How to Write a Play: The Workshop

I had a fascinating couple of days this week.  The director of CurvingRoad's next production, two actors and I locked ourselves in the Old Red Lion Theatre and workshopped Dig, one of the two plays we will be presenting in June.  As far as I'm concerned, workshopping your play is as crucial as sitting down to write it in the first place.  I wrote about last year's workshop of my own play here and this was when I really began to appreciate how different writing for the stage is from all the other sorts of writing I do.  It's absolutely true that the playwright is just one of the people involved in creating the piece.  The initial ideas, characters and words may come from us, but the depth behind what we first write down comes from the director and actors. It really is a sort of alchemy, and it's fascinating to watch.
   Directors have many different ways of "discovering" a play.  This week with Dig, it was really an exercise in archaeology. Ellie, the director, first had the actors read the script in its entirety.  Then she asked them to go back to the beginning, and every time there seemed to be a change - a shift in tone, in voice, in the relationship between the characters - we would stop.  That section became it's own individual unit and the following questions were asked: what is each character trying to achieve in this unit? How is he going about it? What active verb can we find to describe what he is doing or how he is feeling?  And then, based on these minutiae, a "title" was given to the unit.  It was amazing to see how interactions change between sections, even between lines.  By the time we had slowly, painstakingly worked our way through most of the script, we had discovered the back story, themes, relationships, motivations.  As a writer it was fascinating to see how the subconscious workings of the playwright could be revealed and how those revelations work to flesh out a play.
  Over the course of this scrutiny, we found one section which hadn't even been written.  It was there lurking behind the lines waiting to be brought out, but it just hadn't been put into words yet.  How often as writers do we find that in early drafts we roam around the edges of an idea without coming out and writing it?  I know I  do it all the time.  Ellie asked the actors to improvise that section based on all that we had discovered about the characters thus far.  She didn't want them to worry about the specific words they used.  She didn't even want them to act.  She wanted them to interact in character, and like magic, the entire play opened up.  I feel like I'm struggling to describe what it was like.  I used the word "alchemy" before, and I think that is the best word I can find to describe what happened on that stage.  The director is now going back to the playwright, armed with pages of notes and annotations, and a video of what the actors improvised.  We all know that the next draft of the play can now become even richer and more compelling than the first.
  I think you have to be brave (or a bit crazy) to write for the theatre.  You have to be willing to let others reach inside your heart and brain, fish around and see what they can pull out.  And they often get to do it with you standing right there.  It is very personal and close and as far removed from sitting at your desk alone with your computer as you can get.  It's not for everyone.  But if you allow yourself to be a part of it, I do believe it can reveal more about you and your writing than most anything else you do.  And that experience can't help but effect you and all your work, for the better.

A Chat with Chown: Part II

As  promised, here are the rest of Marcus' fascinating answers to my innocent questions:

Is it frustrating writing about something like physics when you know it can all change at any time? I am especially interested in how you deal with the unreliability of facts. For example, I was taught and tested on the names of the planets. Pluto used to be one of them, but  now.....

