Interview with Stephanie Greer (Sadie Jones)

Stephanie Greer. @Stephanie De Leng

I met Stephanie nearly a year ago at the audition for ‘The Disappearance of Sadie Jones’ (then called ‘Hunger’). I thought she was great, but the role she was right for (Sadie) was already cast. The first phase of work was development followed by a showing at CPT, after which it turned out our lead was unable to do the production and tour, so I called Stephanie. I knew she was very keen on the project, her training seemed right, and there was something about how she found her way around Sadie’s lines that told me she got my writing.

- The fact that she looked so perfect for the role wasn’t the deciding factor – it’s a bit disconcerting to meet someone who has existed in your imagination in real life. Thankfully the similarities are only external.

It was a great call. Stephanie is a fantastic actor – flexible, dedicated, open, emotionally connected, and after just a few days she has a great sense of the character and the play. I found it interesting to hear Stephanie talk about Sadie – she started with her back-story, and details that aren’t actually mentioned in the play. – perhaps reveals the actor’s approach to character.

[odd fact: Stephanie’s real surname is Jones]

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Where did you train?

At Bretton Hall, in the middle of nowhere in Yorkshire. It had a reputation for being a bit cult-like, which is accurate in a way, it was very much a bubble, the emphasis was on creating new and exciting work, it wasn’t as traditional as some drama schools. So even though it was an acting course- Stanislavski training, animal studies, Shakespeare, Greek plays, you got the opportunity to choose your own path through the degree.

In my third year I was lucky, our large cast performance was directed by someone with a theatre company and links with the National Theatre in Cyprus, so that was how I got my first job. We took a version of the same piece to a festival of ancient Greek drama in Cyprus, the director produced it and we had a new director – Michael Fentiman who was at the RSC.

I was the last year to graduate from Bretton hall. We didn’t know it was going to close until half way through our first year. Once we’d come to terms with it, for us it meant we had a lot of outside directors who came in for modules, so we worked with some very interesting professional people. …and there was loads of space….

It sounds similar to my experience of Dartington – in the middle of nowhere in Devon. The move to Falmouth was announced in my final year there. It seems that these kind of small, experimental arts colleges aren’t sustainable anymore. We also described Dartington as a bubble….actually that’s a great thing when it comes to training and making your own work. I always feel like I’m in a bubble during a rehearsal process…..  In what ways was your training at Bretton Hall useful for this project?

In a general sense, it’s the openness to something different and not having set ideas on what ‘theatre’ should be. I worked with a PhD student in my 3^rd year and he was interested in treating text as music, not everything, but some of the things in this piece are reminiscent of that. I think I take for granted how physical our training was, and even if you didn’t decide to go down physical theatre route, if you’re devising theatre it’s different to being sat around a table writing. When I think of creating a piece it comes out of the body first…

Tell us about your character:

Sadie lives with her boyfriend Danny, her sister Kim lives nearby. Her and her sister were predominantly brought up by their mum, their dad left when they were young. Their mum wasn’t very stable, she had depression, I think that’s had a massive impact on Sadie, I think she blames herself for her mother’s unhappiness and I think her mother’s relationship to food and meals was perhaps not greatly helpful for Sadie.

However I don’t think you can blame everything on the mother, because Sadie has got an eating disorder, and self-harms as well as seeing things and hearing voices that aren’t there. Kim deals with the grief of the mum’s death in a very different way. When their mother died, Kim took on her role, Sadie was too vulnerable. What we see in the play is that Kim has smothered Sadie and not allowed her to become an adult, and her own person. Sadie is living with her boyfriend, but I think her sister is around a lot and involved in that relationship. I think Danny is a very patient person, to put up with that, and loves Sadie very much. And perhaps he didn’t quite know what he was letting himself in for.

Sadie wants to be tall and thin, and has no real sense of her actual body. This image, even though it’s something she aspires to, manifests itself in a nightmarish way….She sees tall, thin people around her, when she’s walking down a street or at home…but also I think her mind guards itself. If something painful happens in real life she switches, forgets about it and goes into her imagination. Her imagination frightens her a lot of the time but it also protects her, which is maybe why she believes it. I think when she’s in a really bad place she loses bits of time, she won’t remember something that’s happened, I think that’s really quite scary.

