Is science fiction better on film?

This summer I had a science fiction play, Future Shock, produced at the 247 Festival in Manchester. Some people I spoke to about it were nervous about putting science fiction on the stage. “Film does it so much better” by which I assume they mean if you want to fire a laser or beam someone aboard it’s bound to look a bit naff on stage therefore you can’t do science fiction. This is of course nonsense. When writing for the stage you are careful to select what you show and don’t show, this is the job of the dramatist to select what is appropriate for the play in order to make the point you are trying to make. This is true whether in science fiction or in any other genre, for example, Alan Ayckbourn points out in his book, that you have to be careful about the way that you use violence since it either looks false or else we get too much of a vicarious thrill from it and it obscures the meaning.

As a result most plays prefer to keep fights offstage. In science fiction you do the same – you just keep the lasers or phasers or fazers (or whatever the hell they are) offstage. A play is still a play whether it is set in 1603, 2010 or 2875, the same rules apply. Science fiction is usually about what it means to be human whether it’s Blade Runner “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…” or Star Trek “logical captain”. By presenting the non human replicant and the non-human Spock we are able to consider what the boundaries of humanity are. That theme is also central to my play.

Future Shock

In Future Shock a woman is stranded out of time unable to reach her lover – the only way to get to him is for her DNA to be recorded and the data held for the time in the future when her lover will appear. The question of the piece is: will the reconstructed human being be the same if body dies but the blueprint goes forward, or are we more than our DNA? In other words, what does it mean to be human?

Genre expectations of science fiction

The genre then raises an expectation which is partly fulfilled and partly surprised, it’s a shorthand notation for certain expected themes and tropes. When the expectation for these are fulfilled the audience is soothed and rewarded, they are made to feel knowing. The genre therefore helps the audience to a point of understanding from which the more interesting, unique element can grow. By sharing a starting point (the genre) writers are freed from a host of setting up problems and instead of starting from point A and writing through to F they can start from D and then go further – maybe even to P or Q!

Future Shock was performed at the 247 Manchester in July 2011. It was the winner of the Drama Association of Wales prize for Best one Act play of 2011, and is published by the Drama Association of Wales (price £3.50, to order email info [at] dramawales.org.uk). Visit Richard Stockwell’s website to learn more about his work.

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From the Newcastle Journal (in the print version we’re reviewed on the same page as Alan Bennett!) 

From Spike Mike is Breaking a Leg (online theatre reviewer)

From Jesmond Local (an innovative online hyperlocal newspaper staffed largely by students from Newcastle University media department)

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1. Booking open for Pig Stew
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Amy Nicol as Juliet
Jo Kelly as Louise
Mel Dagg as Denise
Stuart Laidler as Matthew

Director: Sarah McLane

Here’s a clip from Pig Stew and an interview with me and Jo Kelly on KYEO TV
http://www.kyeo.tv/2010/11/16/pig/

If you haven’t booked yet there are still tickets available. Follow the link on the KYEO TV page.

Break a trotter everyone!

Related posts:

1. Booking open for Pig Stew
2. Pig Stew – the reviews!
3. People’s Play Award

Related posts:

1. Pig Stew – the reviews!
2. Opening Night for Pig Stew
3. People’s Play Award

Related posts:

1. Booking open for Pig Stew
2. Pig Stew – the reviews!
3. People’s Play Award + scriptwriting resources

TCW: When and where did you get your first professional staging?

JH: My first production was “A Little Crazy”, at the 2002 Orlando International Fringe Festival.

TCW: How long had you been writing plays before this?

JH: This was my first play. In the fall of 2000 I was told by Canadian author Douglas Coupland (“Generation X”) to leave the short fiction field and write plays. It took about a year to write, produce and get this play in front of a paying audience in response to that advice.

TCW: What made this script a success?

JH: At that point I didn’t have any unsuccessful scripts (or any others at all) … in fact I can say that with only two short exceptions every play I’ve written (ten to date, with way too many more in progress) has been produced somewhere. I make my living as a writer, so for me the concept of “unsuccessful” simply means it hasn’t been seen by the right person yet – I never give up.

TCW: When did you first submit work to UK theatres and when and where was your first staging?

JH: “Crazy” had a reading in 2001 by Eyewitness Theatre in Manchester; my first full production was “A God in Aspect” in 2004 from the Charade Drama Group in Bristol.

