Stephen Jeffrey’s Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write

Stephen Jeffrey’s manual on how to write plays is brilliant. He had a celebrated series of workshops he used to do, although I never made it to one. The book covers character, form, structure and story in one of the most accessible, comprehensive and erudite fashion. Great for an enthusiastic beginner or seasoned writer alike.

One short passage “your characters do not necessarily understand their motivations, and that the gap between characters’ stated intentions and their deeper motivations is a very fruitful area for the playwright. Indeed, you may not fully understand your character yourself. During rehearsals for the second production of my play The Libertine, I asked John Malkovich, who was playing the Earl of Rochester, what he thought the play was actually about. He replied by saying that he thought Rochester was a man who had been given every conceivable physical and intellectual gift and had quite deliberately proceeded to waste them. On hearing this for the first time, I not only understood my play, but realised for the first time why I had written it. In a sense, the characters you write will never be entirely knowable, just as you will never entirely understand the people you meet in life..."

If you are interested in the structure of plays (and also film and some similarities/differences), I can recommend it.

Stephen Jeffrey’s Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write

British Library accepts ASD son’s book

In a lovely and extraordinary gesture, the British library has accepted my autistic son’s book. The Chief Exec took the time and effort to write to him. 

The book doesn’t have classic “literary merit” but it’s made me feel the openness and inclusivity that libraries embody.

If you were to take the book on its own terms, then it uses many techniques of the “found poem” form but also mashes up or enjambs an old folk story trope with modern - hyper-modern even - characters.

In that sense it’s imaginative power is unique. The type of mind and attention to detail plus the repetitive stim of words is atypical in a wide sense.

The illustrations are part of the whole and display a singular vision.

It has child-like qualities in the way that it is fantastical. Yet this echoes Spike Milligan or Borges or Dr. Seuss in playful nonsense.

Perhaps for a moment it allows to think in a way of something other.

There are now two generations of Yeoh in the British Library.  My own work sits there because of the 1968 Theatre Act that requires a deposit of playscripts of all plays performed in Britain. 

Top Girls

There are strands of theatre which are conscious of the world they play in.

Some may argue that all theatre always reflects the wider world or at least the wider world reflects back on the theatre.

On occasion, I wonder how close the world pays attention. In a week where the National Theatre is criticised for its lack of female playwrights, I’m unsure how much the outside world observes.

That’s an  argument - all the more - for our national theatres to pay attention to the world and tell us the truths we are wilfully blind too.

Top Girls then forcefully reminds us. Reminds us of the subjugated role of women in history. Reminds us of the socio-political clash that brought Thatcher’s 80s and one woman’s cry “I don’t believe in class.” And how that worship of the individual has now played out.

That an all female cast written in a politics of over 30 years ago still has fresh resonance in an age of MeToo, identity wars and a politics which echoes and rhymes and seems to again reflect today.

A structure that spans dinner with almost mythical historical women to a kitchen sink in the early 1980s.

Our best theatre can leave you thinking or being something different at the end to at the beginning.

What’s a performance lecture?

It’s a form of anti-TED talk.

A genre of performance with roots in conceptual art.

Existing since the 1960s as a subgenre of performance, the lecture-performance or performance-lecture has its roots in the performance and conceptual art of the 1960s, and balances on the boundary between art and academia.

The lecture space becomes a performance space but fuses other disciplines

It’s a type of presentation that goes beyond the academic format of the lecture. Artists (not only visual or performance) use the lecture to turn it into a performance space which fuses aspects of drama and of visual and other media disciplines.

Hybrid it borrows heavily from anywhere else

It’s hybrid nature then often expresses in borrowed hybrid elements such as storytelling, the mass media, internet, adverts, slogans, images, and technology.

It acts on multi-levels to juxtapose and contrast

The performance lecture at its best has varied functions and elements operating on multiple levels. These can form a visual rhetoric or performative actions and artistic non-sequiturs  Techniques of advertising and propaganda or more straight forward education lectures and slides are used to explore the relationship between the image and the text or between consensus and the facts, or contrasting ideas or narratives.

