There is nothing quite like the let-down after a stage play, unless its the let-down after you've finished writing a book. But I think the let-down after a play is worse, for the very good reason that writing is essentially a lonely business. You sit in your room, with the radio and your own imagination for company, and write what you want to see. Then, for a few short weeks, you work with other people, people who are taking this piece of work seriously. You collaborate. You discuss, and watch and listen and marvel as your work takes on a life of its own. And you meet people. You meet them during rehearsals, and during the production. Friends come and see it. Colleagues come and see it. Complete strangers come up to you and tell you how much they enjoyed it. Let's face it, it gives you such a buzz and not just because it's nice to be appreciated (which it is) but simply because it's good to know that you are communicating with other human beings. And then all of a sudden, it's over, finished, and everyone has moved onto the next thing, and so must you. But there's a space, and suddenly everyday life seems a bit humdrum and a bit boring. You feel spaced out and slightly depressed.
The play was pretty much a success. The reviews were good, the people involved with the production seemed to like the play, and the audiences were appreciative. After the last performance, on saturday, there was one of those rare moments when the whole audience (and the place was packed) falls silent, and then gives a little collective sigh, before bursting into applause. THAT was good.
But now it's back to reality, which in my case means the desk, the endless pots of tea (made with real leaves of course) and the next big project.
Production Diary (5)
Which should be subtitled "I LOVE Neil Cooper." Because he liked it. Not only that but - writing in the Herald - he liked the actors, the music, the direction, the lot. He liked it and - more to the point - he "got" it. I have maligned the guy elsewhere in this blog by assuming that he might not like it. Now I find that he is a man of taste and sound judgement. He is a wonderful man, and a fine critic. (Why do we always tend to believe the bad reviews and disbelieve the good ones?) Right now, I'm happy, not just for myself, but for everyone involved because as the director pointed out at one point, it was also, in many ways a "joyful" experience and I think it shows in the finished product. Sending actors out onto a stage in your own play is a bit like sending a child to school for the first time. You can't go with them, you can't do anything to help, they've got to go through it, but my how you worry. You do more than that. You pray.
I won't see the play again till later in the week but, when I could stop worrying and concentrate, I too thought that they did a great job on monday. Working on a play is a very strange experience for the playwright. By the time the performance is happening, the play is already sliding away from you. I know that this week will pass by in a blurr, and it's touch and go whether the play will have another life beyond this time - except in the minds and memories of those who have seen it. I wonder.
I won't see the play again till later in the week but, when I could stop worrying and concentrate, I too thought that they did a great job on monday. Working on a play is a very strange experience for the playwright. By the time the performance is happening, the play is already sliding away from you. I know that this week will pass by in a blurr, and it's touch and go whether the play will have another life beyond this time - except in the minds and memories of those who have seen it. I wonder.
Production Diary (4)
Couldn't believe just how much the play had "gelled" yesterday. There are two more days of rehearsals, friday and saturday, as well as a run through before the performance on monday, but I will be leaving them to it now. I think at this late stage the writer can be a hindrance rather than a help. I have answered every question I can possibly answer about Rab and his relationship with Jean. I've watched a couple of runs from beginning to end, and although I am now in that state of panic that all writers get into at this stage, it is all to do with my own insecurities about the play and nothing to do with this production. You get so close to something that you just can't see the wood for the trees. Then you start to see things you would have done differently. Or you start to notice all the things that the play doesn't address, rather than what it does address. Then you remember that this is a 50 minute show, so what else can you do? On the other hand, I love writing for this length and this space. It concentrates the mind wonderfully. And there is no reason at all why a shorter play shouldn't be as complex and emotive as a longer piece. More so in fact. The discipline involved in fitting it all into a restricted time slot, and a simple space means that you can't be over indulgent. Something has to happen. It has to happen soon. And it has to go somewhere pretty quickly.
The piece is potentially controversial for a number of reasons. There are scenes in there that - when I actually saw them on stage - brought me up short. There are interpretations of the poet and his life that might be deemed provocative. I haven't written any of this just to provoke a reaction however. It was simply that I wanted to explore some aspects of the relationship between Rab and Jean that are all too often glossed over. It helps enormously that the cast are so young. Their attitude to the poet is refreshingly down to earth. And because of that I hope that both Burns and Jean begins to emerge as a living, breathing people.
The piece is potentially controversial for a number of reasons. There are scenes in there that - when I actually saw them on stage - brought me up short. There are interpretations of the poet and his life that might be deemed provocative. I haven't written any of this just to provoke a reaction however. It was simply that I wanted to explore some aspects of the relationship between Rab and Jean that are all too often glossed over. It helps enormously that the cast are so young. Their attitude to the poet is refreshingly down to earth. And because of that I hope that both Burns and Jean begins to emerge as a living, breathing people.
Production Diary (3)
Second week of a two week rehearsal period and the play is shaping up nicely. Actually that sounds glib. Two weeks is a horribly short length of time for what - from a purely practical point of view - is a "big learn." Lots of words. Also, this is a very physical and very visual play, which has to be carefully choreographed if it's going to make sense, and both actors and director are doing a great job. I wanted it to have something of the quality of a country dance about it - and I think that's what it will have. Whether the audience will appreciate it or not is another matter. I predict right now that the Herald's Neil Cooper won't like it - may as well acknowledge that and get on with it! (Not his sort of play I think. He may damn it with faint praise though...)The musician, an astounding young woman from Glasgow called Celine Donoghue, is proving to be such an asset. The music is an integral part of this play, interwoven with action and dialogue, but it takes a special sort of skill to improvise around this and she is amazing - quite magical in fact. (Working with a fiddle from the early 1700s, as well.) Besides that, I think Burns is charismatic, deeply sympathetic and exasperating all at once - as he should be - while Jean is poignant, perceptive - and with a singing voice to die for - again, as she should.
