Choose the Future - part 6 of my series about writing drama

The arts need no justification.  They are part of the knitted fabric of a people. The cardigan of a culture. The socks of a society.  They are the language we speak to each other, the ideas that pervade our culture, the history and the dreams.  Ironically, when a civilisation perishes it is generally the art works that remain.  The paintings, carvings, and, if we are lucky, writings and other records of a people. The enjoyment and challenge of the arts is a community good along with education, health and welfare.

The fundamental power of the arts can be seen by the way authoritarian regimes co-opt the arts as power statements and as weapons of propaganda.  Tyrants love art as a statement of their own personal prestige and as a symbol of their wealth.

Meanwhile the most we are allowed to do is to decorate the dolls houses of the oligarchs.

The arts are not owned by any one section of society.  Whatever occurs, art is still made.  Artists will still paint, sing, sculpt, tell stories even when the world descends into chaos.  Perhaps, especially then.

But somehow, the arts have connived with dolls house landlords and let themselves be dressed in pretty bows and furbelows and drained of any meaning. Next time you watch the Baftas or any other awards ceremonies, see how the arts have become commodities to be bought and sold to the highest bidders.  See how the awards that we give them are tawdry and spurious and contribute little to either the wellbeing of audiences or the artists who win them.

How can we reclaim theatre from a system which demands prices so enormous that a visit is now a once a year treat for those that can afford tickets at all?  That sets an entry threshold beyond the means of most ordinary people? At the same time the shows have become so packaged with music and lights and effects so that what is at their heart is obliterated by the need for immediate gratification and burst of hollow emotion devoid of nuance and challenge.

The current no-hope, grab-it-all consensus means that the arts can only be seen as a product to be packaged and resold.  And like all commodities they need always to be more, bigger, more glittery, more extravagant.  These days, the cardigan of culture needs to be knitted from gold thread.

And, in the end, it’s Rapunzle who has to spin it all from straw with little recognition for her efforts.

We know that mental and spiritual well-being is in a global crisis.  We are like rabbits frozen in the headlights of existential catastrophe.  We know these things but we are incapable of acting.  And anything we do about it is hemmed in by the limitations of our imaginations. It is not Global climate change that threatens us so much as the system which bamboozles us into believing that we are doing something by signing a petition against it.

More and more solutions address the appearance of progress rather than progress itself.  More and more we are required to audit ourselves and live up to meaningless, arbitrary norms. 

Problem. Petition.  Tick. Solved.

We are dragooned into seeking validation for our work from meaningless competitions and personal validation from social media.  We ask:  Is there anybody out there? Please

There is no such thing as society.  

The mechanism, the machine, the matrix, the Margaret has conned us into thinking that it is all there is and that there is no limit to its power over us.

We fall to our knees.

This is it.   This is all it is.   This is all it can be.

What can writers do?

I believe it is possible to think beyond the boundaries described by Mark Fisher in “Capitalist Realism”.  There was a time before this time and there will be a time after it. I believe it is possible to escape the meaningless drudgery of the factory floor.  Or the roles that are forced on us by the drama we are living. Not so much by the stories we tell ourselves now because those stories are only the instruction manual for the machine we live in. What is more important is the actual way we tell ourselves our stories.

Let me repeat that with more baffling images:

We will never break free by story-telling because the very stories we tell are part of the fences that surround us.  It is only by thinking about HOW we tell those stories that we can progress.  The key, I think, is by human involvement in exploration of new ideas that we can see into and maybe, move forward out of the darkness.

In my last five essays I’ve suggested that we need a whole cohort of new drama writers.  There is a huge well of ideas and experiences that could be drawn from if they were given the tools. And that they could well provide something that explores the intimate relationships between audiences, the actors and the dramatist. This needs to be done by involving the writers like war reporters within companies in order to grow plays that are at once challenging and human sized.

We need to shake the current models hard and start creating something that will pull together actors, writers and audiences into a big discussion about the human condition.  Not only for today but for tomorrow and the day after. 

We need writers who are confident enough to write big plays about subjects that will speak immediately to audiences.  Not from personal experience but by acute searching observation of the world around.

One of the tropes of the “More and More” culture is that audiences are incapable of concentrating long enough to absorb or contemplate ideas over the time it takes to explore them. Research by Kings College, London seems to argue otherwise and gamers are able to concentrate for hours on end on their quests. The thing is that it is not attention span that is decreasing. It is, in digital terms, akin to having too many screens open at once.  Our eyes flick from here to here to here desperate not to lose any clue that that will help us get to the “More and More”. This is really facsimile social overload.  We are at a party always seeking someone more interesting over the shoulder of the person we are talking to. Too much.  Too much.

And a great deal of the current epidemic of mental health problems can be attributed to this sort of welter that diminishes the individual and makes them feel helpless and inconsequential.

More than anything, this is why I suggest we look for a simpler, more meditative form of drama that can take place over longer periods and is less hurried along by emotional prompts such as music and effects. 

The ideal place to explore the very basic idea of drama at its rawest is in small, local groups.  Clumps of ideas that can coalesce and make something that resonates with local audiences.

The idea of a competent, challenging locally faced company should be paramount. Big, challenging, exciting, ideas-led theatre that does not rely on expensive effects.  This has been the staple way of working for small companies over the years.  The only things missing are the resources to work in depth with writers and to develop the audiences for those writers,

And while this work will not garner awards and accolades Writers do need to eat and companies need to be able to produce shows.

I have already described an unplugged back to basics type of drama that will enable small companies to speak to and develop their own audiences.   What this style could do, is to get drama back into the heart of a community provoking reactions, but, above all, becoming familiar and trustworthy. So that audiences will come and come again as familiarity becomes part of the engagement.

It’s clear from my reading elsewhere that there is a move towards making writers more involved in the production process and theatres like the Royal Court are taking steps to embrace writers within their management structures. However, this sort of initiative is not available to small, locally based non metropolitan companies who need to develop new audiences for this new dramatic writing.   

Funding for artists becomes dependent on fulfilling spurious funding criteria.  These are driven by abject political concerns that seldom coincide with the idea of making Art. Small companies will need to make the case for developing new audiences in this new way.  It’s always been tough but if they believe in what they are doing they will achieve.

But no small company could afford to take a dramatist into the heart of their project over long periods.  A serious, full length play will take a year to write.  Most small companies can only find funding for one project at a time and this will require months of pre planning and form filling.  To work with a writer requires additional development grants.  And if the company itself is working on a project by project basis, the idea of paying a writer for a year whilst the rest of the company members are only able to work together for a few weeks could be seen, understandably, as disproportionate.

It might be possible to form a network of small companies. Share work.  Perhaps linked back to major companies that could offer to do some of the heavy lifting in administration and marketing in return for showcase seasons of these unplugged dramas.

One of the most productive times in modern theatre was as a result of support from the Trades Union Congress in 1960 added to the work of a government rebuilding the fabric and spirit of the country after the war.  I’m suggesting there may be other networks that could be brought into play if we look for them.

It is up to the arts and drama in particular, to speak up and claim its correct place in the order of things.

And for those writers that might be stirred into action, may I suggest one or two ideas to think about:

Set your own goals

Aim to change lives one at a time

Stay within your community

Write about big things.

Look up from your own navel and write about things you have to find out about.

Work as a team.

Organise cooperatively

Be ambitious and brave

Raise resources in terms of the project you are working on.

Knit your own socks.