal reality of growing up. The play's world is both fantastical enough to be enjoyed by the young and real enough to resonate with those a bit older.

While the show is essentially a morality tale that draws references from other well-known fables, it's conveyed in such a striking, original and passionate way that you easily forget this. The ending, in particular, is bold and surprising – you'd be a hard person indeed not to find it very moving.

Until 15 August. Today 12:10pm.

UPDATE 11AM - Just had a call from the Scotsman to say we have been awarded a Fringe First!

2009-06-26T11:02:00.012Z

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.

2009-05-04T17:18:00.002Z

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.

2009-04-25T14:11:00.002Z

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

2009-04-05T10:52:00.006Z

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?

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 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!

2009-03-30T15:32:00.003Z

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 brillaintly 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.

2009-03-16T17:15:00.009Z

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 which 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.

2009-03-08T13:47:00.002Z

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."

2009-02-13T14:47:00.004Z

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.

2008-12-18T17:45:00.002Z

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.)

2008-10-19T16:26:00.002Z

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.

2008-10-03T11:26:00.003Z

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.

2008-09-01T17:28:00.002Z

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.

2008-08-13T13:45:00.003Z

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

2008-08-06T14:21:00.006Z

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.

2008-07-02T12:18:00.003Z

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.

2008-06-27T15:04:00.002Z

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.

2008-06-25T08:36:00.000Z

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

2008-06-19T19:52:00.003Z

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.

2008-03-23T13:03:00.002Z

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.

2008-01-27T18:22:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-16T20:01:00.000Z

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.

2008-01-10T13:24:00.000Z

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 De m leader says he's no Cameron clone'.

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

2008-01-09T16:39:00.001Z

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 naughty assembly. Though I had to admire his balls for being there at all.

2007-12-12T15:25:00.000Z

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.

2007-11-28T16:57:00.000Z

Writing plays, no-one can hear you scream.

2007-11-08T11:06:00.001Z

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...

2007-11-03T13:58:00.000Z

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...

2007-10-08T17:35:00.000Z

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.

2007-09-28T19:27:00.000Z

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.

2007-09-26T13:46:00.000Z

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.

2007-09-18T17:39:00.000Z

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

2007-09-16T17:49:00.000Z

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...

2007-09-11T17:19:00.001Z

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.

2007-08-30T16:52:00.001Z

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.

2007-08-16T16:58:00.000Z

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.

2007-08-10T08:10:00.000Z

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!