Tearing Puccini to pieces

Darren Rapier goes from Edmonton to the Royal Albert Hall on an education project with young offenders

January 2008. The depressing darkness enveloping the concrete landscape was nothing compared to that which it seemed to exude. As I got out of the car I could actually feel the surroundings sucking out the marrow of enthusiasm, crushing all aspirations under the oppressive heel of apathy and despair.

Yes, I had arrived in Edmonton, North London. And I would have to survive the walk from the multi-storey car park to the Arts Zone on The Green ten times before I was permitted to leave.

That is genuinely how it felt. Edmonton is one of those places you see on the news when there’s been another teenage stabbing – the press stand on a grubby street corner and look concerned, into the camera with those ‘where will it all end?’ eyes.

But before any trendy North London arty types choke on their latte and write in to complain that it is a vibrant and upcoming hotbed of talent and that I shouldn’t diss the regeneration of these barren and culture starved peripheral inner/ outer London ghettos (even if a coffee house and a bus depot with sails does not a regeneration make) and that with a bit of artistic input these youths could achieve great things, I would like to point out that that was why I was here. Even though, looking at it, I did feel a bit like a mountaineer arriving at the base of Everest in a pair of flip-flops.

So what was I doing here?

It had all started just before Christmas, when the Education Projects Co-ordinator at the Royal Albert Hall had been doing some voluntary work for the Enfield Youth Offending Service (YOS). She had thought that both the Hall and the young people she was working with could benefit from a joint project, around one of the productions at the Hall.

The young people could work on something, then bring their work into the Hall, as well as seeing the main professional production for free. It should be something big, something they wouldn’t normally choose to see, but could really discover something about.

It was decided that it would be a writing project to complement the coming production of the opera Tosca and that the young people would write a modern day version of the story. The schedule was tight. Tosca was coming in at the end of February and, besides this, the nature of the young participants, all offenders under the care of the YOS, is that they are a transient group.

As we sat in the comfortable surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, I sketched out how I though the project could work given the timescale, type of participants and the opera itself. The Hall’s Education department had decided that the young people would write a a half-hour modern adaptation of the story, that would then be read by a cast of professional actors at the Elgar Room at the Royal Albert Hall.

Thankfully Debra Cougill, the Education Projects Co-ordinator, said she would be there for all the workshops as well. This would allow us to split into smaller groups, and she knew some of the young people already. There would be ten sessions at two hours each, over a five week period. We were due 20 participants, plus YOS helpers/ case workers, which seemed an awful lot, but I took a chance on the fact that my experience of these projects has always been that the enthusiasm quickly dwindles and there’s at least a 50% drop out rate on the first night.

This was further fuelled by the fact only three young people turned up for the initial introduction at the Royal Albert Hall – not a good start.

And now, less than one month on, I was three streets up from where my Dad used to live and where I used to visit my grandparents, feeling like I’d been dropped into Beirut. I consoled myself with the fact that the unfamiliar (as it now was) always seems worse than the familiar and that, as the National Child Birth Trust like to say about contractions, you should think of each as one less you have to go through. I would be counting down my sessions from today.

It was also important to remember that my own experience at youth theatre in Woolwich has made me what I am today – not just a struggling writer with no pension, but someone with the confidence to do and say what I think. I don’t expect everyone I have ever taught to become a professional actor or writer, but I would hope they are more able and more confident in their own abilities.

As Debra enthused about the project that evening we both noticed a certain amount of embarrassment and giggling in the room. Sure, as far as they were concerned we were both middle class hippies from the other side of town, but we realised half of it was the fact that these young people had never seen an adult be enthusiastic about anything. And I suspect this was particularly true of anything they were usually having to talk to an adult about. The Royal Albert Hall meant nothing to these kids, they were more excited about the free biscuits during the break (perhaps they could be writers after all?).

Although there were only six participants that first day (seven if you include the stoned one who turned up for five minutes, said how great it all was then left) it was hard work. Some of these kids had to be there, others had volunteered, but they were certainly not a ‘group’, they were six individuals all vying for attention in their own way.