Production Diary (2)
The first read-through is invariably nerve racking for the playwright. Mainly because it's where you spot all the shortcomings in your script - the things that you thought you had fixed, the infelicities, the words that you hadn't realised were so bloody hard to pronounce, and the ideas that you thought were as clear as day, but now you are not so sure.
I love my cast, I love my director, I love my designer, and - glory be - they've found me a professional fiddler. I'm happy with all of them. Right now though, I'm not sure about the play. But then, I think that's pretty much condition normal, for any writer. You find that you expose so much of yourself in writing. You work away at something, and see it and hear it in your head in a very definite way, but at the point were it begins to go public, you always get cold feet.
The thing to remember at this stage, though, is that there is a long long way to go.For the actors, and director, it must be the equivalent of somebody looking at a writer's very first draft, and judging it. Can't be done. All you can say is - yes, it feels right, it's heading the right way, and then let them get on with it for a bit. There is, too, something of the feeling of sending your child to school on the first day. That nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach!
I hadn't realised how much I knew about Robert Burns: anecdotes, stories, opinions, relationships. And places. And the language of the time. My task was to communicate that time and place to the cast as clearly and vividly as I could. You can read books till they are coming out of your ears, but they are no substitute for a human enthusiast, and that was my role. The informed enthusiast.
More later.
I love my cast, I love my director, I love my designer, and - glory be - they've found me a professional fiddler. I'm happy with all of them. Right now though, I'm not sure about the play. But then, I think that's pretty much condition normal, for any writer. You find that you expose so much of yourself in writing. You work away at something, and see it and hear it in your head in a very definite way, but at the point were it begins to go public, you always get cold feet.
The thing to remember at this stage, though, is that there is a long long way to go.For the actors, and director, it must be the equivalent of somebody looking at a writer's very first draft, and judging it. Can't be done. All you can say is - yes, it feels right, it's heading the right way, and then let them get on with it for a bit. There is, too, something of the feeling of sending your child to school on the first day. That nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach!
I hadn't realised how much I knew about Robert Burns: anecdotes, stories, opinions, relationships. And places. And the language of the time. My task was to communicate that time and place to the cast as clearly and vividly as I could. You can read books till they are coming out of your ears, but they are no substitute for a human enthusiast, and that was my role. The informed enthusiast.
More later.
Production Diary (1)
Whenever I talk to a writers' group, or do a workshop, I am usually asked about the process of writing for the stage. What is involved with a production? How do these things work?
So - without going into many personal details - I thought it might be interesting to follow a small production through from beginning to end, from the point of view of the writer.
I have already touched on the process of writing, and submitting plays in previous posts, but now, here I am on the eve of rehearsals for Burns on the Solway, with a director, a cast and a musician in place. I've re-read the script, and spotted the typos (two of them, biggies, that I should have noticed several drafts ago. ) I've gone through the usual angst. What will the actors and the director - professional, sympathetic and inspirational - make of it? How will the play evolve? We'll see.
The production process varies, which is why it is so hard to be exact, when explaining it to people. Some directors like the writer to be there all the time. Some would prefer it if the writer never showed at all. (Best avoided, in my experience!) Some like the writer to "dip in and out" giving the actors time to experiment, make mistakes, thrash things out in the intervening periods without a looming writer. On the whole, I think this is probably best, although I have had at least one production where the director simply downed tools if I couldn't be there. I learned a vast amount in the course of that production, but it also involved a huge commitment in terms of time - and it was quite stressful. Good though. I'm glad I did it. I think on this occasion, and by mutual agreement, I will be "dipping in and out."
We have two weeks of rehearsal, and the play is approximately 45 minutes long. That's a lot to fit into a couple of weeks. The work will be intense.
There's one piece of advice which I always give to aspiring playwrights - if you don't like collaboration, then theatre isn't for you. Quite probably drama isn't for you. A play begins in the mind of the writer, but by the time it hits the stage it has gone through this magical process involving the talents of many other people, and what emerges, if you are lucky, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, is something you could barely even imagine. That's the reason you do it though. When it works, it's wonderful.
What's my main worry, at this point? That's easy. Doubts about my own writing.
Burns on the Solway is a play about Robert Burns. The sacred bard of Scottish imagination. There have been so many plays about Burns. And films. And books. Books upon books. How could I dare to do it? I have loved this poet and his work since - as a teenager with a romantic imagination - I traced his footsteps around Ayrshire, and then beyond. But the years have deepened my understanding until the urge to write about the poet and his wife became an ache inside - something I went back to again and again.
What have I written though? And have I even begun to say what I set out to say?
More later.....
So - without going into many personal details - I thought it might be interesting to follow a small production through from beginning to end, from the point of view of the writer.
I have already touched on the process of writing, and submitting plays in previous posts, but now, here I am on the eve of rehearsals for Burns on the Solway, with a director, a cast and a musician in place. I've re-read the script, and spotted the typos (two of them, biggies, that I should have noticed several drafts ago. ) I've gone through the usual angst. What will the actors and the director - professional, sympathetic and inspirational - make of it? How will the play evolve? We'll see.