 Not at all. All science is provisional. It’s not set in stone. It is merely the best picture we have of reality at this moment. When something doesn’t fit, it doesn’t mean the whole edifice is invalid. It just means we need a new idea, a better theory. It’s a cause for celebration. As John Wheeler, who coined the term “black hole”, said: “No progress without paradox.” The great paradox at the beginning of the 20^th century – the fact that our theory of matter and our theory of light predicted contradictory things in the realm of the atom – spawned “quantum theory”, a change in our worldview so profound that even today we have not got totally to grips with it. At the moment, we have the paradox of the “dark energy”, the invisible stuff that fills all of space and is speeding up the expansion of the Universe. Quantum theory predicts an energy for this stuff which is 1 followed by 120 zeroes greater than the astronomers have observed. This is the biggest discrepancy between a prediction and an observation in the history of science. It’s safe to say something is badly wrong. Some big idea is missing. It could be that in the next few years there will be a revolution in out picture of reality as profound as the quantum revolution. I think that makes for exciting times. Your Pluto example is a good one (BTW, did you know it was named by an 11-year-old school Oxford girl called Venetia Burney?). We thought it was the ninth planet. But, then, we started discovering lots of other icy bodies orbiting out by Pluto, at least one of which is bigger than Pluto. Now I think we’ve found at least a 100 – with names like Easter Bunny, Buffy and Santa (with its moons, Rudolph and Blixen)! - and we think there could be more than 10,000 in a belt of rubble long predicted to exist. So we have had to revise our view of Pluto in the light of this new evidence. It’s not a planet in its own right like the Earth and Jupiter.  It’s one among many similar objects orbiting in the outer Solar System.  I don’t have a problem with our scientific picture changing all the time because change is a central characteristic of our scientific view, which is constantly having to be modified in the light of new experimental and observational evidence, as we grope for a better, more satisfactory picture. I love it that we’re constantly learning more, expanding our horizons. Rather than finding it frustrating, I find it exciting. And, of course, it keeps science writers like me in work!

  

Are you interested in all science or just physics? What’s your background and where did this interest come from?

I’m interested in science but I’m also interested in lots of other things too. One of my heroes is Geoffrey Beattie. He has been the “Big Brother” psychologist on all 10 series. But he is also head of the psychology department of the University of Manchester. And he has written some books, including “Protestant Boy”, and his brilliant novel, “The Corner Boys”. Beattie’s interests span a wide spectrum. And so do mine. I don’t know if you’ve read my children’s book, “Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil”? It was an opportunity for me to be just very, very silly.

   I have no idea where my interest in science comes from! Both my parents left school at 15 and there is no one else in the family with an interest in science. But my dad did buy me a book on astronomy when I was eight, which left a big impression on me, and which I still have. I don’t know what made him buy that book. I wish I could ask him. That’s the trouble, when people are dead; you think of all the things you should have asked them when they were alive. I do actually speculate about my dad and his incredible belief in me in the Foreword to Afterglow of Creation. One occasion, he insisted I should have won a particular book prize even though I had not entered a book for the prize – in fact, hadn’t even written a book that year! The Foreword, which I wrote on the 10^th anniversary of my dad’s death, meant a lot to me, so I was very pleased when Scott Pack, former chief buyer of Waterstone’s, said: 'The wonderful intro alone is worth the cover price.”

      But, to get back to your question, I liked English and science at school, but had to choose, which is a great shame. So I chose science. I got as far as being a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena before giving it up and trying to be a journalist. I have been working my way back to writing ever since.

  

You are a master at using metaphors from everyday life to explain difficult concepts. To me, that is very much what we poets try to do. Do you write poetry? Dare I ask where these metaphorical connections come from, or do they just pop into your head?

 Thank you. That’s really kind of you. As I said in answer to one of your earlier questions, I think visually, so I am always looking for the everyday metaphor to illuminate a difficult concept. Actually, of course, mathematics, the language of physics, is a metaphor. Physicists write down a mathematical equation – say, describing how a ball arcs through the air – and miraculously it mimics reality. You were asking me about the history of scientific thought before. Well, imagine how amazed people were when Newton wrote down mathematical formulae that were exact metaphors for the motion of the planets around the Sun or cannon balls through the air. Newton almost certainly thought God was a mathematician. Even now physicists can’t quite believe that nature dances to the tune of the equations they scrawl on blackboards. Why is mathematics a perfect metaphor for physical reality? That’s one of the deepest, unanswered questions in science. But maths is beyond most people’s everyday experience so I’m always looking for simpler metaphors that are closer to my readers’ experience. And, yes, the metaphors just pop into my head – although I wouldn’t like to take credit for all of them. Once again, it’s simply the way I try to understand things.

