What's In A Name? or rather What's In A Title?

So I wrote this play last year. A modest short one acter and entered it into a competition, where it came runner up. It had a title, of course it did. A boring, simple title – or rather I thought it was boring and simple. But when I sent to a group for a possible rehearsed reading In London, I rather reluctantly kept that title. That was until they offered a rehearsed reading. Then I started to get second thoughts. I played around with titles.  So that when I sent the play to another company for judging, I changed the title. Whilst that was happening, the company who had done the rehearsed reading wanted to do it as a double bill in London. So that’s when I changed the title yet again.

Are you keeping up with me? –So that now the play has its original title – somewhere in the annals of something (or rather as the runner up of the original competition). It has another title for the double bill run in London – and now surprise, surprise the company with the third title make it a winner of yet another competition and want to perform it in August. They were offered the other titles but went with their title, the one that I used for the competition. So now I am completely confused.

What I ‘m trying to explain is that the play, a simple short one act comedy, is now masquerading under three different titles.

Well, Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights used to give some of their plays two titles – Twelfth Night, or What You Will;  Volpone, or The Fox etc. So there is a precedence. But three titles?? That is a bit excessive.

I have this strange idea that a company approaches me to do all three “Plays” in a triple bill. Boy, are they in for a surprise.

So after this summer I need to settle on one good title – and if there’s anyone out there with a suggestion, then these are the three titles it currently masquerades under.

THE DINNER PARTY – that was the original. It has a kind of Pinter ring to it (The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter – sort of thing).

Then there was the imaginative leap of poor French but a witty pun –or so I thought MANGER A TROIS.

Ok, so what’s the third? THE GUEST WHO’S COMING TO DINNER. That’s from a film which starred Spencer Tracy, Kathleen Hepburn and a young Sydney Poitier. But who remembers that? – So the pun may not work. The original title of the film - GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?

So that’s it. Never have been very good at titles; but have found the simple ones are probably the safest. So back to THE DINNER PARTY –

Or is there out there in the creative ether a fourth title - something which finally and irrevocably pins the whole thing down??

Never Mind The Quality – We Want It Longer!!

So they like the play.  It was given a public reading and the response was very positive. They will consider it for production later in the year – BUT!

Of course there’s not always a BUT, but sometimes there is – and the BUT this time? Well, they normally do two short one act plays together in an evening – and normally the plays are about 40 to 45 minutes in length. My play comes in at under 30 minutes.

Well, it was good enough for the company who produced it originally, because they were going to do it with two other plays and needed plays which were 20 to 30 minutes in length. Mine was therefore just perfect for them. But at just under thirty minutes, is it going to be discriminated against, when it comes to choosing the plays for their – wait for it!– LONDON run!

Oh, now I’m beginning to think that what was my perfect play at twenty five minutes – is perhaps not really all that perfect.  Was it missing something?  What was it they – wrote -?  That someone had said that the female part was underwritten. That was probably the female actor reading the part.

So what am I to do? Padding comes to mind – just add a few lines here and there, and it will gradually edge up to the forty minute line. But I am a dedicated writer – a playwright with plays that have been performed in Sydney, Australia; Chicago, US of A – Neath! Am I being told that my play is not perfect and needs a bit more?

This time last year I was frantically cutting lines to get down from eleven pages to eight, this year I’m being asked to add pages. Would Alan Ayckbourn submit to this kind of dictation? Would Shakespeare have added to Macbeth, because it was a bit underwritten for the temperamental boy playing Lady Macduff?

But of course the reality of it is, that if I look closely at the piece; I have given big speeches to the male characters, but none to the female. And it is a bit light in plot if I’m honest but I hadn’t wanted to overload it at twenty five minutes with too many twists and turns, so that even I would get confused, if I had to describe the storyline.

And all of this is an honest view from people who don’t have an axe to grind. Whereas I have a short twenty five minute play to grind.  But that’s not going to get me anywhere. And anyway Dickens was once told by his publisher that he was two thousand words short for an instalment of one of his novels and had to write some more to give the reading public their money’s worth.

So if Dickens can do it –

And perhaps the female actor was right –

And the female character could do with a bit more going on.  

Reluctantly I reassess what I wrote last year and slowly begin to question that original piece – and slowly, ever so slowly a thirty five to forty minute play emerges with a stronger play device – not shoe horned in, but delicately crafted in so that no one but no one will see the join. Except of course all those who saw or read the original piece. But then I can always change the title and swear blind it’s a new play – or at least a new version.

So there you have it. Twenty minutes does go into Forty, if the incentive is right. And of course my creative integrity is still intact.

So now all I have to do is press the send button, and my new and longer attachment is sent on its ethereal way.

I’ll let you know when it’s on –

That is, if I haven’t ruined the very qualities of the play that made it so attractive to them in the first place. There’s always that, of course!

Trying to please all of the people all of the time

Well, that last post of mine got some response!
To refresh - I tried to argue that a play script - that sacrosanct piece of great art that we try for - is just a blue print for the final performances that will take to the stage; and that directors, actors, stage designers,etc etc are all part of that production that erupts onto that stage, be it in the backwaters of a village hall to the Olivier at NT.
However, two of you out there have had problems with this. First the author who does not quite see it like that - or rather in most cases it's the estate of the author being extra protective about the dead author's text and don't see it quite like that.
In this case and in the case of many other battles it was a certain Samuel Beckett estate which guards dear old Sam's words with their life with threats of litigation. The most famous incident of this was the one some years ago when the actress Fiona Shaw and her director Deborah Warner tried to do a Becket production.