The production process varies, which is why it is so hard to be exact, when explaining it to people. Some directors like the writer to be there all the time. Some would prefer it if the writer never showed at all. (Best avoided, in my experience!) Some like the writer to "dip in and out" giving the actors time to experiment, make mistakes, thrash things out in the intervening periods without a looming writer. On the whole, I think this is probably best, although I have had at least one production where the director simply downed tools if I couldn't be there. I learned a vast amount in the course of that production, but it also involved a huge commitment in terms of time - and it was quite stressful. Good though. I'm glad I did it. I think on this occasion, and by mutual agreement, I will be "dipping in and out."
We have two weeks of rehearsal, and the play is approximately 45 minutes long. That's a lot to fit into a couple of weeks. The work will be intense.
There's one piece of advice which I always give to aspiring playwrights - if you don't like collaboration, then theatre isn't for you. Quite probably drama isn't for you. A play begins in the mind of the writer, but by the time it hits the stage it has gone through this magical process involving the talents of many other people, and what emerges, if you are lucky, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, is something you could barely even imagine. That's the reason you do it though. When it works, it's wonderful.
What's my main worry, at this point? That's easy. Doubts about my own writing.
Burns on the Solway is a play about Robert Burns. The sacred bard of Scottish imagination. There have been so many plays about Burns. And films. And books. Books upon books. How could I dare to do it? I have loved this poet and his work since - as a teenager with a romantic imagination - I traced his footsteps around Ayrshire, and then beyond. But the years have deepened my understanding until the urge to write about the poet and his wife became an ache inside - something I went back to again and again.
What have I written though? And have I even begun to say what I set out to say?
More later.....
Sending Stuff Out
In the days when I was tutor to a Writers' Group, I was forever going on at the members about sending out their work. They would invariably have poems, stories and articles, languishing in drawers and folders. "Send it off" I would say. "You can't hope to win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket" - and similar terms of encouragement.
Now, some years later, here I sit with drawers full of the stuff, and although certain manuscripts are, in fact, "out there" with my agent, so much of it is languishing still.
Perhaps most frustrating among the "languishees"though, is a full length stage play called The Locker Room. So much of what sits in drawers is there because you know, deep in your heart, that it is garbage. The Locker Room is different. I think that the Locker Room is a good play. I first drafted it out some years ago, but have done many rewrites and revisions since then, pushing the dialogue as far as I could, experimenting with it, paring it and pruning it until it reflected exactly what I wanted to say. It is a hard hitting play, not a bundle of laughs for sure, in that it tackles the thorny subject of abuse in sports coaching within the ever-so-masculine sport of ice hockey.
For the past ten years - as well as writing novels - I have written drama for radio and for the stage. My play Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, was lovingly nurtured by the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and produced to excellent reviews. The play was published in an anthology called "Scotland Plays" and is now a set text for the Scottish "Higher Still" drama exam. A further play for the Traverse, Quartz, about themes of magic and religion, was also beautifully produced and well reviewed. Then I sent them The Locker Room, but they didn't like it. Actually, that's not strictly true. One of their readers loved it. That's what the artistic director told me on the phone. But for various reasons which I won't go into here, he himself didn't really want to do it. And no, he didn't think it needed workshopping, because it didn't need rewriting. There was nothing wrong with it as a play. He just didn't like what I was saying and the angle I was taking.
Fair enough. There's no reason why he should. These things are very personal and we simply agreed to differ.
Since then, though, I have sent the play to every theatre in Scotland that I can think of that accepts new writing. Sometimes I have emailed beforehand to ask about submissions and have received encouraging noises. I know I'm the woman with the funny foreign name - but it should be a reasonably familiar foreign name in Scottish theatre. After my new short play The Price of a Fish Supper was produced in Glasgow last spring, I wondered if I should try to do something with the Locker Room - again. And the result? As before, as always, complete, utter, dead silence. I don't mean that the play was turned down. The only theatre to have turned it down was the Traverse. I mean nothing, zilch, nada. Not an email, not a phonecall, not an acknowledgement, nothing. The script has just disappeared into this great, silent, black hole.
Actually, I suspect I know all too well what the problem is. In theatre, you have to polish your profile. You have to go to events, and opening nights and previews and workshops. You have to sit in the bar and be seen. You have to chat to people and remind them of your very existence. You have to be part of the "in-crowd". And, woe is me, I live in deepest rural Scotland, and spend most of my week struggling to earn a living, which kind of limits my networking possibilities.
But it gnaws away at me, it really does.
Increasingly now, I think that more time in Glasgow, which I love, is probably the answer. I have to be bold and elbow my way in, somehow. I'm working on it.
Meanwhile, if anyone out there is interested in a full length well polished and "provocative" (buzz word) play with believable characters, written in a taut, almost poetic, but ultimately realistic style.... well, just let me know, would you?
Now, some years later, here I sit with drawers full of the stuff, and although certain manuscripts are, in fact, "out there" with my agent, so much of it is languishing still.
Perhaps most frustrating among the "languishees"though, is a full length stage play called The Locker Room. So much of what sits in drawers is there because you know, deep in your heart, that it is garbage. The Locker Room is different. I think that the Locker Room is a good play. I first drafted it out some years ago, but have done many rewrites and revisions since then, pushing the dialogue as far as I could, experimenting with it, paring it and pruning it until it reflected exactly what I wanted to say. It is a hard hitting play, not a bundle of laughs for sure, in that it tackles the thorny subject of abuse in sports coaching within the ever-so-masculine sport of ice hockey.