It questions the audience/performer/viewer divisions and plays with interaction

In its artistic investigations the relationship of perception and of understanding, the audience and the performer and performance ideas can all come under scrutiny.

In that sense it is nothing like a Ted talk. It’s almost an anti-Ted Talk.

A TED talk gives you an idea and a smooth talker and tells you it’s the truth.

A performance-lecture gives you a part-idea that you have to complete, challenges you to assess its truth, your truth and the performers truth and like all good theatre can leave you activated and different from when you started.

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An early influence on this genre has to be considered John Cage and his work Lecture on Nothing (see below) which may be considered performance art or poetry or music of sorts.

Robert Wilson staged a theatrical version around 2012. Cage himself gave the lecture around 1949.

In any case from the experimental poets and performers has come this cross-genre form. It toys with more questions and answers and tends to critique all sorts of things. Not a mass media genre and less popular in . the UK - it has distant cousins now in stand up comedy and even YouTube performances to a distant degree.

Here’s a review of a recent Berlin lecture performance.

Contemplating other forms of performance for my sustainability arguments, this type of form seemed to suit and hence Thinking Bigly was created.

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Further reads: Check out my £10K in microgrants for individuals looking to make positive impact.

A blog on listening to legendary theatre agent, Mel Kenyon. 

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times  (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Autism, Stories, Representation and All In a Row - Review

​Let’s consider the main controversy first. The use of a puppet to portray a disabled non-verbal autistic boy.

The writer notes: “...Laurence is one autistic character with an extremely profound learning disability and set of behaviours including violence. He is by no means intended to be a representative of the whole autistic spectrum and the people within it. I’m a massive supporter of inclusivity in art I’m currently working on three different projects that feature learning disabled performers all playing characters with the same disability as their own. I believe people with learning disabilities should be given the chance to tell their own stories and the stories of others whatever appropriate.

Laurence is a character with the level of disability that would make it impossible for him to appear in the play especially a play like this one. The task of portraying a non-verbal 11-year-old with a very challenging behaviour is something I decided to do through puppetry. This has proved to be a controversial decision and I am saddened that some people have taken offence.

Laurence lacks agency in his own future. His fate is decided for him by neurotypical people and in many ways he has manipulated by the system he is within. This is one factor that informs the choice of puppetry But not the primary one.

I’ve always loved puppetry the way talented artist can observe life and distil it into an essence that captures the heart of a human being can often be breathtaking and illuminating ….different materials and practices all heavily influenced by two years of research and development and years in the field autism all came together to build Lawrence. During this process we included autistic people and parents of people with a similar level of autism to Lawrence and they all felt that the puppet was effective. We also have two autistic members of the team directly responsible for the characterisation of Lawrence….”

On balance, from an artistic point of view the puppet turns out to be unnecessary, in my opinion.

The puppeteer actor could have played Laurence without a puppet (and his movement was a highlight of his performance although I wasn’t completely convinced at all times). His actor’s body and physical portrayal were a good enough representation and the less convincing moments were typically with the puppet, for instance, when the puppet hands were picking up pieces and placing them not with the actor and his movement. The grey colour of the puppet was not a cohesive choice given the character of Laurence and given the colourful nature of the string design and lighting. (I liked the lighting design and colour squares design a lot and it referenced to my mind the shapes and patterning use of Laurence in a clever way).

One strength of representational acting is that you don’t have to be the character you are acting. Actors are not animals in Animal Farm, they are portraying. While a puppet can portray, as can an actor, in this case the connotations of the lack of humanity within a puppet are too strong.

Two years of R&D with a puppet maker and some focus groups can’t overcome this. (And why the inhuman grey??)

Unfortunately, we have so little narrative plenitude of stories portraying disability that a single potentially misguided artistic choice throws the production into such a storm.

Mainstream shows make misguided artistic choices all the time and that’s somewhat OK.

The pressure is magnified dealing with stories of people who don’t see themselves on stage often.

In that sense, this drama is important as a story to be told and the difficulties of balancing personal and family wants and needs with the best care and wants and needs of disabled children.