TCW: Have you ever written anything with a specifically British audience in mind?

JH: No. I did have to amend “God” for some British cultural references at the request of the director.

TCW: In your experience, how do British and American audiences differ?

JH: UK audiences actually get “smart” (not a reference to the dreadful movie out now). They read, they’re willing to come along for the ride, regardless of where you take them; they’re willing to climb two flights of stairs to see a reading of something they’ve never heard of in someone’s flat. American audiences like safe and familiar.

TCW: In your opinion, are American theatres open to British writers and vice versa?

JH: I don’t really have an answer for that. I certainly enjoy British writers …

TCW: What are your three top playwrighting tips?

JH: Only 3?

1. Listen. Go to a park, sit in a diner late at night, ride a bus. Listen to people talking, learn the rhythms of real speech.
2. Listen. Read your script out loud, at every opportunity. Begin the day by starting from Page One and reading it out loud. Make cuts, changes, read it again. Aloud.
3. Listen. Buy a bottle of wine and invite some friends over to read your script, cold. They don’t have to be actors, but that’s nice too. Pay particular attention to mistakes they make, words that get transposed or left out. Odds are, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
4. (I couldn’t resist) DO IT YOURSELF. Buy another bottle of wine, invite a lot of friends over, and stage a reading. Rent a hall, convince a restaurant it would be a great use of their empty back room, talk to your neighborhood librarian, get a space, invite people, DO IT. You’ll never know if a script works until you hear how an audience reacts.

TCW: Can you recommend any websites, online resources or books for playwrights?

JH: Cough cough, all you’d ever need to know can be found at The Burry Man Writers’ Center, the resource website my partner, Jennifer, and I have run since 1997; freelance jobs, fiction markets, tools for building a website, where to find an agent, what books to read, and submission details for several hundred theaters willing to look at new scripts. Ten thousand people visit us each month, which, considering it is a website solely for writers and we don’t advertise anywhere, is pretty good. Last year we started a social network for creatives (writers, musicians, artists) called Inked-In which just welcomed its 397th member.

TCW: Is there anything else you would like to share with The Crafty Writer?

JH: Between The Burry Man and Inked-In, I get dozens of letters every day from working, would-be, wanna-be and won’t-be writers, and I tell them all the same thing … Do The Work. Nobody is going to knock on your door and ask for a script, you’re not going to be “discovered”. Theaters aren’t going to open their stage to you if you haven’t sent them the best possible piece you can write, and that doesn’t come easy. Do The Work.

TCW: And thanks for Doing The Work here, Joseph!

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1. New Writing for theatre
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3. Writing for Television

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Live Theatre is a 160-seat theatre located on the Quayside in Newcastle upon Tyne. Following extensive renovations in 2007 the theatre also boasts a small studio space and extensive writers’ facilities. It specialises in new plays and has produced the work of Lee Hall, Peter Flannery, Alan Plater, Julia Darling, Sean O’Brien, Karen Laws, Peter Straughan and Joe Harbot, among many others. Its New Writing department offers a reading service and various development and writer education initiatives as well as hosting writers’ groups, a bi-annual New Writing Festival and multi-platform projects with partners from other theatres, radio, film and television companies.

TCW: Are theatres in the UK actively seeking new writing?

JH: Yes, because writing is the life blood of a few organisations, Live Theatre included.

TCW: Is it true that regional theatres like Live will only commission ‘regionally themed’ pieces?

JH: No, it is not necessarily true but there usually has to be some local angle: i.e. that the writer is from, or based, in the North East. Generally the play has to have some relevance to the theatre’s constituency but that doesn’t mean it has to be literally set here or thematically tied down.

TCW: What is a commissioning director looking for in a new play?

JH: Originality of voice, technical skill, plausibility and relevance to its audience.

TCW: Are there any themes, genre or styles that a new writer should steer away from?

JH: I would hesitate to put a limitation on any writer’s work. As a small producing theatre we would struggle to find resources to mount a first-time unknown writer’s work if it is too large a scale – i.e. if it needs more than four or five actors. However it would be delightful to have to break that generalisation: to do so the work would have to be of an extremely high standard.

TCW: Would you advise a new writer to work on ’shorts’ or one-acts before attempting a full-length play?