I think she finds things that are real and builds nice places and fantasies from that…if she felt safe in her childhood bedroom, or something she’s seen…it’ll appear in her fantasy….and then it might take over and the fantasy becomes a nightmare.

Do you identify with her in any way?

Yes, it’s difficult because she’s really messed up, and I think I’ve been fortunate in my life in that I’ve nowhere near got the same issues that she’s got, but – some of her worries and fears and insecurities do ring true, I would imagine with a lot of people. Danny’s got his issues with tidying up, we see in the play that at one point this prevents him going to bed with Sadie, she takes that as a massive rejection. I think there’s something in me that if someone was to say ‘OK yeah but later’ I’d be like – do you not fancy me enough? I suppose I’ve learned about my own insecurity there…I think if all her issues were coming out of somewhere far from most people she’d be hard to identify with, but I think there is a point where you go ‘I do get that, I understand, I just don’t deal with it in that way’. The people around her aren’t helping. She’s coddled and protected, Danny puts up with her craziness and shouting and moods.

What are the challenges of the role?

Her journey is a rollercoaster. Where she goes emotionally is so extreme that it’s about finding the sense and meaning of it but then going further than that. Whatever I imagine I would do in that situation, if those things were happening to me – I then push that to the very extreme… I have to lose any barriers, any holding back. I think we do guard ourselves, we don’t cry in front of people we don’t know…in order for me to play Sadie in the most truthful way I need to let that go…

As an example – Sadie is in the market having an absurd conversation about buying apples and a disagreement on the price…she’s trying to explain her point of view but the market seller is having none of it and she completely breaks down. It reminded me of a time recently when I needed to be in London for a screening, and I had a ticket for a specific train but I’d forgotten it was Sunday and the buses were irregular, I was cutting it fine and I ran from the bus stop to Liverpool Lime Street, I got there just in time. I’m convinced the conductor saw me and he put up the signal for it to go just as I was getting there. I lost all sense of the people around…I was pleading with him, he was like stone, I completely burst into tears which is very unlike me. People were stood on the platform staring at the conductor like he was the worst person in the world.

He came to help me change my ticket, I couldn’t say thank you in a normal way, I was choking. So that’s what I channel for the breakdown…..you know  it’s embarrassing and you want to control your speech but you can’t, you’re in such a state of distress.

 What’s your favourite moment in the play? 

I really like the naturalistic bits with Danny at the moment, you can ask me this again when we’re further on, I think it’s because the naturalistic bits are easy for me to find, I can relate to them – living with a boyfriend, having tense moments. It should remind the audience that actually she’s a person…not a fantastical character, and I think that’s important, and hopefully she’ll be likeable so they will care…that’s my job…

You came into the process later than Lizzie and Alan. What’s this like?

I’ve never done that before, I’ve always started with everyone else, so it’s a bit daunting despite everyone being really nice, it’s a bit scary because I don’t want people to get frustrated if we have to stop because I’m not up to speed on lines or don’t understand bits they’ve already worked on… plus there’s the fact someone else has already had a go at this role, so I’m trying not to think about that as it’s not helpful. I am really competitive and a perfectionist, I’m not used to being the person who’s behind, it’s a good learning curve for me.

At times though it’s been really useful. A scene has just been left to run and the other two are doing things in character and in the space, and I have no idea what’s going on, so I get to experience it for the first time, I’m in the same position that Sadie is in.

I’m really impressed by the other two, in awe at times actually. Which makes me go ‘come on’ – sometimes you might be in a cast where the others don’t have the same work ethic. But here everyone’s working extremely hard and are really talented…so I have to tell myself ‘OK don’t let the side down’.

What’s it like being based in Liverpool?

I’ve never lived in London, although I spend a lot of time here, there is that assumption that if you’re taking acting seriously you should live in London. I continuously pull against that and I wonder if I’m making a bad decision, putting myself out of opportunities – which is why I go to auditions, I get up at stupid 0’ Clock in the morning…but Liverpool is so much cheaper so you can get a better quality of life for less money. I remind myself of that when I’m on a coach at five in the morning…it allows me more time to be creative and not have to do menial jobs for rent and things. So I do think I made the right choice for me, also because I’m Northern…. I’m not about to be on Eastenders….but Liverpool and Manchester are in the middle of the country, and media city is now in Salford.