Due to a predictably late start, a hideously long break and a general sense of ‘is this going to be like school?’ we had not got as far as I’d hoped by the end of the session. The problem with writing, as we all know, is not coming up with ideas. Ideas are easy, it’s about cultivating and nurturing those ideas, bringing them to fruition or watching them die, or maybe bringing them to fruition and watching them die.

This is the problem with a project like this, or with any writing project of this nature. Lots of people want to be writers but no-one wants to write. There was no way that any of these young people were going to do any work outside the sessions, all the writing was going to have to be done there and then typed up by me.

I know some people in these situations like to have a notion of what they’ll do if the thing doesn’t happen – a back-up idea that they can feed in to the play and paper it over with a few ‘street’ phrases here and there – but I believe the participants should do the work. I simply steer them in the right direction: no preconceptions, no limitations, no backup. It means they have ownership and pride in the piece. You just have to believe it will work, eventually.

For the second session I wanted them to do some acting, get them up on their feet. Armed with a synopsis of each act, we split into groups and then presented a potted version of Tosca back to each other. There were some fantastic moments and everyone was surprised at how well they had coped. We then moved on to looking at character.

Everyone was given a character breakdown and they had to come up with a modern alternative. We discussed names, jobs, likes and dislikes – everything you’d need to build a biography.

The following session we read out the character descriptions. The shocked faces were quite amusing, as we read back to them what they had said and they could see it there in black and white. Suddenly the character who was a pimp who owns a sex shop was less of a giggle; the realisation that I meant what I said about ‘no limitations’ on the content at this stage hit home.

Often it’s surprising how self-censorship kicks in, when young people realise this is going to be seen by someone else. I knew I needed to keep things simple and not let them realise at any point how much work they were actually doing.

I broke the original synopsis down and fitted it into boxes, so they had to come up with a new piece of plot to match the old one – any bit they wanted, there was no starting at the beginning and filling every box. At every stage we would review and discuss ideas; this became a strong part of the sessions.

I had decided to get a good foundation before starting the actual scripting, on the basis this would make the scripting quicker, easier and give them a real understanding of the source material. I wanted them to be desperate to get on and write, but to make sure there was as little slack as possible in what they wrote – after all I had to type it up!

Finally, in week five – half way through the project, but dead on schedule – I got them to write. It was unbelievable. The sound of scratching pencils was deafening and, as the session drew to a close, people were desperate to finish what they were doing, writing faster and faster, until eventually we had to insist they stopped.

This was the first really positive session and I now had seven versions of the first four pages of the play. All I had to do was edit them into one piece of writing. This took an interminably long time, involving re-reading each section, deciding what to cut and what to keep, trying to keep a balance of who had contributed while still keeping the flow of the scene.

Was there any hope of delivering this on time? I would have to come up with an easier way of working, where each person could script their own ideas and know that they would be used in the end. There’s nothing worse than working hard on something and then finding it discarded. It happens all the time in professional writing, but at this stage you need to know your writing is valued.

There was only one way to do it and I knew it could work, due to my TV writing experience. I split our synopsis of the new version into story beats, like you would get on a soap. I then typed up a blank script: that is a script with character names down the edge of the page and stage directions here and there.

It’s how I write a script myself sometimes, if I know I don’t have time to sit and ponder the best line for this section I’ll leave it blank, with a notion of how I want it to feel and what the characters should be doing physically. It’s a quick way to work, because you can notionally see the characters’ moods and hear them speaking in your head, giving you the rhythm and tone of what they are saying without having to write any actual words. The result would be a sort of writing by numbers, but would allow them to get on with what they wanted to do – write the dialogue.

Arriving back in Edmonton that evening I was confident this process would work. But the drama of who and what we were not dealing with always seemed to intrude. There’d been another stabbing in Edmonton and, when no-one had turned up half an hour into the session, we considered abandoning the evening. Thankfully two kids did make it, and they wrote reams.

From now on each week consisted of us reading what had been written from the week before and allowing constructive criticism and changes (if agreed by the group). Then reading out the next chunk of plot, assigning the story beats to people and sending them off to write. It was a perfect way of working with them and allowed faster writers to move on to another beat, while the slower ones didn’t feel pressured. It was still a lot of work, but my job then became editing it all together, smoothing over the edges and trimming it here and there.