For the past ten years - as well as writing novels - I have written drama for radio and for the stage. My play Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, was lovingly nurtured by the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and produced to excellent reviews. The play was published in an anthology called "Scotland Plays" and is now a set text for the Scottish "Higher Still" drama exam. A further play for the Traverse, Quartz, about themes of magic and religion, was also beautifully produced and well reviewed. Then I sent them The Locker Room, but they didn't like it. Actually, that's not strictly true. One of their readers loved it. That's what the artistic director told me on the phone. But for various reasons which I won't go into here, he himself didn't really want to do it. And no, he didn't think it needed workshopping, because it didn't need rewriting. There was nothing wrong with it as a play. He just didn't like what I was saying and the angle I was taking.
Fair enough. There's no reason why he should. These things are very personal and we simply agreed to differ.
Since then, though, I have sent the play to every theatre in Scotland that I can think of that accepts new writing. Sometimes I have emailed beforehand to ask about submissions and have received encouraging noises. I know I'm the woman with the funny foreign name - but it should be a reasonably familiar foreign name in Scottish theatre. After my new short play The Price of a Fish Supper was produced in Glasgow last spring, I wondered if I should try to do something with the Locker Room - again. And the result? As before, as always, complete, utter, dead silence. I don't mean that the play was turned down. The only theatre to have turned it down was the Traverse. I mean nothing, zilch, nada. Not an email, not a phonecall, not an acknowledgement, nothing. The script has just disappeared into this great, silent, black hole.
Actually, I suspect I know all too well what the problem is. In theatre, you have to polish your profile. You have to go to events, and opening nights and previews and workshops. You have to sit in the bar and be seen. You have to chat to people and remind them of your very existence. You have to be part of the "in-crowd". And, woe is me, I live in deepest rural Scotland, and spend most of my week struggling to earn a living, which kind of limits my networking possibilities.
But it gnaws away at me, it really does.
Increasingly now, I think that more time in Glasgow, which I love, is probably the answer. I have to be bold and elbow my way in, somehow. I'm working on it.
Meanwhile, if anyone out there is interested in a full length well polished and "provocative" (buzz word) play with believable characters, written in a taut, almost poetic, but ultimately realistic style.... well, just let me know, would you?
Displacement Activity.
I have taken this to new heights (or should that be depths) within the past few weeks. Here I am, with a full length book to finish. By the end of May. Actually, preferably, say the publishers who commissioned this a while ago, by the end of April. Please?
It's non-fiction. It will be called "God's Islanders"and it will be a history of the people of the Island of Gigha (just off the Kintyre Peninsula, on the west coast of Scotland, in case you don't know....) But not a big academic tome. Just an average sized, very personal and slightly poetic account of the history of this tiny (and most southerly) of the true Hebridean islands and the people who have lived there over the years. I want it to be accurate, but lyrical and evocative as well. The island has been an inspiration to me in fiction and plays, so I want something of that in the book. It can't be dry, it might sometimes be funny, but by the end of it, the reader has to know something of the island and its people. And I have been working on it, on and off, for a good while now. So not one of those quick inspirations then.
I am swamped with research and reference books. I have some thousands of words already written. Pages of notes and letters from people, and photocopies of interesting old documents. I even know what I want the cover to look like for God's sake. I have spent weeks and months of my life on this. But for ages I just haven't been able to get my head (and, face it, my body) round the idea of assembling it all into something readable.
I have ditched an old PC and acquired a new one. I have signed up to broadband. I have listed items on eBay. I have cleaned the kitchen, and changed the beds. I have watered the plants and written emails, and Googled for a million interesting items, all connected, of course, with my book. Or not, as the case may be. I have drunk tea, coffee, wine and (the last desperate recourse of the afflicted) whisky. Not much whisky, true, and it was Laphroaig, in the vain hope that the taste of the Hebrides would inspire me to get going. I have phoned friends. I have cleaned the cockatiels' cage. I have phoned my student son. I have chatted to my husband who is working on the floor of our new bathroom, and cursing quietly. I have made a fish pie. I have gone shopping. I have tidied my desk, and thrown away a heap of old papers and magazines. I have sharpened a pencil. I have figured out how to use the CD player my family bought me for Christmas, and played Bob Dylan endlessly.
But today, having exhausted every last possibility, I have sat down at my computer, and written 5000 words, the first chapter, pulling together some of that great multitude of notes and ideas as I went. And you know what? Suddenly, I thought, I can do this. Like riding a bike, or swimming in deep water. It's all there. Suddenly I know what I'm doing and how I should do it. Oddly enough, I don't think I could have done it till now. It's as though all this time, something was working away in my head, and now it's shuffled itself more or less into the right pattern, and...
Tomorrow, I will write the chapter about the Well of the Winds. And then I'll be absolutely certain that today wasn't just some kind of fluke....
It's non-fiction. It will be called "God's Islanders"and it will be a history of the people of the Island of Gigha (just off the Kintyre Peninsula, on the west coast of Scotland, in case you don't know....) But not a big academic tome. Just an average sized, very personal and slightly poetic account of the history of this tiny (and most southerly) of the true Hebridean islands and the people who have lived there over the years. I want it to be accurate, but lyrical and evocative as well. The island has been an inspiration to me in fiction and plays, so I want something of that in the book. It can't be dry, it might sometimes be funny, but by the end of it, the reader has to know something of the island and its people. And I have been working on it, on and off, for a good while now. So not one of those quick inspirations then.