I’ve only lived in Liverpool for two years….moving out of Manchester didn’t affect my work there, but I’d never worked in Liverpool until I lived there. I’ve had a lot of work there since…I have had to perfect my scouse accent….

What are your ambitions for the future?

I’d like to be able to live off just performing. At the moment I do lots of workshop leading and teaching. Having said that, I’m sure I would miss working with children and young people, they always surprise you and that can inform your work, but I suppose if it was a choice rather than a necessity that would be nice. I’ve done a lot of film recently and I’m liking that as it’s very different, I’d like to do more, and there are so many theatres and theatre companies I think are brilliant….I want to work with them all.

This job is closer to my training than anything I’ve done before. When we go to Leeds in the autumn I’ll get some of my tutors to come, it’s funny because even though I’ve had good jobs I’m proud of, this will be what they are most proud of me for. Because it’s new and exciting and daring.

Thanks! – Great place to end the interview and start the rehearsal!

Stephanie Greer, Lizzie Crarer (and Alan Humphrey’s arm) in rehearsals.

Interview with Joanna Laurens

 On Writing and Not Writing

Joanna Laurens 

I’ve just written a column for Exeunt Magazine. One of the playwrights I mention is Joanna Laurens. Her first play, The Three Birds was on at The Gate in 2000 and won her the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for most promising playwright, the Time Out award for most outstanding new talent and a special commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Her next two plays Five Gold Rings (The Almeida, 2003) and Poor Beck (RSC, 2004) were ripped apart by the critics. Charles Spencer wrote in the Telegraph ‘could she now do us all a favour by taking a prolonged vow of silence’ which is precisely what happened next. Her fourth play, Queen of Hearts is published but un-produced.

I was introduced to Laurens’ writing a couple of years ago during a writing course with David Lane. I immediately loved the way she uses language in The Three Birds and have been curious about her work ever since. I’ve discovered a few connections between us. We both started out as trained musicians. We’ve both been mentored/supported by playwright Colin Teevan. And we both play with language and form and find it hard to write to order.

After a lot of searching and wrong turns, I eventually found contact details and I thought I’d publish a section of our correspondence here, in case there are others who want to know what happened next.

You stayed in bed.
A mirror by the window
brought the outside in:
A refracted, fractured olive tree.
A single shoe left on cobbles.
A child’s music box;
in reflection, smashed.
The street in pieces on the floor.

And what did I say? What did I say, do you remember?

FATHER continues counting. (Joanna Laurens Queen of Hearts)

JL: It is hard to say anything about this subject, from the position I am now in. Anything I might say runs the risk of sounding embittered; resentful; hard-done-by. I’m not saying that I won’t speak out, just that it is hard to speak out in a way that people will hear…

The critical reception to my second play (Five Gold Rings) killed my career – ten years ago, when I was 25 – after my first play had won many awards, had been translated into many languages and had been produced in many countries. I’d already signed a contract with the RSC for the third play (Poor Beck), before Five Gold Rings opened – so that didn’t happen after Five Gold Rings: After Five Gold Rings, no one wanted to produce anything I wrote.

After Poor Beck, I went on to write two more plays – The Postman and The Queen of Hearts. We sent these out to many theatres. Sometimes, someone wanted to produce them – or co-produce them – but then, when it came to move forwards on it, some other person stopped it all – almost always because they didn’t believe the language would work, or because they thought the language made the play a ‘risky’ financial venture.

From the perspective of ten years on, I do think that Five Gold Rings was flawed. The plot was problematic and far too complicated. Not all the language worked. Some of it was naive. I also think: Like it or loathe it, it was not like anything else. I was stamped right through it and fully invested in the writing. I took a risk. I did something different. I learnt a lot. I wish I could have had a chance to use what I learnt – because it made me a better writer – but no one would give me that chance. I also think that Michael Attenborough was brave to produce it, and that it was a small miracle for it to be on a stage with the profile of the Almeida.

