Showing posts with label monologues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monologues. Show all posts

Listening and Watching - The Price of a Fish Supper


 A couple of weeks ago, MAD Productions staged another handful of performances of my play The Price of a Fish Supper, originally produced at Glasgow's Oran Mor as one of their A Play, A Pie and a Pint series. It's a single hander, i.e. a long monologue and consequently a very 'big learn' for the actor involved, but Ken O'Hara (above) has made the part uniquely his own. 

For me, once he is on stage, he is Rab, the troubled but essentially decent ex-fisherman who hangs about the harbour and tells his tragic (but often very funny) story to whoever will listen. 

It's a play about the long, sad demise of the traditional Scottish fishing industry, a play about friendship and family, about where and how people fit into the world in which they find themselves, and the possibility, or otherwise, of redemption. It's a play that tackles adult themes and pulls no punches. 

Thanks to Ken O'Hara and to Isi Nimmo, who directs, the play has had a long life beyond that first well reviewed production. I've done the occasional after-show Q & A session. Every single time, somebody has asked me or Ken if he ad-libs it. And every time, he points out that, with the exception of the very occasional phrase, it was all written down. Carefully constructed by me. Even down to the way it's written on the page, orchestrated, almost like a long poem. (If you want to see for yourself, it's available here, published by Nick Hern Books.) 

I always wonder if they would ask the same question if I were young and male. I suspect not!

All the same, it's Ken who brings Rab vividly to life. Plays are meant to be experienced in performance. Not as words on a page.

It also makes me think about how Rab first came into my mind, telling me his tale before he told anyone else. Which is what it feels like to write in a single voice like this - you listen and your character speaks.

In the 1970s, I did a postgraduate Masters in Folk Life Studies. My dissertation was on the fishing traditions of the Carrick district of South Ayrshire. I interviewed many elderly fishermen over a period of a year. and their vivid descriptions of the herring fishing have stayed with me ever since. Even more to the point, my husband was once a trawler skipper here in Ayrshire. Eventually, he moved on to skipper charter yachts and then came ashore to work as a woodcarver and artist, but he too had stories to tell. We had and still have friends who worked at the fishing. So there was a certain amount of immersion going on for me - and many of the tales told in the play are certainly based on truth.

After the most recent production of Fish Supper, it struck me that one of the most valuable pieces of writing advice I can give anyone - whether you're aiming to write plays or fiction - is to watch and listen. Watch how people behave. Listen to how they speak.

You have to be fascinated by people. All kinds of people. What they do, what they say and how they say it. 



Monologues and Stuff

Ken O'Hara WAS Rab in The Price of a Fish Supper

I've been thinking about The Archers on Radio 4 recently, because after a small hiatus when they repeated some of the older episodes - but not, alas, the divine Nelson Gabriel - they have resumed in monologue form, taking account of the need for social distancing. Challenging for all concerned. Except that it's not really monologue form at all. And therein, I think, lies the problem.

I know a lot about radio writing. It's where I started out, and I have more than 100 hours of produced radio drama to my name, both adaptations, original plays and series. You can read a bit about all that here.

 I've written a couple of stage plays that are monologues. But it's not a format for beginners - even though beginners tend to think that it'll be easy.  The most successful was probably the Price of a Fish Supper which started out as a play for Glasgow's Oran Mor, was produced on BBC R4, and then  directed very successfully by Isi Nimmo, with Ken O'Hara in the role of Rab - a production that toured to full houses throughout Ayrshire. It's a 50 minute monologue and what's known as a 'big learn' and a demanding one, for any actor. Ken was outstanding.

I've refrained from commenting on the long threads of discussions about the Archers on Facebook for a couple of reasons. One is that the community is fairly evenly divided between those who dislike the new format intensely, and those who love it and I'm not about to wade in. I've given it a good go, and I have to say that, personally, I'm not a fan. But at the same time, I know that those people who are asking 'how hard can it be to record some kind of dialogue online' are blissfully unaware of all the technical difficulties and complexities. So my sympathies tend to be with the makers: the writers, actors and producers who are struggling to please everyone in uniquely difficult circumstances.

All the same, I think I know why these episodes aren't working as well as they might for many people.

Monologues only really work properly when the audience becomes so involved that they forget they are listening to one person. They are there, within the drama, the other side of a conversation if you like. It's a hugely demanding form for writer and actor alike.  But the new format Archers, in an effort to satisfy everyone, intercuts one very short monologue with another. And sometimes - disastrously, I think - they even have terrible one sided conversations online or on the phone, with people the audience doesn't hear. 

Given the demands of the time and the relatively short length of each slot - why not be brave? Why not give each main actor a shot at a genuine monologue - something for actor, writer and audience to get our collective 'teeth' into?

The monologue form par excellence was, of course, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. Everything else seems like a pale imitation. But the Archers' writers are by no means beginners. So it might have been good to seize the day and give them free rein to have a go.

Mightn't it?