So you want to be a playwright?
Chaired by Guild President, David Edgar, an expert panel at a Writers’ Guild event in London on 17 March 2008 talked about current issues facing aspiring playwrights.
On the panel were writer and actor Kwame Kwei-Armah (left), Purni Morell (Head of Studio at the National Theatre) and the writer and actor Sudha Bhuchar, who is the joint founder and artistic director of the Tamasha theatre company.
Reflecting on changes during his professional career, David Edgar began by saying that there were now many more professional playwrights than when he started in the 1970s. That demonstrates how new writing has become an established part of our theatre culture, he said. And it also means that the competition for writers is tougher than ever.
“There is nothing like the same number of working playwrights in any other country,” he continued. While the international success of contemporary writers means that “I know the words for ‘Shopping’, ‘Fucking’, ‘Blasted’ and ‘Psychosis’ in every language of the European Union.”
Purni Morell agreed that new writing is the lifeblood of theatre and pointed out the different ways in which the National Theatre works with playwrights.
First of all there are commissions, most often for established playwrights but also for emerging ones as well. In addition, the Studio has an attachment programme which allows those they think will be major playwrights of the future to have the time to develop their skills.
The National also accepts unsolicited scripts. They get 1,500 a year and all are read and reported on. “We’ll get in touch with the writer if we want to pursue something,” Morell said. “But we’re not able to respond otherwise.”
Sudha Bhuchar (right) said that she never expected to be a playwright. “I feel like an actor who came to writing because there was a dearth of interesting roles for me to play ,” she explained.
She started Tamasha to “tell untold stories” and, as well as staging her own work, the company has had notable successes such as the first production of East Is East by Ayub Khan Din.
Kwame Kwei-Armah also said that he never really wanted to be a playwright – “It kind of fell at my feet”. He explained that he had been influenced by the political African American narratives such as the films of Spike Lee. “I was thrilled to go to the cinema and hear words spoken in my front room and community centre,” he said.
The contrast with what he was seeing on stage in the UK was stark. “I was fed up with seeing plays that were saying they came from the black community, and were often written by black writers, but didn’t seem real to me,” Kwei Armah explained. “They were written to the agenda of commissioners rather than from the truth of a writer’s own experience. That angered me, and I wrote from that anger.”
Invited to write a play for the Bristol Old Vic, Kwei-Armah wrote A Bitter Herb and went on to become playwright in residence. His subsequent trilogy for the National Theatre, starting with Elmina’s Kitchen, came from a desire to write “a theatre of my front room. I wanted to be not just a mirror of my society but an archivist.”
Broadening the discussion, David Edgar pointed out that when he started in the early 1970s, there was only one literary manager, Kenneth Tynan. “I’d only read the word ‘dramaturg’ once. Plays were not ‘developed’ and that whole idea of a ‘process’, borrowed from film, would have seemed very strange."
The first questioner from the audience asked how secretive she should be about ideas – was it right to worry about people stealing them?
Sudha Bhuchar said that in her experience very few people actually steal ideas. “People often have the same ideas but no one can write your play in the same way as you.” Purni Morell said that she knew writers who found that keeping ideas to themselves helped them to form in their own minds, while Kwame Kwei-Armah said that he had to be confident enough that if someone did steal an idea he’d have another one ready to replace it.
Another questioner asked Kwei-Armah to expand on the notion he had mentioned of “writing on the shoulders of others”.
“In America,” Kwei-Armah explained, “critics see me as part of a long tradition of African diaspora writers, while in the UK it’s easy to believe there will only ever be three black writers – myself, Roy Williams and Debbie Tucker Green.” He said that it helped him to feel part of a theatrical tradition, especially when you get knocks. “It gives you the strength to keeping going.”
The next questioner wondered, “Writing aside, what do you value in a playwright in order to build a working relationship?”
“Initially it is the work,” said Sudha Bhuchar. “Then it’s being open to changes in the rehearsal process.” Purni Morell said that she had a similar outlook. She wanted writers who accept “the idea that we’re embarking on a joint endeavour [with the directors, actors, designer etc] for the benefit of the audience.”
David Edgar argued that this approach represented a huge change from the post-war tradition of British playwriting. The near-contempt for audiences expressed by certain writers in the past might have been excessive, he said, “but there is a danger that the pendulum has swung too far the other way and people are now scared of audiences.”
Among the other questions were queries as to whether theatres were still interested in new verse drama and whether the panel believed that playwriting could be taught.
Purni Morell said that she was certainly interested in finding excellent new verse drama but “I don’t often seem much that’s any good.” Sudha Bhuchar said that she believed the nuts and bolts of writing can be taught but “you can’t learn what your voice is.” Purni Morell agreed. “The question if being an artist only comes after learning the craft,” she said.
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