The look on their faces when we read out their words the first time was amazing. So we ploughed ahead until session eight. Some bad news meant that one of our star writers turned up drunk. Another girl, who had missed a couple of sessions was so far behind that she felt disrupting the group was the only way she could cope and the others were angry that their work was not being taken seriously by the rest of the group. The session was a disaster.

Again we had ground to a halt, and it seemed like there was nothing I could do to pull it around this time. We still had the last and most important scene to write. After stern words and expressions of disappointment from the staff I tried to salvage what I could of the evening by getting an idea of what the young people thought could happen in the last scene. The ideas were sketchy, but I hammered it out to three alternatives and we said our goodbyes.

There is a great deal of pressure at this point in any project and you feel it would teach them a lesson to fail. Particularly with acting students, you know that on the night they will be facing the crowd and not you. But these were not acting students, half of them were not even interested in drama. Besides, where as failure is a great motivator if you are self-assured and confident, if you’re not it can destroy your ambition in a second. Therefore I felt this was not an option.

That night I typed up three ending scenarios, as tight as I could muster. The following week was essentially the last session, as next time we’d have some drama students in for a reading. Everyone was there and everyone was on time – a good start.

I read out my versions of the alternative endings and they considered them, but one girl didn’t like any of them. I had always tried to make it clear that we should only suggest solutions, never simply highlight problems. She had some radical changes in mind, but they were solutions and this is how it should be.

With renewed vigour they all started discussing and arguing their points. I chaired the discussion and kept it on track, but the solutions had to be their own. Eventually, over half way into the session we had thrashed out a new ending. It incorporated most of the previous ideas, along with some new ones and meant we added a final short scene at the flat, back where we had started. I was able to suggest resolution ideas to key points made earlier in the script and before we knew it everyone was scribbling away.

The result was patchy scripting in places, but what was there worked. Two scenes written in just over an hour is good going by anyone’s standards. I had a lot of stitching and smoothing to do, but then I was the professional writer and that’s what I was being paid for. I worked long into the night to get it all into shape.

With a full overview and a handle on what they wanted from all the characters I felt my job was only done if no-one (especially the kids) could see the joins. The following session the students arrived. They introduced themselves and, as the reading commenced, I could see six astonished faces as the words left the pages. Suddenly their work had come to life and, especially if you have never seen it before, that can be an uplifting experience.

For the first time they were excited, astonished and proud. We knew there would be even more of a buzz at the Royal Albert Hall, especially as Phil Daniels had now agreed to direct – something the young people found hard to believe.

Two weeks later I was back in the plush setting of the Royal Albert Hall, meeting Phil Daniels and the actors Debra had secured for the reading. They were a mixture of actors from TV and theatre, all doing it voluntarily and Debra had been keen to make sure the young people would recognise a few of the faces.

Two of the young people came in early to talk to the press, who were now really keen to hear all about the project. Both BBC and ITV news teams covered the event, The Stage recorded a podcast and the young people came over extremely well. Thankfully it was not a talent show where people are wheeled out to be humiliated, it was a showcase of genuine ability, backed up by hard work, and certainly something they could be proud of. The rehearsed reading went well and I genuinely feel that for the young people involved it was a life changing experience.

The week after the reading they got to see the opera. All through it they could relate to their own knowledge of the plot and really understood what was going on. One of the girls, who had never been to the theatre before, shouted out, ‘Fucking hell!’ when Cavaradossi was shot on stage and in the interval one of the boys, totally unprompted and unrehearsed, thanked Debra and me for allowing them to do the project and believing in their ability to do it. At least two of the young people are now looking at further writing courses.

The question is, had all the time and effort been worth it? If it takes this many resources to run a project like this for six young people is there any point?

It was something I had constantly struggled with during the project. But, as Debra pointed out, surely if we had raised the self-esteem of just one of the young people and opened their eyes to alternative avenues to explore then it had all been worthwhile.

Most of these young people had never heard of Tosca or the Royal Albert Hall before this project, they now know both. Hopefully it has opened their eyes to new things – you cannot improve your view of the world from a closed room. In 20 hours these young people have discovered and created great drama, they now have the rest of their lives to enjoy it.

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Summer 2008)