The first long monologue by the father is a description of a difficult moment where Laurence attempts to bite a 8 year old girl. That this is “told” not “shown” is notable especially as the writer indicates in his notes the importance of showing Laurence (as a puppet). The end of the monologue also reveals a secret which the audience is then aware of for most of the play, and which the mother only learns about at the end.

To me, this secret and the secret about who calls social services are well telegraphed from early in the play. I think dramatically the father’s secret should have been withheld longer from the audience. We only learn who made the call at the climax of the play, but it was of limited surprise to me. Perhaps others didn’t see it, I’d be interested to know. (Other reviews seem to also view these “twists” as non-events).

Protect the row! (In case you haven’t noted the All in a Row reference)  

Moving on from the dramaturgical structure and early monologues, the drama unfolds in a fairly standard melodrama fashion over the night before Laurence is moving to a residential care home, triggered by an anonymous call to social services. The knives have been out between the parents for some years it seems and they re-hash their old wounds in a raw if sometime overblown manner.

That they both loved Laurence, I was of no doubt. (But an over fondness for ruffling the puppet’s hair was inauthentic to me; the foot rubbing being closer to the mark - note also the foot rubbing was on the actor’s actual feet as there was no bottom half of the puppet)

The carer character was the most sympathetic apart from a strange flight of fancy from the character as to a notion that disabled people might be reincarnated animals - this didn’t seem in keeping with what we knew of the carer to me. I’m not surprised the writer was a carer himself, so sympathetically was the character written.

The father (Martin) was not particularly sympathetic. His anger and aggression were perhaps understandable although after 11 years or so, the portrayal of his handling of Laurence’s behaviour (eg when asking for more pizza, and then cake) was a little off. Still, the mother accuses him of mostly playing Xbox and by implication wasting his life. It was a little unclear how much caring he was doing (Laurence was also going to a school with 2-to-1 support). That the father wanted Laurence to stay at home was clear, whether this was the right decision by Laurence was less clear.

The mother (Tam) was more sympathetic than Martin but with many flaws and had a wider range of characterisation to play with, although again the feelings of being undesired and the need to be loved were well telegraphed - that it made the carer seem clueless that he didn’t see a potential clumsy pass coming at him. The anguish and guilt of what it means to be a good mother to want the best for your child, when the best thing might not be yourself, was well articulated. Charlie Brooks, playing Tam, had some fine character moments particularly in her quieter moments rather than the arguments.

But both parents had few redeeming features and so at their core didn’t quite feel authentically complete to me.

I think the phrase that many might pick upon would be:

“You can love someone and wonder what it would be like if they were someone else. That’s OK.” (spoken somewhat aphoristically)

But, I think the theme I pick up on is

Wishing the best for someone you love, might mean letting them go, might be supporting them in reaching their potential and their dreams.

If Martin truly supported Tam in her venture business… and made a success of her

If Tam could love Martin for who he was, not for who she wished him to be

If a young couple could grow together…

If Tam and Martin could put Laurence’s needs before their own… which ultimately they do

And which ultimately parents round the world do every day for the children they love.

Points to the writer for telling a story, not often told and bringing disability to the stage. Points to Southwark and the AD for staging the play. That the creative decision on the use of the puppet has gone down badly with many is unfortunate as we need more of these stories. Not less.

Read a positive Guardian review (MIriam Gillinson) here: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/19/all-in-a-row-review-autistic-child-puppet-drama-southwark-playhouse-london

A critical review here: https://britishtheatre.com/review-all-in-a-row-southwark-playhouse/

See some real footage of a Japanese non-verbal (But can communicate) boy author of Reasons I Jump: here 

 https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2017/8/5/reasons-i-jump

and some Lessons I learned from Autism here: 

 https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2017/7/15/autism-lessons-taught-me

Projects for 2019

Above picture charts some of the projects for 2019.

If I can manage some time, there’s a good chance I can draft a new play. I have a decent set of notes for an outline. I managed to finish and sell the first set of Aphorism books.

There is also a decent shot you may see me on the “stage” in a form of performance lecture in a collaboration with David Finnigan*.

What hasn’t made it on the picture…I’m hoping to do more cooking. I think cooking for yourself/family tends to have less food waste, which saves money as well as the carbon cost, and is tasty!