      I don’t write poetry but I very much enjoy reading it. Poetry is one of the best places to find titles. The title of my book The Universe Next Door comes from an e. e. cummings poem. “Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go!” Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You comes from a line in an Adrian Mitchell poem: “Mashed potatoes cannot hurt you darling.” Despite my best efforts, my publisher would not let me use the “darling”. But I live in hope that I may be able to slip it in in a future edition! 

I’ve got a million of them…

Only 999,995 questions left for me to answer, then!

but I think I better stop there.

Which I did. I will go on to say, though, that I do agree with Scott Pack when he said Marcus' beautiful introduction about his father is worth the price of the whole thing. It's the introduction that made me so excited about the prospect of entering into a dialogue with Marcus. If you read Afterglow of Creation, I believe you'll feel like you've entered into the dialogue, too.

A Chat with Marcus Chown

I have always been fascinated by science, as those of you who have read Tangled Roots know.  And I love to  think about the interplay between science and language.  And so, when I heard that Marcus Chown, whose book We Need to Talk  About Kelvin I talked about here, had a new book coming out, I thought, "Great. Let's have a good old chin wag."
   Afterglow of Creation tells the story of the biggest cosmological discovery of the last hundred years, namely the afterglow of the big bang, what it is, how it was discovered, who did the discovering. It's a fascinating story, well worth reading, and it brought to mind a universe of questions. Chown's answers are below. We did go on a bit so I've divided this interview into two blog posts, just so you can think about his ideas without looking at your watch. 

This book seems more like “history of science” than science, and that’s a field in itself. Are you more or less interested in the history than you are in the science?

I’m interested in both. On the one hand, I'm amazed by the things we have discovered. Let’s face it, the Universe we find ourselves in is stranger than science fiction, far more surprising anything we could possibly have invented. For instance, a single atom can be in two places at once, like you being in London and New York at the same time. I ask you, who could make that up? But, in addition to being an ideas junkie, I am also interested in how we got to the current view. And here I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet because the tendency of scientists is to present only the finished product – Einstein, for instance, destroyed all the steps on the road to his finished theory of relativity. That kind of thing gives the public the impression scientists aren’t ordinary human beings, groping in the dark and making mistakes like the rest of us, but gods who conjure their discoveries, fully formed, out of nowhere. And that probably stops a lot of kids even pursuing science because they think, How can I ever live up to that? But most discoveries were not made by Mr Spocks, using logic to home in relentlessly on answers. And I think showing the tortuous route by which discoveries are made not only de-mystifies the process but it makes a great story too. In Afterglow of Creation, for instance, the afterglow of creation – the leftover heat of the big bang fireball – was both predicted and discovered long before it was discovered, if you see what I mean. But nobody took any notice of the prediction. And nobody realised they’d actually discovered it. Then, the two astronomers who finally discovered it – thinking at one point they had detected the microwave glow of pigeon droppings! – wouldn’t even accept they had found the echo of the big bang for two years. Yet they were still awarded the Nobel Prize. This is the way science is done.

 Do you assume your readers know nothing about the topic? If so, when you write are you forever explaining everything as you go along, or do you fill in the background information in some later revision?

Yes, I assume the readers know nothing. In fact, I write for my wife, who is a nurse and has no science background. Of course, she has a medical background but not a physics background. If, when I show her what I have written, her eyes glaze over and she starts reaching for the TV remote control, I have to start again. And, yes, when I write, I explain things as I go along. Believe it or not, in writing, I am principally trying to understand things to my own satisfaction. And I think visually, so I am always looking for apt metaphors that will deepen my own understanding. Fortunately for me, this process is the same as trying to explain science to someone with no science background. So I kill two birds with one stone.

Okay.  That's enough for a Sunday afternoon.  Come back Thursday when we'll discuss the frustrating unreliability of facts and science writing as poetry.

Sarah Salway's latest: One Week Left to Win Yours!

