Choose Real Life. Unplug Yourself. part 2 about writing for the drama

Some suggestions for aspiring playwrights

  In my last couple of blogs (“Choose Life. Choose Art.” and “Choose Art. Choose Drama.”)  I’ve suggested that there may be other ways to satisfying your desire to create art through writing rather than chasing a conventional career path.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given both trophies and awards but they’ve been sporadic and, in the end, non life-changing.  What I’ve done, - been driven to do - has always been to make stuff.  Mostly with words and mostly in the theatre. Any success I have had has been from lucky meetings or having written enough to feel confident that what I’m doing will fill a gap that no-one else can. I have taken on mad projects – the madder the better – through which I’ve learnt about people and the world and have been able to create something out of that knowledge.  Every project I embark on is usually way beyond my comfort zone.  “I’ll give it a go.” has been my motto. And the more unlikely the project, the better.   And for me, every project has been a learning experience for the next one.

As I’ve said before, I try not to give advice – your path through the undergrowth will be way different from mine.  But yours will be just as valid and worthwhile.  Probably more so.  You may well hit the jackpot financially.  Good for you. The crucial thing is that you are doing what drives you and not trying to fit in with someone else’s view of how this or that should be done.  That you’re creating something that no-one else could create and that you’re pushing the boundaries of understanding of the world.  For me, that has been to try and learn through observing and using what I see and hear in the world around and then trying to condense it into some sort of narrative.  A meditation, if you like, on the world and the people in it.

And any writing you do, however flippant and inconsequential on the surface, will have some sort of serious intent bubbling underneath.  To repeat:  as writers we have been blessed with the desire and ability to report back on the shadowy, shaded corners of human experience.  And, however we frame our reports, as comedies, tragedies science fiction dramas or romcoms we are constrained to report back with honesty and thoroughness. Many of my plays have been for small audiences in unusual venues.  If I can affect one person in a village hall it means as much to me as a hundred in a gilded concert hall.

The decline in theatre audiences has been variously ascribed to the growth of cinema, the introduction of television, the Internet and so on.  Those may be contributory factors but a number of studies have shown that’s not the whole truth.  Indeed, there was a high watermark of theatre going in the UK in the 60s, 70s and 80s when cinema had been well established for two generations and TV widely available for twenty years.  There were real reasons for this, stemming partly from Government decisions to increase funding for the arts in 1948 as part of the rebuilding of confidence in the country after the war;  and also from the extraordinary Resolution 42 of the 1960 Trades Union Congress .  There was an outpouring of grass-roots led theatres taking up the examples of Unity Theatre, Stratford East, Centre 42 and a myriad of others.  And at the same time a huge number of post war writers, directors and actors all trying to speak up for the under represented in the country.

So why is the Theatre Industry in the twenty first century in a tizz? Is it down to the decline in attention span of potential audiences?  Is it the incessant need for clickbait and pre digested, ill-informed pap?  Is it the current self-obsession in writers that maybe have narrowed their view to the exclusion of concern for audiences?  Is it down to feeling inferior to the electronic media?  Is it down to the idea that Theatre should be some sort of Industry with Industrial goals and mind-sets?

Maybe some of these.  Maybe all or none.  Perhaps we need to go out there and find the audience that is hungry for something different.

In my opinion, theatre needs to find its heart in drama again and not try to compete with other art forms.  I believe its attempts to match movies and TV for spectacle and melodrama gives theatre its present inferiority complex and need for more and more in the way of support. What audiences were looking for in previous generations was the social interaction provided in a theatre.  A direct contact with actors and opportunities to consider and reflect on what has been offered.  So, let’s see if we can refocus theatre to a more human size experience.

To be fully human, we need direct encounters with other human beings.  We have to be in their presence, open to their otherness, alert to their hopes and fears, engaged in the minuet of conversation, the delicate back-and-forth of speaking and listening.  That is how relationships are made.  That is how we become moral beings.  That is how we learn to think as “We”.  This cannot be done electronically.

“Morality:  Restoring the Common God in Divided Times” by Jonathan Sachs.

Trisha Lewis as Nanny Eve in my drama “Eve of War” which played countless times between 1984 and 2017. Sadly still relevant.

Unplug Yourself…

Let’s get rid of all that stuff like extensive and expensive lighting and stage effects. Let’s narrow the focus of theatre down to concentrate on the little magic area which is the stage, right in the heart of the audience in which every bead of sweat and breath and nuance of voice is right there for the audience to see and hear.   This magic place does not recognise the difference of the actor, only their ability to show difference.  It requires huge intensity of emotion to draw the audience in, so that the audience becomes one with the actor who has joined with them in this tiny space.

I believe it is possible to find an audience that will respond to this and build on it. It is not a matter of educating an audience away from a reliance on music and flashy effects but, rather,  more about making a noise about what theatre has to offer on its own terms. Certainly, the big West End Musicals have their place but maybe they can be left to look after themselves for a while. In short you could provide more in the way of triggers for imagination, and encourage audiences to involve themselves by creating their own, internal stage pictures and emotional flow.  We should trust our audiences to bring as much to the performance as we provide by writing the bare bones.  At the same time, let’s explore the new audiences that have a thirst for more than ten minute sketches. Contemporary objections like the short attention span can be overcome.  Anyone who has watched gaming online can see that attention spans can run into hours given the right balance of intensity and relaxation. Teach yourself about detail and pacing as you go along. Be uncompromising but don’t try to do this on your own. Find a group of mates and write to fit the ethos of the group. Form a co-operative. Exchange work with other groups nearby. Be the first person in your neighbourhood to write for this new audience.

 We need a canon of new plays that could work in this way and we need to persuade the gatekeepers (Arts Centres, funding bodies)  that this sort of theatre can be a worthwhile and connected art form that can explore serious human issues at length and that can entertain and involve a new audience.