I’m going to continue enriching relationship connections and nuding several levers on the sustainability and climate front.

Continuing to support the autism charity, Focus West London and any thoughts on how to push that forward.

Send me a message if you have an idea for collaboration.

Links:

http://davidfinig.com/

Focus West London, Donations.

The IASB group, I’m part of

https://www.ifrs.org/groups/management-commentary-consultative-group/

Thinking about Purpose

Thinking about purpose… I led an “away day” for the Board and Exec team at Coney, the theatre company I chair.

One session was about mission and purpose. You can see part of the word exercise we do on this above.

Arts organisations (or any organisations) should take time out to think about strategy and purpose. (If you ask nicely, and I have time, I could potentially even help lead that for you).

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Three off-shoot thoughts on purpose.

Thinking too much about life purpose might not be effective. If you really know all you want to do is make games or treat breast cancer that might satisfy. But most of us lead plural lives. A diversity of goals and purposes might suit. Humans can have plural identities and plural purpose. It’s OK not knowing exactly what you want, and wanting multiple things. Long-term planning for individuals is hard - a lot happens in 5 years. It’s easier to target shorter horizons.

But, when you turn to the level of an organisation, I believe thinking on purpose can be helpful. Long-term planning is easier and be targeted.

Some public companies have taken this so far as to put purpose in its “articles of association” essentially in to its legal core being such that shareholders can vote for/against its purpose.

You can see this with Eisai, the Japanese company Ryo Yanagi is now CFO at. *

This aligns with a Purposeful Company idea about a “say on purpose” as a useful stewardship and governance idea.

Prof. Alex Edmans suggests in his recent Gresham lecture on how business can serve society that one effective way for it might be to set a purpose and try and deliver that as well as possible. He cites a telecoms company having more positive social impact by enabling payment transactions via mobile phones in African countries lacking infrastructure - ducking a purpose of connected communication rather than of “social impact”. ***

This brings me back to why thinking about purpose at an organisation level is useful. Once you set purpose, it’s easier for people to then figure out the “how” - the strategy and implementation and the supporting culture.

Organisation lacking a cohesive purpose tend to fall apart. A strong purpose supported by the right culture, strategy and then implementation, can achieve much.

Last thought: Consider how the purpose of Microsoft has evolved.

Current CEO Nadella: “Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Compare this to the original CEO Gates mission:

Put "a computer on every desk and in every home."

And then to Ballmer the CEO between Gates and Nadella.

"to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most."

And consider how Microsoft has evolved during that time….

*** The transcript of Edmans Gresham lecture on the Purpose of Business.

*A blog on Ryo Yanagi’s talk on purpose, ESG and Japan value creation.

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Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.

Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell. (soon to be at Oberon Books)

Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.

Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Some popular posts:  the commencement address;  by NassimTaleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher),  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes;  JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity

Fragmented Reflections on Chris Goode's Mirabel

A broken notes reflection blog of limited sense to most people…

I watched Chris Goode in Mirabel at Ovalhouse Theatre .

My ASD son is dancing, half dressed, on a yoga ball and hum-singing the tune of the Wii Sports Resorts jingles while watching screen shots of Minecraft Story Mode snapped by him and beaming on the TV via an ipad.

Both are interwoven scenes of joyously sad unbearably funny bleak hopeful slices of humanity - a form of intimate theatre.

I took a 9 year break from watching much performance as my energies went to my family.

There are lines that connect our life. 

Chris Goode programmed one of my first theatre pieces in the Camden People’s Theatre space. Ovalhouse was the space for my piece, Yellow Gentlemen.

Lines that thread our life reflect back on viewing and seeing.

I have missed much in those 9 years - but with Chris there on stage I’m taken back to Kiss of Life - the interconnectedness of being - the story telling - the love -

and I’m swept somehow into a memory of Speed Death of the Radiant Child.