Now this is a book I have been waiting anxiously for. Sarah Salway is a well known writer of great talent, generosity and humour. Her previous novels, Tell Me Everything and Something Beginning With, have been big sellers, though I came to know her work first via her wonderful short story collection, Leading the Dance.  Her blog, Sarah's Writing Journal, is also well known throughout the writing world for its quirky wisdom and honesty. Oh yes - I have been looking forward to this new work of hers with great anticipation indeed.

Sarah's third novel, Getting the Picture, comes out at the end of this month.  Here's what she says about it:
"It's the story - in mostly letter form - of love, life and sex in an old people's home. The genesis of it began when an elderly woman turned to me at a poetry reading and said she hoped she would never get too old to cry over love. I suddenly realised that I did too, but more importantly that I had only really thought of writing about love in youthful terms before. And once I started thinking, I realised how limited that approach was."

Publishers Weekly have said this about it:

'Salway (Tell Me Everything) refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks in this breezy epistolary novel set in a British retirement home. Not that the residents of Pilgrim House don't know plenty of old tricks already: Salway's appreciation of her characters is refreshingly nonpatronizing—her oldsters have rich and naughty pasts, but live in the present, very much alive and eager to gossip, conspire, and seduce... relationships and characters evolve nicely in this lighthearted novel about family and lovers and the not-so-lighthearted secrets that separate them."

And now she is running a competition to win a first signed copy.  Send her a quotation about love and old age such as this one, which Sarah herself offers up:
   Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. Dorothy Canfield Fisher

You can go here for all the details of how to enter, and how to win. Entries should be in by March 26 and the winner will be announced on April 6.  Good luck.  I'll be heading over soon to toss my entry into the hat.

Finding a New Way: In Conversation with Fiona Robyn

I don't need to tell you that the airwaves are full of discussions about the changing face of publishing, the latest technological advances and how they affect writers, the how-to's and how-not-to's of everything from writing a pantoum to writing a query letter. I'm to blame as well, with my latest diatribe called "So Tired of Worrying about Waterstones."  But the writer Fiona Robyn is walking the walk with the publication on-line, and for free, of her latest novel, Thaw, and I couldn't help but be filled with wonder about this decision and what it means to her career.  Fiona has been generous and brave enough to talk to me about it:

Sue: Given that you have gone for an “untraditional” or some might say “new age” approach to publishing and publicizing your work, I wonder if you feel that this has hampered your “prestige” as a novelist in any way.  In other words, are there some things you had to sacrifice by disseminating your work the way you have? 

 Fiona: That’s a good question, Sue. Sometimes it does feel like there’s a fine line between appropriate self-marketing and overkill. I think this is especially difficult for writers at the beginning of their careers, and the worse case scenario would be to become better known for one’s marketing skills than for one’s work. For me, though, literary prestige isn’t my priority (although of course I wouldn’t say no!). The most important thing is to find readers who enjoy my novels. I’m hoping to give my books as good a chance of being read as I can. The rest is up to them!

Sue: The technological innovations in the publishing industry is the hot topic now. Some see it as a cause for concern, others as an opportunity for writers. Do you think publishing on demand, ebooks, viral marketing is changing the face of publishing? I’m wondering if you think these innovations will cause book sales to rise or fall? Do you worry about “quality control” and how your work, being marketed the way it is, might be viewed within the established industry? In some ways, I think these are the unspoken doubts in writers’ minds.  Fiona: These are all important concerns. I try and deal with these issues by separating ‘the business of writing’ from ‘the business of selling the writing’. I know I will always write, whether or not I have readers or make any money from it. This feels helpful to the writing, and it also puts the rest of it into perspective. I am a writer because I want to write. Yes, I’m sure that e-readers, social media etc. will change the book industry beyond recognition. Yes, it’s true that I don’t know whether giving ‘Thaw’ away will help or hinder my sales or my reputation. All I can do is trust my work to stand on its own merit, and do what I can to get it out there. I’ve always taken a long term view when I’ve thought about my career as a writer, which helps me not to get too tangled up in the immediate details. I frequently fail at this, of course!

