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In 1991 I attended Interplay, the International Young Playwrights' Festival, in Warragul, near Melbourne. One night I found myself leaning on a bar chatting to a Czech playwright, who asked, "What do you write about in New Zealand? I mean ..." and here he shrugged ... "nothing happens."
Under his piercing West Slavic stare, I felt immediately on the back foot and stammered something about us being a young country still unsure of our identity and so mostly we wrote about ourselves. Sort of. Kind of thing.
He nodded, and shrugged dismissively, the way one does to a comfortable, middle-class pretender, when one comes from a country which has been repeatedly invaded, annexed, split, reconstituted, and was about to dissolve into two countries the following year. Oh yeah, and your president is a playwright.
Strictly speaking, President V·clav Havel, was a former playwright, after which he became a banned playwright, then a political activist, jailbird, ex-jailbird, and now in 1991, President, soon to become, the following year, ex-President, and six months later, President again. (And, as an aside, he has recently published his memoirs.)
"What do you write about in New Zealand? I mean ... nothing happens." It was as if he couldn't understand why we voluntarily burdened ourselves with the vexing business of writing plays instead of getting on with lying at the beach.
If you deconstruct his question, you find, as usual, some assumptions.
There is an assumption about the purpose of a play. There is an assumption about what is worth writing about. And in my rather flippant interpretation of his attitude, there is an assumption about what is worth doing with your life.
What should you write about? What is the purpose of a play? Are there better things you could be doing with your life? These questions are so intertwined that an attempt to address any one of them inevitably crosses them all.
So ... easy ones first.
What should we, you and me, here and now, write about? Well, what's available to us to write about? I believe that any person has the right to tell any story. We do not forfeit that right because of our gender, race, age, nationality, culture, sexuality, wealth, or any other aspect of our being. To try and deny anyone the right to tell any story, is censorship of the most repugnant kind. Censorship of the imagination. And I'd like to return to that notion shortly.
You have the right to tell any story, provided - and this is not a negation - that you establish an authentic connection with your material. It's a moral obligation you have as a writer. If you don't do it, you're a fake. Your work will be derivative; copied from some other play you saw, or something you watched on TV once.
You should be able to articulate, at least to yourself, your authority for telling this story; for making this statement; for addressing this question - however you like to express it. When that voice in your head, or even a real person, demands of you, "Who are you to say that?" - you should be able to tell them.
Here's what I mean by establishing an authentic connection with the material. I currently teach playwriting at Unitec in Auckland and I always ask my students a series of questions about their plays, especially when they are embarking on a second draft - although they can be helpful at any stage. The questions are quite mechanical, but I find them useful for cutting to the heart of the students' stories.
First question: What happens in your play? They must answer this in a paragraph.
Most students, on their first attempt, write the blurb for the back of the DVD cover. They don't tell me what happens in their play. They tell me something designed to make me want to know what happens in their play. Which is exactly the position I'm already in. I want to know what happens in their play. I want to know how it starts, how it develops, how it ends.
Once they get it, they find they have encapsulated in one paragraph, their plot. Simple and uncluttered.
Second question: What is your play really about? They must answer this with a single word. That's hard, and I'm quite strict about it. The first time I pose these questions, it's an exercise; they're not going to be committed to their answers, so it takes the pressure off a bit, but it doesn't make it any easier. The single-word demand forces them to look for the big subject their play is addressing. Once they settle on a word, that's what I describe as their play's theme. Jealousy. Family. Betrayal. Solitude. Obsession. Loyalty.
You can almost feel the satisfaction in the room once they've come up with their word. "Whew. Now I know what I'm writing about. Away I go ..." In fact, most of us tend to stop there. But the third question is the really useful one when you're prying apart your work. You've got your one word, now ...
Third question: What are you saying about that thing? They must answer this with a statement. The shorter the statement and the stronger the language, the better.
"Jealousy will kill you."
"Families are dangerous."
"Solitude will save the world."
Everyone has a name for this kind of statement. Somewhere along the line I started calling it your dramatic premise. It's a human truth that you believe, or know, and which is going to inform your play, and your audience.
Once you have a statement you think lies at the heart of your play, ask yourself, "How do I know this? Why do I believe this?" Your honest answer to this question is your authentic connection with the material.
It doesn't have to be a profound, deeply private answer. It might be, but it doesn't have to be. Maybe you know this thing because you've lived it, and it drew you to the very brink of suicide. Or maybe you know this thing because you researched it. Or maybe you know this thing because you observed it happen to someone else. This last one raises a few issues, which I'll only address as far as saying that I'm talking about the human truth of the situation. I am not talking about the factual, blow-by-blow reproduction of someone else's life on stage. The line is blurry, and you have only your integrity to guide you.
If you have, or can establish, an authentic connection with the material, then you have the right to tell that story. I chose those words quite carefully. I don't believe it's obligatory to have this connection when you start work, but you must have it at the point you consider your play finished.
All of this is instinctive to an experienced writer, although it never hurts to make it clear. In practice, our instinct is nearly always to write about something we know about. The trick is to recognise that you really do know. For example, some writers, especially beginning writers, believe they know about something because they've seen lots of TV dramas about it.
One other thing. When I asserted that "anyone has the right to tell any story," I chose to express it that way because it sounded neat and concise and a bit provocative. It might be more accurate to say that I believe anyone has the right to attempt to tell any story; and your ability to establish an authentic connection with your material is the only thing that affects which stories you should rightly tell.