JH: Yes I would. Writing a full length play has so many technical demands that it seems that the best way to ‘graduate’ towards that is by exploring character and theme and dialogue in a more controlled way. You learn by doing it, so the more completed work you produce, the more you can learn. There is a great deal to be said for a high turnover at the early crucial stages in your career.

TCW: What is the current ‘market’ for shorts and one-acts?

JH: I don’t think there is a market in the fiscal sense as such. It is hard enough earning a living from full-length plays. The virtues of short form pieces are what you as a writer can learn from them.

TCW: Let’s say a new writer catches your eye, what process takes place after that?

JH: A meeting/conversation trying to understand what makes them tick, whether this material is a one-off, whether the writer has the art and ambition to create some worthy work and how they and the theatre might benefit from a development process, and what the nature of that development process should be.

TCW: In your experience, are new writers aware of how collaborative the process of taking a script from concept to stage can be?

JH: They become aware in the natural course of events. A lot of new writers have fun learning that the nature of the process is essentially collaborative and after the loneliness of writing the thing in the first place, that is often a great relief.

TCW: Could you explain the role of a dramaturg to Crafty Writer readers?

JH: Not really, as I don’t quite understand it myself. I think Dramaturg is a common role in the European theatre and as I understand it there is a great deal of work done between the dramaturg and the writer before a director gets involved. The British tradition that Live Theatre embodies – and that I first encountered working at The Royal Court – is much more based around a literary manager in the first instance and then a two-way relationship between director and writer. Whenever I have worked with a dramaturg I found that my role with the writer was confused by having another person in the mix. But that was only once and on a brief week-long workshop.

When it comes to ‘dramaturgy’ on any of the productions I’ve worked on I have brokered that relationship with the writer myself and it has involved giving perspective to the writer by trying to reflect back to them what they have actually written as well as offering suggestions as to how to improve the delivery of what I understand to be their vision.

TCW: What is the role of the director in shaping a new script?

JH: It depends from director to director I suppose, but my philosophy is basically outlined by the previous answer. It is important to state however that these roles and relationships are different every time, depending on several factors including the personalities involved and how they mesh, the state that the script is in, the contribution of the producers or the artistic director of the producing theatre. I know that some directors are very authorial, and some are laissez faire; it all depends on the particularities of the project in hand.

But in short: the role is highly significant, and I would encourage all writers to make the choice of their director very carefully. Any good theatre will give you the right of veto over the director – trust your instinct as you will have to work extremely closely with this person.

TCW: How useful might a playwrighting group like Live Writer’s be to a new writer?

JH: It might be very useful if the writer chooses to make it so.

(TCW: As a member of Live Writer’s I can tell you that the benefits of joining a group attached to a New Writing theatre are that you regularly have an opportunity to submit scripts for staged readings with professional actors and directors which, if you’re any good, will get your work noticed. Collaboratively, you and your peers can spur one another on. You can also see shows and discuss them with fellow writers. So contact your nearest New Writing theatre and find out if they run a group).

TCW: Could you recommend some online resources for new writers of theatre?

JH: We are developing an on-line course at Live Theatre. Other resources I’ve found useful are:

• www.royalcourttheatre.com is great for education resources, interviews with writers and podcasts and things.
• www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting has free Playwriting Seminars, which are an easy way to start thinking about playwriting.
• Writernet is good for opportunities and critiques.

TCW: Is there anything else you would like to share with The Crafty Writer?

JH: The best tip I can give you is to read and see as many plays as you can. Read Chekhov, Ibsen, Williams, Pinter, Churchill. Then, after that, the next most important thing is to simply write. As Hemingway said: “The first draft of everything is shit.” Just concentrate on finishing it and then at least it exists and you have something to make better. It might take you years but keep going: even the most successful and seemingly brilliant writers struggle to stay sane, so if it’s important to you, keep that faith.

TCW: Thanks Jeremy, we appreciate you taking time out to speak with us.

Books on Playwrighting:

Jeremy recommends: Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov is an occasionally comic novel about a first time writer working at a thinly fictionalised version of the Moscow Art Theatre. It is a very amusing warning to all would-be playwrights.

The Crafty Writer recommends: The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn, The Art and Craft of Playwriting by Jeffrey Hatcher, The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and Stage Writing by Val Taylor. The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook also has some excellent resources for playwrights.

Related posts:

1. When Theatre Crosses the Pond
2. Theatre – it’s in the blood!
3. Play festivals and competitions