I am angry about the vicious quality of many of the reviews, which were decimating for a young writer. They mocked the language, belittled, and shamed me, publicly. Some of the reviews were bordering on slander. At the time, I read them alongside the reviews for The Three Birds and it was hard to believe they could be referring to the same writer. I mean, how can I be [quoting a selection of reviews] an ‘audacious, rigorous, talent’; a ‘distinctive new voice’; a ‘writer to treasure’; ‘an extraordinary voice that deserves nurture’; someone who writes with ‘murderous beauty’; with ‘depth and maturity’, in ‘an extraordinary new language’ – AND ALSO be a writer who produces ‘freshly squeezed bullshit’; a ‘piss poor’ writer, ‘immature’ – who produces work the same standard as ‘a bright sixth former’ – someone who should now do them all a favour and take a ‘prolonged vow of silence’…and so on?? I was only 25.

I struggled to integrate all of that and to make any sense of it. Everyone gets bad reviews – but there is a bad review, and then there is a review whose agenda is your annihilation. The latter is not common, not from multiple critics at once. (According to Damian Lewis, Helen McRory said it was the worst reviewed production she had ever been in.)

I was unprepared for it, especially after the raves for The Three Birds. I read the reviews standing in the newsagents at Gatwick, waiting for a flight. I was so ashamed, I buried my face in the paper to hide from other shoppers. In the coming weeks, I had several other writers contact me to express concern and support. But it was very hard for anyone to say anything to me which I didn’t experience as evidence of the publicity of my humiliation: If unknown people from across the UK were writing to me, everyone in the world of theatre had read these reviews. It felt like a public shaming – I was in the stocks, for the whole world to see.

I tell this in such detail because, if I had written a play using naturalistic language that had not been a success, I can’t imagine that the response would have been so extreme. And this is part of the story which doesn’t often get heard: We see the plays, we read the reviews – but then what? And what is the role of a critic? Can we say that they should have a duty of care? Do they play a part in shaping the direction in which theatre goes? Do they exercise their power responsibly? I am glad to hear that Helen thinks it is the worst-reviewed production she has been in – because it helps me to know that this was not me, distorting the reviews and experiencing them as harsher than they were. They really were that harsh.

I didn’t read the play for a long time after. I took on the perspective of the critics towards it. There were many of them – how could they all be wrong? I was ashamed to have written it, this awful, embarrassing and immature thing. Even worse: Not only had I written it, but I had then displayed it for approval, believing it to be good.

Then, after a few years, I picked the play up and dared to read it again. And, yes, some of it was naive and didn’t work. But, I made allowances for that – because I’d been so young and just been trying things out. The writing surprised me; I surprised myself. I thought it was interesting, curious and often beautiful. I thought ‘who wrote this?’ for a split second – before I realised that I had.

Strangely, this whole experience happened ‘in miniature’, when I wrote The Three Birds: I wrote it whilst I was a student at university. I brought it along to the (fantastic) Queen’s Writers’ Group which I was a member of at the time. Luckily the group was run by a playwright – Daragh Carville – and he suggested I do a reading of it, so we could hear it. So: I got together some actor friends and rehearsed a reading – as best I could.

But not everyone I wanted to invite could make it to the reading – some people I looked up to, and whose opinions I respected, couldn’t make it. So we decided to do two readings – one a small, private reading for these few people who couldn’t make the ‘real’ one. This private reading was first.

One of the people I’d invited said it was ‘too wordy’ and I got my first experience of that ‘pretentious’ ‘affected’ ‘conceited’ response which I was to encounter again – although, being kind, they didn’t use those words. I came close to cancelling the remaining reading and giving up on it. It was only because the actors had spent so long rehearsing it, and it seemed unfair to cancel at the last minute, that I went ahead. That audience responded very differently to the play. It reached them. And that was the reading where Colin [Teevan] saw it, and passed it onto Mick Gordon, at the Gate.

So, you know, perhaps I should have foreseen these extreme responses… they have been there from the start.

HS: It’s astonishing that with the success of The Three Birds the critical reaction to Five Gold Rings was enough to stop theatres commissioning you.

JL: Many critics sent to review The Three Birds were not the ‘number one’ critics of the various papers, but were probably ‘number two’ critics: I was an unknown playwright, the Gate does not have the same status as the Almeida, we did not have any stars in the cast… And I seem to remember there was another press night on that evening, where the top critics would have been. Whereas the Almeida was a much higher profile, with the all-star cast – and so the top critics were sent. They then had no experience of The Three Birds, or where I’d come from, as a writer, and were just viewing Five Gold Rings cold – with no sense of the evolution between the plays.