It's about now I should acknowledge how pompous it is for me to tell you what rights you have or don't have. I don't have that power. You have to claim those rights. But in reality - real New Zealand reality - you can write about anything you damn well like. And perform it. No one's going to stop you. Are they?
It's true that there is no formal process specifically for the censorship of theatre in New Zealand. We have a Film Censor, a Video Recordings Authority, an Office of Film and Literature Classification (who also deal with PlayStation and XBox and other computer games) a Broadcasting Standards Authority, and an Indecent Publications Tribunal. But our lawmakers see no need to censor, or classify, live theatre. So when I say you have the right to tell such-and-such a story ... big deal. Of course you do. What's stopping you?
Lots of things.
Writer, director, and actor, Danny Mulheron, said once that if he ever finds himself saying, "Oh, god, I can't say that!" then he knows he has to.
Where does that censoring voice in your head come from? Let's assume it's not a craft thing. It's not judicious editing - it's you feeling that there is some thought you're not allowed to express. Maybe it's your own horror at yourself for even having that thought in the first place. What conditioning went on in your upbringing which now tries to muzzle you? What conditioning is all around us, right now, so pervasive that we've normalised it, which has you believing, "Oh my god, I can't say that."
This is the country which banned David Irving from entering. He is a British historian. At least that's what he calls himself. Most people call him a holocaust denier. He was banned from entering this country because of his opinion. It was not in the public interest to let an outspoken person with such a controversial, potentially explosive, let's face it "offensive" opinion, into the country.
It's occurred to me while preparing for this talk that I've never seen a piece of theatre in this country that offended me. The word "outrageous" has been hi-jacked and watered down to mean "deliciously naughty." I have never seen anything in New Zealand theatre which caused outrage in anyone.
Everything hard, cutting, edgy, or outrageous in New Zealand theatre is fashionably so. True outrageousness is unfashionable. That's the right we should claim. The right to be unfashionably outrageous.
So which stories should we tell? As I said, that's inextricably bound up with what you believe the purpose of a play is, and what is worth doing with your life.
Ken Duncum is one of the best playwrights in the country. (Note: when referring to a colleague, you always call them "one of the best" because it sounds generous, but it still leaves the way clear for you yourself to be the best.) Ken Duncum wrote a play called "Blue Sky Boys," about an imagined night in 1964 when the Everly Brothers played the Savage Club in Wellington the same night the Beatles played the Town Hall. There is a moment when Don Everly says to the young ring-in drummer, "I want to take the universe, everything I know, and put it all into a three minute song about a boy and a girl. Because I happen to think that's a worthwhile thing to do."
What do you think is a worthwhile thing to do? Work it out. Write it down. Then find the courage to do it. It can be a humble goal, or something lofty. I tend to go for lofty. I want my play to add to the sum total of human understanding about what it means to be human. Whether it's a knockabout, door-slamming farce, or an intensely moving drama, that's what I want from my writing. Because I happen to think that's a worthwhile thing to do.
I read that on the opening night of "Death Of A Salesman" after the play ended, Arthur Miller saw an old man leaving the theatre, not looking too happy. It turned out he was Gimbel, of Gimbel's department store, and the next day, having seen "Death Of A Salesman," he ordered that no one would ever be fired from Gimbel's just because they were too old.
Imagine that.
Maybe you just want to give people a good night out. Relax them, and refresh them, set them up for the coming week. You're not alone.
In the April edition of Playmarket's e-bulletin there was an article by British writer and director Anthony Neilson. He says:
"We are entertainers. What we do is not as important to society as brain surgery, or even refuse collection. But when the brain surgeon and the refuse collector finish work, they come to us and it is our job to entertain them - not necessarily just to distract them, but to stimulate, to refresh, to engage them. That's our place in the scheme of things, and it's a responsibility we should take seriously."
It doesn't matter whether you just wanna make 'em laugh, or whether you want to profoundly alter their understanding of life - if you believe it's a worthwhile thing to do, then take the responsibility seriously.
Then there's the question we all need to ask ourselves, and probably have: Is this the best way to spend my life? Is my writing really going to have any effect on anyone, or am I just in love with the notion of myself as a writer.
If I really do want to add to the sum total of human understanding about what it means to be human, is writing plays the best way to do that?
Anecdote. In the mid-eighties I was studying theatre and film at Victoria University. Brecht was very fashionable amongst us then. One day some of us were preparing for a performance of bits and pieces of various Brecht plays. A compilation of good political theatre. We were gonna show them. Yeah. Just after half past five, we remembered it was Local Body election day, and we had less than half an hour to get to a polling booth and vote. The irony was so obvious, we felt ridiculous. We ran - and made it.
How long did it take you to write your last play? Don't count the thinking you did while you were weeding the garden or walking to work. Just the hours you actually spent writing words on the page. Fifty? A hundred? Would you have had more effect on the world spending those hours working at the city mission, or volunteering at the Citizens' Advice Bureau?
I'm not suggesting you stop writing and take up charity work. But I am asking you to address that question.
So what should you write about? You write about something you have an authentic connection with. You constantly remind yourself what you want your writing to do. You find the courage and claim the right to say the things you musn't say. And you never forget that it is a worthwhile thing to do.
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