Foxon - Being a Playwright

Chris Foxon & George Turvey

BEING A
PLAYWRIGHT

A Career Guide for Writers

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

CONTENTS

For my parents, the family I did not choose but for whom I am thankful.

And for Hannah, for I am beyond thankful that she chose me.

Chris

For Jo and Ophelia; behind this average man are two incredible women.

And for my parents, who first introduced me to stories.

George

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We must first and foremost express our profound gratitude and affection for the Backstage Trust team: Kathryn, Susie, David and Dominic. You believed in us, supported us, and transformed our work.

We also wish to thank Papatangos board of trustees and artistic associates for all their hard work.

This book would not exist without Nick Hern Books, who have supported Papatango and published our writers for years. Their contribution to new writing has been immense and it is always a privilege to work with the team. We must single out Matt Applewhite for being an outstanding and merciful editor.

We are also hugely grateful to our generous, far-sighted supporters at Arts Council England, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation, the Royal Victoria Hall Foundation, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the Leche Trust, the Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust, the Mildred Duveen Charitable Trust, the Derek Hill Foundation, the Fenton Arts Trust, the Mercers Charitable Trust, the Ernest Cook Trust, the BBC Performing Arts Fund, the Channel 4 Playwrights Scheme and the Golsoncott Foundation.

Most of all, thanks are due to those who have contributed to this book, and to all the writers and creatives with whom we have been blessed to make plays.

INTRODUCTION

To become a professional playwright requires more than just the ability to write a great script. This runs counter to many of our cultural reference points, which perpetuate the romantic image of the writer as a lone genius, penning something of such outstanding wisdom and artistic worth that the world falls into line to accommodate them. Think of the wonderful story of George Devine rowing out to John Osbornes little houseboat, where the writer was literally stewing nettles to survive, so eager was Devine to announce that Look Back in Anger would headline the Royal Courts next season. But this story is wonderful because its so exceptional. Usually the myth of the sudden breakthrough is just that a myth. Most playwrights have to labour for a very long time on a lot of things besides their script before they achieve success.

Thats one of the reasons British playwriting still has significant failings in representation; if talent were truly all it took, wed see new playwrights emerging from every avenue of society. Instead, the writers who make a professional career in theatre are, disproportionately, from more privileged, insider backgrounds. This is for many reasons cultural capital, confidence, education, wealth to fall back on but perhaps the most crucial is having the connections and know-how to navigate the business, not just the art, of playwriting.

Successful playwrights have to understand how to promote their script, how to build relationships with venues and companies, how to collaborate with different practitioners, how to navigate different deals and production opportunities, and how to maximise the impact of such opportunities. These are just a few of the practical realities that writers must master if they are to survive within a competitive, often flawed, theatre industry.

Since 2007 our theatre company, Papatango, has worked to discover new playwrights, develop their writing, and support them in building careers, focusing on artists who might otherwise struggle to access professional resources. We have time and again been asked the same questions, faced the same uncertainties, resolved the same complications.

Hence this book. If each writer who emerges, blinking, from the creative sanctuary of the bedroom/garret/studio faces the same challenges as the writer before them did and the writer after them will do, then it seems there is a need for an accessible, unpretentious guide to the business of playwriting. And maybe, just maybe, that will help to diversify playwriting and open up pathways into theatre.

This book therefore shares our experiences and the experiences of the many brilliant writers and theatre-makers with whom we have been lucky enough to work, both through Papatango and independently. It is the result of thousands of conversations with hundreds of artists. In that sense it is a collaboration, as any work for theatre must be. It would not exist were it not for all the individuals who have had the desire and daring to ask how to be a playwright. We will make it clear when we are referring to a particular writers experiences. Huge thanks to all who have shared.

The book is structured in three acts to work through the main stages of an emerging writers career, from getting started to making a production to capitalising on a shows run. Each act addresses the situation of a writer at a different level of experience. If youve never attempted to write a play before or need some guidance on how to reach out to companies, start at contain some useful lists and expand on the references outlined in the book.

Regardless of where you are in your career right now, we trust this book will prove a useful resource. By tackling the recurring questions and challenges encountered on a writers journey, we hope to enable playwrights to flourish especially those who would otherwise lack the knowledge or contacts to overcome the barriers of what can be a monolithic industry.

What It Offers

This book is not an academic analysis of playwriting or the theatre industry, nor is it a guide to writing a play. Instead, by distilling our experiences as producers at the coalface of new writing, we attempt to explain in clear terms what being a playwright means, how the business of playwriting often works, and some of the ways you might go about it.

New writing is a changing industry: in recent years we have seen the rise of more playwriting awards (often in place of commissioning); moves towards devising and collaboration rather than traditional text-based practices; and a shift of public funding away from the focus on new writing that characterised the decades either side of the millennium. All of these impact on how playwrights navigate their place within British theatre today. Rather than be drawn into discursive reflections on the reasons for these trends, we focus on the practicalities of how playwrights can carve out successful careers within this landscape.

The proviso is that Chris is a producer and George an actor and artistic director (well explain these terms in the chapter on ). Instead, this book outlines how to make the most of any play that you have written, because even Shakespeare would never have gone very far if his manuscripts remained trapped in a drawer.

Nor is this book designed to advocate any ideal process. Something as personal as writing stories cannot follow any fixed route. Instead, we consider all the elements that affect a playwrights career, so you can navigate the best pathway for yourself.

What is a Playwright?

This seems an easy question, no? The answer appears obvious: someone who writes a play. But its not quite that simple.

Firstly, writing a play covers a vast range of approaches, from an individual scribbling away on a literary masterpiece, to a devising ensemble with one person nominated to turn collective ideas into a single text-based story, through to teams of writers coming together to edit verbatim material into a script and many more practices besides.