From my perspective, I’d ‘done’ Three Birds (Greek myth) and I’d intentionally taken a risk and done something more strange, what with the setting of Five Gold Rings being something much more naturalistic and closer to today – to offset the non-naturalistic language further.

It was a bigger ‘ask’ for an audience to swallow, and I don’t think I would have dared to make that ‘ask’, if it hadn’t been off the back of The Three Birds – you kind of bring an audience along with you. At the time, I made the mistake of assuming the critics at least would be vaguely familiar with The Three Birds, and would know where I’d come from – but it turned out afterwards that they weren’t.

I also think that unfortunately everything became about the language and that somehow gets in the way of seeing the plays in and for themselves. This took me by surprise, since, to me, the language was just part of what made the play – it wasn’t the focus. To remain so acutely aware of language itself, is to stand in the way of what it carries, so you can’t be reached.

Even here, we are talking about non-naturalistic language as a thing, in itself. For me, I just write plays. The language they use is part of ‘who’ they are; the flavour of the piece. I don’t intentionally or deliberately try to write something in non-naturalistic language. I wish this aspect had not become such a defining feature – overshadowing everything else. Just like any other aspect of a play, the language has to work to serve the whole.

HS: What happened with Poor Beck? Did it have a shorter run purely on the basis of the criticisms of Five Gold Rings?

JL: At the time, recovering from Five Gold Rings, I was grateful for being overlooked. I don’t think I could have dealt with public character assassination twice in as many years. After Five Gold Rings, I just wanted to crawl away into a dark hole and for everyone to forget about me. Which is close to what happened. I didn’t tell anyone I knew that Poor Beck was being produced; I didn’t want them to come and see it. I didn’t want to go through the shame of Five Gold Rings all over again.

The story of Poor Beck’s production is that it was originally supposed to have a full run, for a full season, at the RSC in Stratford – as new plays did. Then the RSC created a ‘new writing festival’, which meant that instead of being the only new play on at the time, it would be one of many – all the other venues in Stratford would also be running new writing. Then, a few months later, it emerged that the run would only be for a week and at 2pm/3pm in the afternoon. (I think there might have been a couple of evening performances, but most of them were afternoon.) So it kind of got whittled down from this full scale production for an entire season, to a week of being at 2pm.

Of course I was disappointed, especially on the back of Five Gold Rings. When I protested, I was told that I could pull it. But, after Five Gold Rings, I didn’t think anywhere else would want to produce it – so I didn’t really have a choice. It did later transfer to the Soho in London and ran in an evening slot, but by then I’d just emotionally walked away, the goal posts had been moved so many times.

I don’t believe any of this whittling down was due to the response to Five Gold Rings, it was just circumstance. However, I got pretty cynical about the whole business side of writing and I would not trust anyone I could perceive as having any industry-related agenda. I would meet with them and of course be polite to them, but I would watch them very closely.

Being creative involves taking risks. And not all risks work. You can’t know if something will be successful before it is produced. You need to feel safe, to take risks – both the writer and the theatre/producer – and when the funding of a theatre is jeopardised, that undermines that needed basis of safety for the theatre.

Any new play is risky, but there is a widespread belief that something in non-naturalistic language is even more risky, in the Riskiness Stakes. Is it?

HS: Did you ever look into other ways of getting your work performed?

JL: No, I’m not sure why. I think perhaps because I hadn’t struggled starting out, I just had no idea how to do all that. I had no idea who to approach for funding, why anyone would want to give me money for free, who would want to be involved in producing anything I wrote (or why), how it all worked and so on. Everything had fallen into my lap with The Three Birds and I didn’t even know the difference between a director and a producer at the time, so understanding the vagaries of funding was far beyond me. I don’t come from a theatrical background and I hadn’t grown up being involved in amateur theatre. It was just all so foreign to me.

HS: It’s interesting, because in the world I make my work in – with funding, without big audiences….my work doesn’t make anyone any money. Hopefully everyone gets paid, but it’s really not a commercial model.

Another thing I’m doing is writing librettos – with contemporary opera, there is much more space for playing with language and writing non-naturalistically. Is this something you considered?