I am swamped with research and reference books. I have some thousands of words already written. Pages of notes and letters from people, and photocopies of interesting old documents. I even know what I want the cover to look like for God's sake. I have spent weeks and months of my life on this. But for ages I just haven't been able to get my head (and, face it, my body) round the idea of assembling it all into something readable.
I have ditched an old PC and acquired a new one. I have signed up to broadband. I have listed items on eBay. I have cleaned the kitchen, and changed the beds. I have watered the plants and written emails, and Googled for a million interesting items, all connected, of course, with my book. Or not, as the case may be. I have drunk tea, coffee, wine and (the last desperate recourse of the afflicted) whisky. Not much whisky, true, and it was Laphroaig, in the vain hope that the taste of the Hebrides would inspire me to get going. I have phoned friends. I have cleaned the cockatiels' cage. I have phoned my student son. I have chatted to my husband who is working on the floor of our new bathroom, and cursing quietly. I have made a fish pie. I have gone shopping. I have tidied my desk, and thrown away a heap of old papers and magazines. I have sharpened a pencil. I have figured out how to use the CD player my family bought me for Christmas, and played Bob Dylan endlessly.
But today, having exhausted every last possibility, I have sat down at my computer, and written 5000 words, the first chapter, pulling together some of that great multitude of notes and ideas as I went. And you know what? Suddenly, I thought, I can do this. Like riding a bike, or swimming in deep water. It's all there. Suddenly I know what I'm doing and how I should do it. Oddly enough, I don't think I could have done it till now. It's as though all this time, something was working away in my head, and now it's shuffled itself more or less into the right pattern, and...
Tomorrow, I will write the chapter about the Well of the Winds. And then I'll be absolutely certain that today wasn't just some kind of fluke....
A Play A Pie and a Pint
Getting a stage play from an idea in the mind of the playwright to performance on stage is - like all kinds of writing - a long and frequently harrowing process. I've just had a phone conversation with the director of Burns on the Solway, which will be staged at Glasgow's Oran Mor Centre during the week beginning 20th February and is consequently about to go into rehearsal. It was a huge relief, because we instinctively seemed to be agreeing about everything - but he had his own exciting ideas about the look of the piece which filled me with enthusiasm. Also, he seems to like the play - a major prerequisite for a happy production! A lot of this is to do with the wonderful David McLennan, and his facility for pairing up people who might work well together - certainly it's one of the factors behind the success of his "A Play, A Pie and a Pint" season, sponsored by Orange.
David organises a series of short lunchtime plays, each lasting about 45 minutes. The price of the ticket includes a pie (literally - meat or veggie options are available) and a drink, alcoholic or otherwise. There are rows of seats with tables. The audience come in, eat, drink, talk, and then, once most of the dishes are cleared away, settle back to watch the play.
The first time I contributed a play, (The Price of a Fish Supper, spring 2005) I couldn't believe the size of the audience. It opened on a holiday monday, the university students were away and Glasgow's West End looked deserted. I had misgivings. But then, quite suddenly, the place filled up. And I mean filled. This is a big venue, but it's congenial and people like it. They also like the fact that they can fit it in around other things. A significant number of retired people enjoy coming out in daylight, people on flexi time come along from the BBC, and the surrounding hospitals and businesses - they even like the pies! They were a mixed, interesting, receptive audience.
This year's play - mind you - is quite different from the last one. So we'll see. In my experience, critics and reviewers often expect you to write more of the same, and sometimes get quite shirty when you don't, reviewing what something is not rather than what it is! Or maybe that's just my usual writer's paranoia surfacing ...
The play takes a fresh look at the relationship between Robert Burns and his wife Jean. I've always been more interested in Jean than in any of his other loves. Maybe because she so often gets a bad press. Miscellaneous academics down the years (mostly male) have gone on at length about Burns marrying someone whose intellectual capacity couldn't match his own. As if teasing Nancy McLehose was the last word in intelligence. One writer labels Jean "glaikit" a Scots word meaning stupid. They even manage to turn her own virtues against her. Because she uncomplainingly agreed to take on the upbringing of Anna Park's daughter, (she of the "gowden locks", the barmaid Burns bedded at the Globe Inn, Dumfries,while Jean was visiting Mauchline) one commentator pointed out that this compliance would have been a constant reproach to the poet and was possibly the reason for his unhappiness! Can't win, can you?
When you search Google for Robert Burns, you get about nineteen million hits. When you search Google for Jean Armour, you get just over one million, and that includes one or two high profile descendents. Highland Mary, on the other hand, gets a whopping three and a half million hits. Wouldn't you just know that the mistress gets more fame than the wife? Particularly when she dies before she can make any trouble!
So I've always had a soft spot for Jean, as well as a huge affection for the poet. I know he put it about a bit, but he was a man who genuinely liked the company of women. You need only read songs like "My Tocher's the Jewel" to know that here was a man unlike most other men of his time. To put such words into the mouth of a woman takes an amount of insight that few writers could match - now or then! And the real words to "Green Grow the Rashes" are not, "the sweetest hours that e'er I spent" - an old rake looking back on past love affairs - but a much more immediate, and quite different "the sweetest hours that e'er I spend are spent amang the lassies oh..." with a final, telling reference to Jesus Christ, usually omitted when the song is sung. "The wisest man the warld e'er knew, he dearly lo'ed the lassies oh."