Sue: There are many blogs that discuss the “truth” about publishing, how to get published, how to get an agent etc. Some people say they live by them, others say they make sure they never read them. I know that when I read these sometimes they are helpful, but sometimes they are demoralizing and can make me think that there is only one way to go about all this, and that can be frustrating.  You have clearly been brave enough to find an alternate route. But do you ever read these blogs, and if you do, do you find them helpful or hindering? Fiona: I’ve always been a contrary kind of person, so if someone tells me there’s only one way to do something then I’m more likely to do something different. I’m not convinced that this has been the most sensible way to approach my writing career, but who knows if I’d have had success any more quickly if I’d done what I was ‘meant’ to do? Having said that, I have used the support of a huge number of people along the way – I’ve learned so much from feedback on my work, and from watching other authors skilfully market their books. Sage Cohen is a particular hero (and now friend). This business is too tough to go it alone. Bloggers, authors and others from the writing business will say some things that are very helpful and some things that are very unhelpful – the trick is to decide which is which. Only we can do that. If something makes us feel demoralized, then it might be interesting to ask what has destabilised us. People can only push at buttons that are already there, and only we can work on our buttons!   

And now for a last tidbit of tongue-in-cheek wisdom that Fiona recently discovered and is sharing with us:

The key to a successful writing career is to be born brilliant, with flawless work habits, little need for sleep, and wealthy grandparents who own prestigious magazines and publishing houses. - D. William Moore  

And a final, very important note, please know that Thaw is also available to purchase the old fashioned way.

Thank you, Fiona. I know this conversation will continue for a long time to come. But for now, for all of us, no matter what stage we are in our careers, good luck.

Prolific Blogger Award

Thanks to JJ at Tea Stains, I am now the proud recipient of a Prolific Blogger Award.  I'm tired just thinking about it :-)  Actually, so many people post blogs more frequently than I do that I'm rather chuffed about this.  So now I'm supposed to send you here so you can read all about the award, and I'm supposed to pass this on to seven people.  At the risk of offending someone, I think just pointing you in the direction of Advance Booking will go a long way towards "spreading the love." At the end of that post there is a list of over 200 blogs -- do go there, find some that sound interesting for you to check out. And I authorize all of you to add your names to the list.  We're all prolific in some way or another (even if it's just the amount of chocolate we eat or naps we take) and let's face it -- we all need an award from time to time.

Otherwise, I'm rather consumed at the moment with a long, if not prolific, list of activities. There's the new CurvingRoad production, a new story that continues to be not quite right, a new poetry collection going through it's second revision, plus all the stuff that's "out there," not the least of which is my Cambodia novel that's knocking on doors hoping to be asked in to tea - which brings me back to JJ.  Thanks again, JJ. I really needed this pat on the back.  Ever onward everyone!