JL: I would have been very interested in this, yes. Given the way I write, many people suggested writing librettos. However, I wasn’t asked and I had no idea who to approach or with what to approach them. After Five Gold Rings and Poor Beck, and the critical responses to them, coupled with being unable to get the next 2 plays produced, I didn’t have enough optimism to keep trying in the face of so much rejection. I just concluded that there was no market for what I did.

HS: It is genuinely upsetting to read this. I think it’s a fear that many writers/artists have – that if it doesn’t work out, at some point we’ll have to make a decision to try and do something else…

JL: I don’t think that writing hasn’t worked out, so much as it’s very quiet at the moment. I would turn back to it, given the right circumstances. But I am also happy not to turn back to it, if that’s how things pan out.

HS: There are other ways of writing outside of the new writing theatres, for instance I’ve just written a play with Colin Teevan for Radio 3, and I’ve been commissioned to write a play by a girls’ school. Surely with the success of Three Birds there would have been opportunities you could apply for?

JL: Well, in my eyes, writing a play is really tough. It is a slog and it is hard work to nail something of yourself to the page – to invest yourself in a piece of writing. It hurts, to write. And the payoff, for me to do that, needs to be some sort of acknowledgement and to know that enough people are going to hear what I write. I did write a piece for The Verb on Radio 3, a very experimental piece which was a hybrid between music and language. (It was called ‘Exodus’.) And it aired. And that was that. No whisper of it in the press. No one I knew even heard it. I’m sure they have gazillions of listeners, but if I don’t know any of them and if I can’t be alongside them to experience their listening to it – if there can be no personal contact – and if there is then no repercussion or public acknowledgement or (dare I say it) review, then it is as if it never happened. And all that slog feels like it was for nothing. (Since the money is nothing in radio, too – as for writing for the stage – it’s definitely not for that!).

Plus, as I’m sure you know, you have to put something forward to be commissioned for radio. Which means submitting plans and ideas and concepts and all of that. And I can’t do it. I’m really crap at that kind of thing. I can’t sit down with a detailed, sale-able plan before I begin to write. And if I try to do that, what I write will be dead. It will be dead because (for some reason) I won’t be invested in it, at the moment of writing. I’ll be too busy following a pre-decided plan – someone else’s agenda has impinged on what I’m making, too early in the process. I’ve failed to complete commissions, in the past, because I’ve known that what I’m writing is dead and, after repeated attempts to make it come alive, I’ve given up.

The other alternative is to ignore what I’m asked for and to write the play I have inside, anyway. That doesn’t usually please the commissioning theatre, though: My last commission was to write a play with a strong female cast – strong in terms of numbers and in terms of presence – and a ‘big’ play with a large cast, happening on an epic scale. God knows why I accepted this commission, but when you’re a struggling writer and this is what you’re offered… Anyway, I wrote a play with one female character and four men – and a small chorus – of more men. All the action takes place in only a couple of locations. No sense of anything ‘epic’ (however you define that).

I can’t make myself write something my heart isn’t in – I know it won’t be emotionally true, that I won’t be invested in it, that I will be ‘going through the motions’ and that this will show in the result.

Some writers manage to survive and thrive and write-as-a-business. I think you know if you can write-as-a-business or not.

HS: How much of a struggle was it to stop writing?

JL: It was difficult in that I continued to struggle along for far too long, hoping that it would all come together again at some point. After the success of The Three Birds, it was even harder to stop trying than it would have been without any success at all. But when I finally turned elsewhere, it was strangely liberating.

HS: I tend to think, if you’re a writer, you have to write, there’s no choice, and if there is a choice, if there’s something else you can do, then go do it.

JL: Yes – in some ways. When I write, from the right(!) and passionate place, then I am driven: It has to be done and it gives me great pleasure to see the result. Sometimes it feels as if something is writing through me, as if it’s not even me who is doing it or responsible for it. (And so, I shouldn’t be praised or blamed for it.) It can come very quickly and very fast and easily. Things come together and feel right –without me even knowing consciously why they are right. (I might realise it, looking back afterwards. But if I tried to work from this conscious point, I would only make something dead and overly thought-out.) Yes, this is the sort of writing which I have no choice about and I will actually want to stay up all night, producing.

However, that sort of writing doesn’t happen on tap. It is not there when I reach for it, always, on any subject someone gives me to write about. Sometimes I may just have nothing to say. Yet writers have deadlines and they have to produce work….