So, Robert and Jean. That's what I wanted to write about. It's a love story - of course.
It's a short play about endings (and perhaps beginnings). It's a play about loss. And about inspiration. And about the complexities of the relationship between a husband and wife. But by the time it's on stage, I'll know more about it. That's what happens when actors and a director get their hands on your work. It's also one of the things that make theatre so exciting - and keeps this writer in particular coming back for more.
David organises a series of short lunchtime plays, each lasting about 45 minutes. The price of the ticket includes a pie (literally - meat or veggie options are available) and a drink, alcoholic or otherwise. There are rows of seats with tables. The audience come in, eat, drink, talk, and then, once most of the dishes are cleared away, settle back to watch the play.
The first time I contributed a play, (The Price of a Fish Supper, spring 2005) I couldn't believe the size of the audience. It opened on a holiday monday, the university students were away and Glasgow's West End looked deserted. I had misgivings. But then, quite suddenly, the place filled up. And I mean filled. This is a big venue, but it's congenial and people like it. They also like the fact that they can fit it in around other things. A significant number of retired people enjoy coming out in daylight, people on flexi time come along from the BBC, and the surrounding hospitals and businesses - they even like the pies! They were a mixed, interesting, receptive audience.
This year's play - mind you - is quite different from the last one. So we'll see. In my experience, critics and reviewers often expect you to write more of the same, and sometimes get quite shirty when you don't, reviewing what something is not rather than what it is! Or maybe that's just my usual writer's paranoia surfacing ...
The play takes a fresh look at the relationship between Robert Burns and his wife Jean. I've always been more interested in Jean than in any of his other loves. Maybe because she so often gets a bad press. Miscellaneous academics down the years (mostly male) have gone on at length about Burns marrying someone whose intellectual capacity couldn't match his own. As if teasing Nancy McLehose was the last word in intelligence. One writer labels Jean "glaikit" a Scots word meaning stupid. They even manage to turn her own virtues against her. Because she uncomplainingly agreed to take on the upbringing of Anna Park's daughter, (she of the "gowden locks", the barmaid Burns bedded at the Globe Inn, Dumfries,while Jean was visiting Mauchline) one commentator pointed out that this compliance would have been a constant reproach to the poet and was possibly the reason for his unhappiness! Can't win, can you?
When you search Google for Robert Burns, you get about nineteen million hits. When you search Google for Jean Armour, you get just over one million, and that includes one or two high profile descendents. Highland Mary, on the other hand, gets a whopping three and a half million hits. Wouldn't you just know that the mistress gets more fame than the wife? Particularly when she dies before she can make any trouble!
So I've always had a soft spot for Jean, as well as a huge affection for the poet. I know he put it about a bit, but he was a man who genuinely liked the company of women. You need only read songs like "My Tocher's the Jewel" to know that here was a man unlike most other men of his time. To put such words into the mouth of a woman takes an amount of insight that few writers could match - now or then! And the real words to "Green Grow the Rashes" are not, "the sweetest hours that e'er I spent" - an old rake looking back on past love affairs - but a much more immediate, and quite different "the sweetest hours that e'er I spend are spent amang the lassies oh..." with a final, telling reference to Jesus Christ, usually omitted when the song is sung. "The wisest man the warld e'er knew, he dearly lo'ed the lassies oh."
So, Robert and Jean. That's what I wanted to write about. It's a love story - of course.
It's a short play about endings (and perhaps beginnings). It's a play about loss. And about inspiration. And about the complexities of the relationship between a husband and wife. But by the time it's on stage, I'll know more about it. That's what happens when actors and a director get their hands on your work. It's also one of the things that make theatre so exciting - and keeps this writer in particular coming back for more.
Of Plays and Things
Some time ago I conceived the idea of writing a play about the last few weeks in the life of Robert Burns. He was sent to a sort of “poor man’s spa” at The Brow Well, down on the Solway where his doctors advised him to try seabathing. The man was dying, but struggled to walk through the shallow waters to the point where they reached his waist. It seemed a dramatic and curiously neglected time of his life. I drafted out the play, but felt that it was a horrible mish mash of too many ideas. I kept shelving it, going back to it and shelving it all over again.
Then, last year, I had a play accepted for David McLennan’s inspired “A Play, a Pie and a Pint” season of lunchtime dramas at the Oran Mor centre in Glasgow’s West End. The Price of a Fish Supper was a dramatic monologue, about – among many other things – the state of the Scottish fishing industry, as seen through the eyes of an ex fisherman. It was beautifully directed by Gerda Stevenson and brilliantly performed by Paul Morrow in a tour de force of memory and interpretation: 45 minutes on stage, no breaks, a moving and magical performance. I counted my blessings because theatre is such a collaborative effort and I sometimes think that the writing is the least of it! It went down well with audiences, and the reviews were good. Enthused all over again about theatre, I thought about writing another play.