11 years ago I wrote - with respect to Radiant… a kaleidoscope of life in all its noise and random/ intended interconnectedness of being and unbeing… 

…these kids – radiant children themselves – jumping off an abandoned high dive platform into the Plymouth sea – splash boom – look towards the light house – look back – catch the sight of the stillness of the rock pool – interweaving with the heat and wet of the play; flash - a pylon – radiant – sleep – wake – where’s the language to describe that?…

In the caesura of 9 years - I think and work almost every day on investing and further back I work with Andrew P. who goes on to work in the same team as Rebecca McCutcheon in Citi in the life of the City - and so the thread comes round again as Becs deftly directs the play - and has made much theatre in-between.

And my thoughts spin back to Mirabel. I am not a critic. As a some time practitioner, wandering back to making - I note the beguiling haunting beautiful sound design, the equally beguiling haunting beautiful set and light - the astonishing animation - these matters so integral, oft reported fleetingly if at all by critics.  I’d have liked to sat in the space. Some sound playing. Some lighting. The animation playing again.

Chris’ presence fills the space. He starts to tell a story.

“Some stories, you have no idea where or when or how they begin.”

Fairytale-like.  Mirabel, 8 years, wakes up after the end of the world with Bear - soon Wolf - and sets off to find a grown-up. This quest arc journey allows all kinds of themes imageries and characters to populate a dystopian landscape with an all pervading spoken-word—poetry-humourous-sad-story telling of loss, refusal and acceptance.

Did I need a coda to find out that vigil and vigilance are the same word, like a vigil’s more than just not going home?

On this night, I’m not sure - the echo of loss was perhaps enough; on another night I’m sure the tightening of loose ends would be satisfying.

The shuddery conflicted loss - the hopeful questing acceptance - the inevitability of dying yet living on in the memory.

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Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.

Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell.

Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.

Hear Chris Goode in conversation with David Eldridge

ear for eye, debbie tucker green, Thoughts Sparked by the Play

Intense. Lyrical with knife-sharp words. The writing staccatos and overlaps to a powerful whole expressing a history and a present of systematic racial injustice in a dramatic form that pushes notions of theatrical form and style.

I’d be fascinated for black critics to see this. A diverse set of black critics. From the US as well as the UK.  Say, Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates (if they don’t punch each other on sight). Would they echo the younger/older black activists in the play? ) and Afrua Hirsch and Renni Eddo-Lodge  and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Valid as their critical thought is - I am not so very interested in [the assessments of] Michael Billington (Guardian, “For me, the real strength of tucker green’s play lies in her ability to explore precisely what it means to be subject to systemic oppression.”) or Dominic Cavendish (“beautiful theatrical invention meets crass identity politics”).

I suppose, given that I’m doubting Cavendish has read Coates, West, Hirsch, Eddo-Lodge and Adichie, and I’ve read some (although I’m not a big fan of many aspects of identity politics either), I should offer some comments.

Forgive the unedited note format of the below. I lack the time for the sharp incision so brilliantly notable in the play.

On the dramaturgy, I am reminded of Caryl Churchill. Churchill has work addressing disappeared people and disappeared language. The taunt clipped lines. The heightened speech that weaves between poetry and spoken word. The subject matter embodied in the writing and its structure. In that dramatic heritage, the work echoes with Martin Crimp and Sarah Kane. Perhaps, seeing Churchill (and Crimp and Kane) on this same stage gives power to the echoes. But the black speech rhythms, both black British and black American, seem uniquely green’s - or they remind me of Suzan Lori-Parks or even the recently passed Ntozake Shange.  The play sits with the work of Beyonce, Solange and Childish Gambino in the music world - black artists speaking about black experience.

In my mind, I have a line of artistic narrative drawn from the play/choreopoem of Shange’s “colored girls who have considered/when the rainbow is enuf” (intriguingly, also mainly lower case) and splintered though Churchill’s work (often concerned with social injustice although not necessarily race; but created on the edge of dramatic form and style)) and to green’s ear for eye.

The case is virtually all black, drawn from the young to old, and including a deaf actor signing expressively, speaking of racial injustice to a mixed-race audience in a bastion of Chelsea, London - one of the richest places on the planet. To me, this says something. Let’s see our deaf people on stage. Let’s see our black people on stage. The old. The young.

Credit: Stephen Cummiskey. Sign Language acting, note Jamal Ajala right, first deaf black actor on the Royal Court Stage.