It is said that you need discipline to be a writer – you need to be able to write, despite not feeling like it. I can’t do that. This is not self-indulgence or some sort of Romantic notion of waiting for inspiration to strike: Will, intent or effort, on my part, make no difference. And I’d rather write nothing than dead writing.

The truth really is that I try to be faithful to the way that part of me feels – the part which wants to make something, the part which gets inspired and wants to put something inside me, outside. I think it is most similar to a child, playing. Try to make a child play, when they don’t want to. Even if they want to please you, and they try really hard, the play will be clunky and self-conscious and artificial. This is what happens if I try to make myself write for the purposes of earning money or meeting the deadline for a commission – I will write crap. It is not laziness on my part, I have no control over it. When a child really is playing, they lose track of time, are fully absorbed in what they are doing – which is putting elements of their inner world, outside themselves. And the child isn’t in control of when they want to play.

HS: Did you ever try writing differently? Did you ever attempt a ‘naturalistic’ play? – Just curious, I’ve tried it, got bored and gave up….

JL: Yes, me too. There was a point when I decided it would be great if I could write a couple of TV episodes a year, and that would pay the bills and then I’d have the money to write what I really wanted to write. However, for the reason mentioned above – I can’t make myself get invested, at will – I couldn’t.

HS: …People sometimes tell me – just write what they want, just write them something naturalistic.

JL: If you can, kudos to you. I don’t think everyone can do this, though. And I think you know very fast if you can. And, even if you can, you may not want to – you may want to earn your living some other way and only write when you have something to say.

I used to believe that I couldn’t be a writer unless I could write to order, get invested at will, and so on – I don’t think that anymore. I accept it is a process I’m not in control of. Like fish stocks, for fisherman. Sometimes you cast your net down, and nothing comes up. Sometimes you look inside yourself, and it’s dead in there. I accept that.

He continues counting.

When I go to sleep
I know that I’ll not know
if you are still counting in the dark:
Weighing each number. Designating its emphasis.
Like the women in the market weigh oranges
to price them.

When I go to sleep
I know that I’ll not know if
one, one. One, one. Has faded to
none.

Or when you’ll talk with me again.
(Joanna Laurens The Queen of Hearts)

Dear Reader,

I want to write the chaos that is inside us, chaos in which a word has no meaning but a meaning has a sound and the layer of sounds is grappling with what it is to be.

I want to write a person that I can’t know by meeting them, that I can’t see on a screen, something that goes deeper than subtext; it doesn’t matter why you are like this. I want to see you, the way we never see each other. I want to watch, I want to listen, imagine. Let me find another way of thinking.

I want to write beyond language, I want to write noise, emotion, the impossibilities of writing any of this.

Show me a world without the answers, let me see the patterns, let me discover something about myself, I don’t care if it wasn’t intended. How could it be? No one is that clever.

Writers don’t know why. Writers don’t know what they are doing. That’s when it’s writing writing writing the writer is lost.

Lost, invisible, busy, we want to disappear in our work.

Risk. Audiences love it. Audiences don’t know the rules. Because there aren’t any. Anyone who needs someone to tell them how to do theatre should be doing something else. A job with a line manager.

Stop censoring writers who play with plays.

I can’t tell you what central question this play is asking its audience, because it hasn’t been made yet. Because the page is only the first breath. And even when it has been made it will ask different things of different people, and they will ask different things of it.

As soon as you think you know how to write, direct, make theatre – as soon as there is a system, it is dead.

Of course I can learn the ‘rules’, I can understand them, I enjoy them embedded in a good novel. Hunger Games used them well in the film (the book gets the rules of plot right but forgot to follow the ‘show don’t tell’ rule with character and dialogue). Of course I know the rules. I’m good at teaching them too. I also don’t think the audience is stupid enough to require them on a plate. Not in the theatre. Not in the theatres with uncomfortable seats, dodgy heating, and no ice cream. I need something more to keep me sitting there.

The funny thing is, everyone knows this, everyone knows that really, there are no rules, but still, people keep quoting the ‘rules’ of playwriting back at me. David Lan’s ‘rules’ come up a lot. But he doesn’t have rules for directors, this is great:

It is not as if once you have done 37 productions, you will walk in next time and know how to do it. Everyone is equal and everyone is struggling all the time. On the first day of rehearsal it can happen that you arrive and you have no idea how to start or what you are going to do. You make it up. We are all equal and everyone is starting afresh each time. David Lan, interview. 