Polish Day at Jewish Book Week

   Literature festivals can be enticing smorgasbords. You wander around tasting bits of ideas here, slices of art there. But it is especially interesting when you can sit down to a 3-course, theme-based meal. Sunday's events on offer at the Jewish Book Week literary festival included just that - a 3 session overview of Polish cultural life, as it was, as it is now, and where it might be heading.
   The first session, "Memory and Revival," began with a bold assertion.  Jonathan Webber, anthropologist and Professor of Jewish Studies, firmly stated: "all your previous assumptions about Poland are now wrong." Yes, for a generation Poland was a country in denial. During all his many visits up until about 20 years ago,  Professor Webber never heard the word "Jew" uttered, Jewish cemeteries lay in ruins, no Jewish community existed. Yes, individuals he met would sometimes take him aside and say "I want to show you something" and sneak him up to an attic, or they would whisper, "Come close, I have a story to tell you." Individual Poles had individual memories of Jews, but their 1000-year contribution to history and culture "officially" never existed. But then in the end of the 1980's, three things happened. Communism collapsed. The  Pope declared anti-semitism to be a sin. And a curious and courageous non-Jewish Pole, Janusz Makuch, forced his country to rediscover its forgotten Jewish heritage by establishing an annual "Jewish Culture Festival" in Krakow. Mr. Makuch was there on the stage yesterday and he spoke quite movingly about this festival, his life's work. Out of his own interest and a childhood discovery of this hidden Polish past, a festival drawing up to 20,000 people is held every summer. Makuch hopes that his festival, which now holds over 200 events in 9 days, is a mirror that reflects Jewish culture today. People from all over the world, Jews and non-Jews alike, descend on Krakow to attend lectures, see plays, hear concerts and celebrate Jewish life through Jewish culture. And although Makuch claims that he does not believe  he can achieve anything with this festival, Prof. Webber begs to differ.  He explains that throughout Poland there are now bookshops and publishing houses selling books in translation about Jewish topics and by Jewish authors, Jewish Studies departments are thriving in the universities, cemeteries and synagogues are being restored. And he notes the amazing fact that of all the people attending the festival, 75-80% are not Jewish, but are, rather,  people interested in Jewish life and are, for whatever personal reasons, drawn to Jewish culture. Sixty years after the Holocaust, changes are happening in Poland. And Prof. Webber was right - I, for one, had no idea.
   This inspirational nod towards the future was then followed by a wonderful performance called "Time Travelling in Polish Literature," in which the actors Henry Goodman and Beverley Klein read excerpts from Jewish literature which were interspersed with live Klezmer music.  I am an unabashed fan of Klezmer, or "Yiddish" music. Yesterday's combination of violin, accordian and tuba played new arrangements of this folk music and drew us deeply into the feelings of joy, wonder, sadness that the readings portrayed. Whether the author was a nineteenth century Rabbi or a displaced European Jew on Ellis Island in the 1970's, the literature all had that voice of humour and pathos which can be heard throughout a century of Jewish Polish literature. There is a self-deprecating humour and a fearless imagination that pervades this literature, and the musicians and actors brought it to life brilliantly. I left feeling nostalgic for the stories of my grandparents, the cadence of their self-taught English and proud of this tradition that I too often ignore.
   I went from this feeling of nostalgia and connection to a session where I was clearly not among the initiated. The novelist Maureen Freely chaired a talk by the Polish novelist, playwright and newspaper columnist Pawel Huelle. The talk was titled, "Meet the Cult Author," and although most of the people in the audience were clearly Huelle cultists, I knew nothing about him or his work. He spoke in Polish and I was surprised at how many in the audience laughed at his jokes and nodded along with his assertions long before the translator could explain his comments. The 1984 novel that launched his career is Who Was David Weiser?, a book that dared to make a Jewish boy the hero and which dared to confront the large chunk of  Polish history which had remained erased for so long. Freely read from this and another one of his Huelle's works, Mercedes, and urged the author to describe his motives and processes. I may not have known his work, but I certainly recognized his voice. Huelle's talk rambled from anecdote to anecdote, drawing from his life's stories to inform his fiction. Having just listened to stories of Isaac Beshevis Singer and Bruno Schulz, Huelle's own storytelling felt like a torch was being passed from one generation to the next. For all its modernity, the voice and the themes are the same. And perhaps, more than anything else, that sums up for me the beauty of Jewish culture. Continuity despite change. Humour despite tragedy. Courage despite fear.
   Yesterday marked the end of this year's Jewish Book Week - a week full of lectures, performances, readings, endless cups of coffees, plenty of book sales. A week for Jews and non-Jews alike. A week full of surprises but one which was as welcoming as the embrace of a long-lost uncle. I'm already looking forward to next year. In the meantime, here's a video of klezmer music from the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival. L'chaim!