On my night, the audience ranged from black teenagers to old white men (I overhear the black teenagers being somewhat bored, and partially perplexed. They seem to know all this - and seeing it reflected on stage is nothing special to them) and from the bored teenager to the stunned parents. This audience mix - is an answer to the Royal Court’s social purpose. Why do these plays have to be on in the here and now?  And what audience is the RC speaking to? ...to an audience that reflects the whole of us.

A central motif. The lack of protection for the black body. The lack of place for the hands of a black body. Any place or position for the hands of a black body is antagonistic to “them” - the black person can’t have their head up, they can’t have their head down.

Extract from ear for eye play text, note capital letters, punctutation and form. Words in ( ) are intentions not spoken.

This motif is expressed in Ta-Nahesi Coates’ Between the World and Me (required reading on the Black American experience, along with James Baldwin and Cornel West) where he evokes, powerfully, the threat to the black body and the difficulty parents have in teaching their black children how to simply be.

To me, those parts of the play are a poetic dramatic embodiment of Coates’ letter to his child. The intergenerational conflict between different black activists echoes with the vitriolic fall-out between Cornel West and Coates. I observe it in other aspects of those who should be on the same page (the fighting between far-left and centre-left, for instance, the far left accusing the centre of letting the far right in; the fighting between the non-binary LBGTQ minorities - perhaps that’s where majorities splinter minorities via divide and rule, as through history), whether that’s intergenerational or perhaps ideological.

This fighting extends to the approach activism is taking. Protest but stand at the back of march, look at clashes from afar. Take a selfie and talk about it. The activists argue about their methods “with all due respect” (but an Brit audience knows when we say “with all due respect” we Brits mean “you stupid effing idiot”. The point argued to my mind is that this form of protest is ineffective and powerless. This ignores some of the real world progress made (George Washington kept slaves and equality of opportunity is far greater now), but art is not made to be balanced - and the outrage in the play is palpable.

Ear for eye then has particular real world echoes. It’s not the specific singular narratives that the white academic in Part 2 tries to defend, it’s systemic oppression, and that gun violence in the US is not isolated either, and not explained away by lone wolfs, cults and depressives.

I had a sense of boxers in a ring for Part 2. Personally, I wondered how different it would be with a tightly constrained intensity rather than a slow rotating circle, but I guess it would be equally effective carried by the language - here the tones of academic speech clanging effectively.

Part 3 take us back to the slave codes of the 1800s (Jamaica particularly) into the segregation up to the early-to-mid 1900s in the US. It does not go back further to the historic global slave trades or touch upon the trading in Africa. The situation in 1800s England, itself, is missing. The work is verbatim and pre-filmed and spoken by various caucasian actors/non-actors.

As a link to why we have modern slavery and oppression today, this Part 3 section of the play makes the point. Personally, as a verbatim or found form, I find Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony (link end)  to be more profound and Smith’s Notes From the Field (seen on this stage a few weeks ago) to have been more rousingly dramatic. This Part 3 reminded me of an art installation, and the distant time, as well as distant filming and portrayal, contained a quieter message.

Part 3 left me pondering. Who makes the laws? People. Who changes the laws? People, too. The laws have changed. Rules codify society norms. Slave codes were tools of supremacy. To point to them as an originating force is to not looking deeply enough.

“... third of the four-of-them who had

cuffed me

smiled

and

silent laughed

and said for my ears only,

that the four-a-them got more rights than

me and they know ‘em better than the few I got that he knew I didn’t even know.” (from Part 2)

Why I find Reznikoff’s Testimony so powerful is that it takes the found stories and plainly speaks to the abuse of the time - comprehensively and systematically.

I find CD Wright’s One With Others an astonishing exploration of this theme as well. Wright explores an explosive moment in American Civil Rights when black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool in her home state of Arkansas

I find it notable green directed the play. Actors intentions are crystal. Attention to the use of punctuation, overlap and caesura is crisp in a way that occurs only in close reading by a director. That she is the writer as well should add clarity for the actors. The way British Sign Language drops seamlessly into the play, and as deeply expressive in its movement as the stillness from the spoken word actors.