During November and December last year, as respite from another project which is proving a bit of a struggle (of which more, much more, in a later blog) , I got out my meandering Burns on the Solway, and had a look at it again. This time, though, I came to it knowing that I had to cut characters, knowing that I had to write within definite time and space and budget constraints. It suddenly struck me what the play was really about - the relationship between Burns and Jean as perceived through the eyes of a dying man, and the wife who has soldiered on with him through thick and thin. I began to cut away all the rubbish – and found that I had a viable play on my hands. It’s scheduled for the new Oran Mor season, some time in February, it goes into production soon, and I’ll let you know what happens next. But I write this mostly to point out that essential constraints can be amazingly liberating. Sometimes too much time and space can be a curse. Sometimes, the need to write to a particular brief can be more rewarding than you would ever have anticipated.
Then, last year, I had a play accepted for David McLennan’s inspired “A Play, a Pie and a Pint” season of lunchtime dramas at the Oran Mor centre in Glasgow’s West End. The Price of a Fish Supper was a dramatic monologue, about – among many other things – the state of the Scottish fishing industry, as seen through the eyes of an ex fisherman. It was beautifully directed by Gerda Stevenson and brilliantly performed by Paul Morrow in a tour de force of memory and interpretation: 45 minutes on stage, no breaks, a moving and magical performance. I counted my blessings because theatre is such a collaborative effort and I sometimes think that the writing is the least of it! It went down well with audiences, and the reviews were good. Enthused all over again about theatre, I thought about writing another play.
During November and December last year, as respite from another project which is proving a bit of a struggle (of which more, much more, in a later blog) , I got out my meandering Burns on the Solway, and had a look at it again. This time, though, I came to it knowing that I had to cut characters, knowing that I had to write within definite time and space and budget constraints. It suddenly struck me what the play was really about - the relationship between Burns and Jean as perceived through the eyes of a dying man, and the wife who has soldiered on with him through thick and thin. I began to cut away all the rubbish – and found that I had a viable play on my hands. It’s scheduled for the new Oran Mor season, some time in February, it goes into production soon, and I’ll let you know what happens next. But I write this mostly to point out that essential constraints can be amazingly liberating. Sometimes too much time and space can be a curse. Sometimes, the need to write to a particular brief can be more rewarding than you would ever have anticipated.
Dawkins Shmawkins
I wanted to write something about this farrago of nonsense, but the incomparable A A Gill trashed the programme (and incidentally its presenter) so comprehensively in the Sunday Times that I needn't bother. The brilliant thing about Gill was that he instantly made the bizarre connection I had been struggling to put my finger on for two weeks: Malcolm Muggeridge. We expect a dramatic Dawkins conversion before too long, and believe me he'll be fierce. In the Catholic church people used to (and still do for all I know, though I'm not what you might call a regular churchgoer) talk in hushed tones about the intensity of the converted. Not long after little Malcolm saw the light, as then rector of Edinburgh University, he made students' lives a misery by his prolonged opposition, on moral grounds, to the installation of contraceptive machines in the union lavatories. I know it sounds a bit far fetched now, but back then it was AN ISSUE.
You know what bothers me most ? (About Dawkins. Though Muggeridge had the same besetting sin. ) It's his woolly thinking. And his complete lack of academic precision. Coming from a young male undergraduate it might be interesting; from a mature scientist and presumed expert in his field, it's unforgiveable. But then maybe - dare I say it? - that's biology for you.
You know what bothers me most ? (About Dawkins. Though Muggeridge had the same besetting sin. ) It's his woolly thinking. And his complete lack of academic precision. Coming from a young male undergraduate it might be interesting; from a mature scientist and presumed expert in his field, it's unforgiveable. But then maybe - dare I say it? - that's biology for you.
Fighting the Good Fight.
When I was first going out with my husband - and we lived on opposite sides of the country - he turned up at my flat one weekend, en route to a tournament in full fencing get-up. (He never did make the competition, but that's another story.) The fact that he still maintains an interest in what he says is an art, rather than a sport, may serve to explain why he devoted two precious hours of his life, the other night, to watching something advertised as a British Drama on Hallmark. I was present but, after the first half hour, I buried my nose in a book and contented myself with the occasional peep - mostly at Robson. The premise was that our hero, fleeing the police, assorted criminals and his past, took on the coaching of a girls' fencing team at a posh boarding school somewhere near Oban. (Culzean Castle, as it turned out. Not THAT near Oban, really. You could see Ailsa Craig in some of the shots.) He had been offered the job after a gratuitous bonk with the headmistress, in a hotel room. Unlikely, but you never know your luck in a raffle...
The fact that the whole production was truly, deeply awful, should in no way be blamed on the actors who struggled manfully, and womanfully, with both script and fencing. It was when the credits rolled that I guessed the awful truth. There, but for the grace of God, went yours truly.
Once upon a time, after one of my stage plays had been well reviewed, I was approached by a script editor, bearing enticements. It was just after Ballykissangel, and they were looking for an idea for a Scottish rural drama. From my extensive experience of deepest rural Scotland, I obliged. In the meantime, however, a blistering drama called The Lakes (remember that one?) was doing rather well, so back came my outline, with the suggestion that I make it "darker." Perhaps they wanted The Lochs. I reckon my modified idea was a little too dark, because at the next meeting the editor suggested that I pitch it somewhere in the middle. More work, more meetings, more discussions. No money though. "They seem to think" said the script editor, apologetically, at what turned out to be our last meeting. "That it falls between two stools."
Beware of script editors or development executives or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays, bearing promises of jam tomorrow, if only you can "get it right."