The Cost of Doing Business or How To Put on a Play

One of the most surprising of all the hats I wear is that of the beleagured theatre producer. Think of Mel Brooks...this may cause me lots of excitement and headaches, but it also creates great curiosity on the part of my friends.  Everyone wants to know how these shows are  put on, and more to the point, why does it cost so much?  I thought I'd give  you a run-down:

You find a play. More often than not, especially if you produce it in the fringe, you pay the playwright next to nothing, or as if often the case, actually nothing (you can imagine how I feel about that). Then you find a director and together you convince a venue of the literary merit and marketability of your play. Do note that the two can be mutually exclusive -- which is, let's face it, why the fringe exists. If you are going for a West End venue, like we did for Sh*t-M*x, they may also require a famous actor or celebrity, especially if the play is new and by an unknown playwright. Once you've found your venue, you put down a down payment of anything from £800-£1,500, which is the price of a fringe venue for one week.  You will book the venue for at least 3 weeks. Any less than that and the play won't get reviewed and you need reviews to get people to come. Then you rent rehearsal space which can be difficult to find and also expensive. You will most likely need to rehearse for 3 weeks.  You then find your cast -- you may need to join Showcase in order to find your actors or put out a call for auditions. And you'll need a place to hold the auditions - that room rental will also cost something. How much will you pay your actors? We at CurvingRoad started out trying to pay Equity minimum, which is now around £380/week (which includes rehearsal weeks of course) plus expenses.  Alas, that has become financially impossible.  The fact that we pay our actors anything at all is a rarity in the fringe. Actors often work for free.  It's either that or not work at all.  But this is also a reason that, unless you're the National or the Old Vic, you try to keep your cast to 5 or less (budding playwrights, take note).

Then the fun starts -- you get together your creative team and begin to work on the production.  The team will include a set designer (often paid as much as your director), lighting designer, sound engineer (sometimes), pr team (to arrange for the reviewers to come, press night, interviews if you're lucky), printer for flyers and posters. Sometimes you'll need a composer for original music or you may have to pay royalties for precomposed music. You'll also need a stage manager who is the person to keep track of everything and everyone, and who will run the show each night.  And of course props and costumes.  And insurance. And inevitably the van to carry the bench donated by the local council to the theatre (or equivalent).

So what does this add up to? A fringe show in a venue that holds about 60 people  and is well-respected enough to get regularly reviewed, has a cast of about five, minimal sets and a frugal hand at the till will likely cost about £20,000.  You can do it for less if you don't pay anyone in the creative team anything, if you hold auditions and/or rehearsals in your lounge, or if, like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, your father has a barn.  And of course, for a West End show this bottom line will more than double. In the West End, the venues are much more expensive and you have to pay everyone.

Now, ticket sales will offset some of this, of course.  Let's say your theatre holds 60 people. Each ticket is £10-12. You do 6 shows a week. The most you could make, if each performance is a sell-out (which is impossible), is £12x60 people= £720 per show, x 6 shows a week = £4320, x 3 weeks of shows = £12,960.  Oops.....

So tonight CurvingRoad holds its fundraiser for our new production of two one-act plays which goes up in June.  It will be a fantastic and fun night with drinks, canapes, and a show with some of our favourite actors. We expect to raise about £3,000.  Our budget is about £20,000.  That leaves about £17,000 more to go.  Hmmm.....

So why do we do it? Because we love it. Because we believe in the power of the theatre and the importance of the arts in our lives and our society. Because we know there are other people in the world who agree that it is worth it to find new artists and bring their work to the public. And admittedly, because we are a bit nuts. Anyone want to join us?

It's  a crazy job, but somebody has to do it. No wonder the people who do are often like this:

Blog Splash

I love creative people, and Fiona Robyn is certainly one of them. Not only is she an excellent writer of moving novels and beautiful poetry, she also seems to be a marketing whiz. Fiona has decided to publish her new novel, Thaw, on the internet for free in its entirety over the next few months. And she is kicking it all off today with this "blogsplash" where all at once, bloggers around the world will be announcing its publication and printing the first installment of the diary which makes up the novel. Ruth's first entry in her diary is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.
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These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

Continue reading here.


Thaw is also for sale in paperback, the old fashioned way.  You can buy it at  The Book Depository, from Amazon or directly from Snow Books.