The following was given to me by David Prescott from the Drum Theatre Royal, Plymouth, I will find out where he got it from. It has also been quoted to me verbatim more than once.

David Lan’s Narrative Structure for all of Western Drama:

A character exists in a culture.

Something about that culture is causing the character to suffer.

Something happens that makes the character realise that they have to do something or get something to ease the suffering.

They go on a journey that may or may not be a physical journey in their attempt to do or get this thing.

On this journey they come across obstacles which they either succeed or fail in overcoming.

In their success or their failure they either learn something about themselves or the audience learns something about them.

[I have never met David Lan and he may not intend the above as a manual for today’s playwrights, however, it has been presented to me as such]

I prefer to think of narrative as the perspective that the work is told from, and as something that the audience can weave for themselves, audiences are good at that, we just need to let them.

I struggle to apply Lan’s structure to Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life, Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, Sarah Kane’s Crave, Beckett’s Not I…etc. Perhaps with effort and a bit of twisting it’s possible. But what’s the point? These principles were not extracted from plays in the first place in order to interpret this ‘postdramatic’ generation of writing (which is a joke in itself, this work is hardly new, it’s just marginalised now more than ever –and in fact barely exists in this country thanks to the censorship of the few ‘new writing’ theatres that accept unsolicited scripts). But it seems this vocabulary is all many have. As a reader/director told me, if we don’t use these parameters to discuss a play – then how can we talk about it? If they can’t talk about it the writer’s fucked.

I hope I never know how to write a play.

Give the writer a voice. Let us respond to your reasons for rejecting our plays without fear of ostracism and the reputation for being difficult to work with.

Being able to think as well as being about to write doesn’t mean we are difficult to work with.

Art gallery curators don’t tell artists how to make their work. Stop telling writers how to write. That doesn’t mean we won’t listen or collaborate. That doesn’t mean we will be difficult to work with.

Stop censoring plays you don’t understand. You’re not supposed to. They are not supposed to be read. I thought Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis was a self-indulgent diary the first time I read it. Then I read it again many times and performed in it. All plays are for performance, but some plays in particular don’t work on the page, and certainly one quick reading of them is not enough. It doesn’t follow that they need more than one viewing in order to communicate in performance.

Don’t dismiss a play because it doesn’t look like a play on the page. Don’t dismiss a play because it does look like a play but doesn’t do the other things you expect. I’ve said this before, I’m boring myself.

Come on England, let us write and get rid of the bloody readers. They are not needed because playwrights don’t write for the page. So stop reading our pages and let us write them.

For my part: I’ll stop sending you my pages to read.

‘We hope you will find a home for your play elsewhere’

There is no home for my plays. I need to build one myself.

Inspired by my rejection letters, various blogs including by George Hunka: 

The impulse to storytelling (and to being subsumed within the telling of a story) is constantly undermined by violent fragmentation of the human urge to both telling and listening to a well-rounded narrative — and, in fragmenting and frustrating this desire, to invite the individual audience member to fit these on-stage events into their own matrix of interpretation instead of having this matrix imposed upon the events by the artist: to create one’s own story, rather than having a story eliminate alternative interpretations through the logic of its expected progression through time, in conforming to the “well-made” story, as that “well-making” is ideologically defined by the dramatist and the director. (George Hunka)

and a feature in the recent UK Writer, the Writers’ Guild magazine which quoted Arnold Wesker from ‘Wesker on Theatre’.

Arnold Wesker on the Royal Court in the 50s:

They didn’t like or understand what I wrote, but they took the risk. I’d like to think they trusted the writer, but with experience and hindsight now understand it was the directors – Anderson and Dexter – whom they trusted.

And on new writing now:

All plays must be filtered through those directors and, more likely, literary managers with first-class degrees in Eng. Lit and little ability to lift a play off a page, or whose antenna are tilted to detect what is politically correct or (ephemerally) of the moment.

[...] I have no home, no base, no team with whom to work on that material, and my file of curious, stuttering, contradictory letters of rejection grows. Artistic directors admire my plays for their ‘powerful’ themes, ‘passionate dialogue’, and ‘brilliant’ something or other but, but, but…they do not fit into their artistic policy.