You have to remember that in television, script editors may be only one step ahead of the writer in terms of experience. Or, come to think of it, some way behind the writer. Development is their job, their raison d'etre, the way they earn their living. The company must be seen to have various projects "in development." Mostly, as a writer, you won't be paid anything for that development work but the script editor will often be employed by the company. It stands to reason, therefore, that the development process will be lengthy, while the writer wastes weeks, months, nay years of his or her life on rewrites and revisions, always pursuing that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, until the initial idea crumbles away into dross. A few dried leaves. Just occasionally though, one of these productions actually makes it onto the screen. To encourage the others, perhaps? The fencing fiasco had the despairing air of something concocted by a committee of script editors and development executives. Somewhere in there was an excellent and original idea, twitching feebly, as it expired before our very eyes.
After a bit, you get wise to this process. But not before you have wasted far too much time, and far too many ideas. Every time I have had a reasonably successful stage play, somebody has approached me about television. The last person I spoke to was refreshingly honest about the whole business. If you want to get into television, you begin by writing for the soaps. You send in sample scripts, and if they are good enough, you get to serve an apprenticeship, learning your trade the hard way. That's how it's done. If you don't want to do that, then you don't want to write for television badly enough. So don't do it. Write what you want to write instead.
PS They were holding their "back hands" wrong in the fencing scenes as well. So said my husband . "They'd have got their fingers chopped off!" he muttered darkly, as he went to bed.
The fact that the whole production was truly, deeply awful, should in no way be blamed on the actors who struggled manfully, and womanfully, with both script and fencing. It was when the credits rolled that I guessed the awful truth. There, but for the grace of God, went yours truly.
Once upon a time, after one of my stage plays had been well reviewed, I was approached by a script editor, bearing enticements. It was just after Ballykissangel, and they were looking for an idea for a Scottish rural drama. From my extensive experience of deepest rural Scotland, I obliged. In the meantime, however, a blistering drama called The Lakes (remember that one?) was doing rather well, so back came my outline, with the suggestion that I make it "darker." Perhaps they wanted The Lochs. I reckon my modified idea was a little too dark, because at the next meeting the editor suggested that I pitch it somewhere in the middle. More work, more meetings, more discussions. No money though. "They seem to think" said the script editor, apologetically, at what turned out to be our last meeting. "That it falls between two stools."
Beware of script editors or development executives or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays, bearing promises of jam tomorrow, if only you can "get it right."
You have to remember that in television, script editors may be only one step ahead of the writer in terms of experience. Or, come to think of it, some way behind the writer. Development is their job, their raison d'etre, the way they earn their living. The company must be seen to have various projects "in development." Mostly, as a writer, you won't be paid anything for that development work but the script editor will often be employed by the company. It stands to reason, therefore, that the development process will be lengthy, while the writer wastes weeks, months, nay years of his or her life on rewrites and revisions, always pursuing that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, until the initial idea crumbles away into dross. A few dried leaves. Just occasionally though, one of these productions actually makes it onto the screen. To encourage the others, perhaps? The fencing fiasco had the despairing air of something concocted by a committee of script editors and development executives. Somewhere in there was an excellent and original idea, twitching feebly, as it expired before our very eyes.
After a bit, you get wise to this process. But not before you have wasted far too much time, and far too many ideas. Every time I have had a reasonably successful stage play, somebody has approached me about television. The last person I spoke to was refreshingly honest about the whole business. If you want to get into television, you begin by writing for the soaps. You send in sample scripts, and if they are good enough, you get to serve an apprenticeship, learning your trade the hard way. That's how it's done. If you don't want to do that, then you don't want to write for television badly enough. So don't do it. Write what you want to write instead.
PS They were holding their "back hands" wrong in the fencing scenes as well. So said my husband . "They'd have got their fingers chopped off!" he muttered darkly, as he went to bed.
Rome
What will I do with my wednesday nights, now that Rome has ended? I know critical reaction to this has been mixed, but I've been hooked right from the start. And I managed to see every single episode, which is something of a miracle for me. There have been criticisms that the language was too modern. So what did they want? Ben Hur? That it was too violent. It was violent - horribly, realistically so, and I was sometimes reduced to watching it from behind a cushion, the way I used to watch Dr Who. Especially the last gladiatorial fight, which was - I'm sure - completely realistic! That it was too sexy. Well, it was jaw droppingly explicit. And you knew where it would all end (in tears of course). But none of that mattered. It was all endlessly entertaining. I loved the way Servilia turned into the villain. I loved the way Atia suddenly became (marginally) sympathetic. I loved the way Mark Antony managed to be both louche and honourable at the same time. I loved the look of it all. The shots that you just knew the director had been drooling over.
Besides, it had Kevin McKidd in it, who is one of the best actors to come out of Scotland in a long long time. I used to fantasise about writing a play for him to be in. Now, sadly, I expect he's too starry for the stage. I'll miss the Vorenus/Pullo double act. I'll miss all of it. Wednesday nights will never be the same.
My son's girlfriend (a classicist) has just reminded me what happens next. Ooh, I remember now. Can't wait for the next series....
Besides, it had Kevin McKidd in it, who is one of the best actors to come out of Scotland in a long long time. I used to fantasise about writing a play for him to be in. Now, sadly, I expect he's too starry for the stage. I'll miss the Vorenus/Pullo double act. I'll miss all of it. Wednesday nights will never be the same.
My son's girlfriend (a classicist) has just reminded me what happens next. Ooh, I remember now. Can't wait for the next series....
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