As a work by a black artist speaking to racial injustice ear for eye joins a growing body of important work across art forms. As a play it continues to push boundaries of form and style equal to the dramaturgy of our greatest playwrights. For the Royal Court, it speaks to its social purpose and reaching to an audience that reflects wider life.

As to my misquiet about where we are with identity politics -

“Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions” - Caryl Churchill

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Other thoughts: the comparison between American Black and British Black is useful to make especially if you are tracing the roots to British slavery. And as mentioned above the threat on the black body is profound. However the contention of guns in the US, and the appalling statistics speak to perhaps a deeper contention (rooted in slavery) the UK seems to me to be intersectional with class.

Part 2 echoes with Mamet’s Oleanna but in Oleanna, I sense Mamet is sympatetic to the academic. But here, green is clearly with the student. green allows limited debate in her work. That’s tiring for audiences and the didactic nature will rub some the wrong way (eg Dominic Cavendish).

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Blog on Testimony - one the greatest works of American Poetry.

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/11/22/testimony-charles-reznikoff

Blogs on black hair, Identity Ta-Nehisi Coates and Afrua Hirsch (Identity, black british) and Renni Eddo-Lodge  (race) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Solange, hair

https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2017/10/21/evening-standard-dont-touch-her-hair

https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2018/9/1/identity

Coates on writing on why he was in trouble at school

https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2017/8/10/parenting-idea

Coates on Between the World and Me

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/8/8/blackamerican

Gambino on Black American experience

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/5/16/this-is-america-black-american-experience

Hirsh, black Hair

https://www.thendobetter.com/blog/2018/2/15/hair-loss-black-hair-experience

Renni Eddo-Lodge

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/5/16/eddo-lodge-why-i-am-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

Slavery and Climate Change

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2018/7/20/slavery-climate-change-and-patents-the-commonalities

Blog on Testimony - one the greatest works of American Poetry.

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/11/22/testimony-charles-reznikoff

Adichie on raising a feminist child

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/3/25/how-to-raise-a-feminist-child

(Given I have some disquiet on identity politics, I’ve blogged a lot about various aspects of it. Hmmm)

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ear for eye at Royal Court, London, until 24 November.

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Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.

Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell.

Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.

White Teeth, the play

Watching a play that a friend (Stephen Sharkey) has written is a different experience from an arms-length stranger. A play based in one of your local neighborhoods (or right next door to your ‘hood) is rare. Where race, culture, Englishness and a sweep of history collide and you can see part of yourself reflected on the stage – it makes for a play of our times.

As I’ve mentioned before (link end) my life has echoes of Zadie Smith’s (West London / NW London – Cambridge – May Anthologies – Harvard – writing – race) and White Teeth echoes with a time and place, which is partly my time and place growing up.

It mixes culture and a certain optimism (an optimism of a youthful writer?)  with an opposing fatalism and sense of doom. But ending with a point to the future. Go escape and be free - FutureMouse ™ !

The play echoes the book in that regard. But – to the team’s enormous credit – the play is its own piece of art. It riffs on the novel, but is not slaved to it. A truism to say a play is not a novel, but adaptations can fall foul of the gravity and anchor of the originating work. This breaks free.

Losing the intensity of reading Zadie’s sentences (Zadie: “Edit as I go Along. Every sentence. Many times.”) reveals the elements of story and character that reflect a British-born immigrant narrative. My own narrative. A narrative of Kilburn and Willesden.

The addition of zinging movement and catchy songs brings White Teeth elements of the musical form. That heightened sense brings at its best an emotional punch and a sensory feast – a form uniquely theatrical over novelistic.

It’s at the newly refurbished Kiln Theatre. It’s on Kilburn High Road.

I’m bias as my friend wrote it and it echoes with me, but brimming with energy, catchy songs, dance moves, a passionate cast and a British-Kilburn story – what’s not to like?

3 blogs on Zadie: Writing tips, some Q&A and interview, and her piece on her advice from dancers

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/10/24/zadie-smith-writing-tips

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/1/22/zadie-smith-questions-and-answers

https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2018/3/17/dance-writing-advice

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Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.

Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell.

Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.