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In a 2008 Guardian interview Miss Shaw describe the time thus:
"..., more than 10 years ago, I performed Footfalls in London, in a production directed by Deborah Warner which we planned to take to Paris. But we never did: famously, it was closed after its short run by the Beckett estate. Beckett had died only five years previously and I think there was still a great deal of sensitivity to any interpretative change. I remember the French co-producer saying with some panache, "Sometimes a vacuum is more important than a presence" - a generous theory given that their investment of £25,000 had just been lost."
But then there was the case of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas which were jealously guarded through the life of the copyright (fifty years then - seventy years now) by the Doyle Carte Opera Company; only licencing other performances to amateur groups, whilst they annually toured around Britain with virtually the same original productions on an annual basis. However, this was all to change with the end of the D'Oyly Carte monopoly on these performances, when the copyright on Gilbert's words expired in 1961 (Sullivan’s music had already come out of copyright at the end of 1950). But it took until 1980 and a centenary production of The Pirates Of Penzance in New York at Joseph Papp's open air theatre in Central Park to really bring the operettas into the 20th century.

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And of course they've not looked back since. The D'Oyle Carte Opera company finally closed finding the grind of annual touring too expensive - so paving the way for the likes of the ENO (English National Opera) to stage many of them including a production of The Mikado in 1986 starring the comedian Eric Idle in a black-and-white setting moved to a 1920s English seaside hotel. It has been regularly revived over past 25 years or so.
^{So if you budding directors out there want to take an old out of date script and knock it into shape, you just have to wait for seventy years after the playwright's kicked the proverbial - or perhaps you writers out there should get a life!
But then that brings me onto the other problem presented to me - the one of the author who has done a new version of Twelfth Night. (Shakespeare's safe by the way; he's way out of copyright - although there are some audience members out there still wanting the plays to be done properly (ie as Shakespeare wrote them - with nice Elizabethan costumes and lovely lovely sets (Sorry, but Shakespeare didn't have much setting, but never mind!)  Sorry about that private rant at a certain stick in the mud kind of audience member!!!
Still back to the problem; there's a new version of Twelfth Night out there tried and tested - and even published. But it doesn't sell. Playwright wants to know why - and asks directors. The answer he gets is that he's not included any stage directions in the published version. They don't know how to put it on! 
You can't win. That's the fact of it, playwrights. We just can't win. 
Too few directions and they complain. Too many and they complain.
Well, we'll all just have to go our own sweet ways and hope for the best. And whilst we're all still in living, breathing copyright, if the directors want any help putting on our plays - with modern methods of communication they can get in touch and ask for suggestions. It really is that simple.}

Letting GO!

Having finally recovered from being performed at Normal, Illinois (Thank you to all involved);

I now find that I have two of my ten minute pieces on at the New Ventures Theatre in Brighton in December. They held a competition with Sussex playwrights this summer and two of my plays were chosen for performance.
But that's not what I want to blog about; more about what has happened as a consequence of that. I was contacted by one of the directors of the plays to ask me about my play; asking for details of my influences, background, info on the play etc. - and this got me to thinking about the whole process of writing plays and having them put on.
Because although you write a play, that is only part of the process; the rest of it includes other people. Unlike other art forms whereby the author has most of the control over most of the art form, most of the time - once a play has been handed over to other people, it's up to them to make decisions about how it will look - what actors will be used; and the pace and intensity created to finally produce that piece of art on stage. It is a collaborative process.
I remember earlier this year being with a number of other writers - writers of short plays as it happens - some of whom had never written a play before. One of them asked how much detail, stage instructions/ directions should be put into the script - and was most put out when some of us said 'as little as possible'. The person wanted to have control over the piece by directing through the stage directions exactly how it should be; how it should look, how the actors should speak (Pauses - silences ) the way they should speak (grumbling, happy etc.).
And of course there has been a strong element of this in the past in published plays - I'm thinking of George Bernard Shaw with his directions which seem to take up more text than the stage dialogue itself - and then of course there were all those Samuel French editions of scripts with lists of music cues, properties and also a plan of the stage entrances, furniture etc. (Taken from the West End production, of course). Heaven help the poor small amateur companies that tried to follow those instructions to the letter.
Nowadays quite the opposite happens and you will find play scripts with minimum directions - perhaps not even an indication of location. (If you want to check this out look at the plays of Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill for starters) (But then of course Shakespeare doesn't either - the locations were added in  later by editors)
A playwright that forgets that they are part of this collaborative process; perhaps shouldn't be writing plays at all. Because it is an important part of the process; a process to enjoy rather than fear, because you will be surprised and perhaps even delighted at what other people make of your work. (Yes, I know I've said before that this can be a disappointing one - things don't quite come out as you planned - but on the other hand you can be surprised.)
I wrote one play for a pub setting and found that in one production of it it was being set in an Airport lounge. In another play some spivs were being played as though they were Breughel beggars with patches over their eyes and arms in slings. You really don't know what people are going to do to your words once they let their imaginations free on them. This recent play has been described as surreal and  "A nod to the great absurd British writers of the fifties and sixties" - which all sounds very nice and complimentary - and thank you for that! And that's the director's take on it - it will interesting to see where he goes with that.
So beware. If you are starting out to write a play for the first time - remember unless you are writing a monologue which you intend to perform and direct - and work the lights and the sound and sell the tickets on the front door and usher people to their seats - then write it, send it off and wait for the results. You may even be consulted, as I have been on what I think of a certain  idea or asked about pace and intentions - but at the end of the day it will be other people on that stage facing the audience, other people helping to create that piece - and not you alone. Remember those people in writing your play and have fun!
But as I said before, if you can't let go - don't go there in the first place.
***  For your information the plays are being performed alongside some others at the New Ventures Theatre in Brighton from Friday 6 December till Saturday 14 December. And each night the audience gets to vote for their favourite play and the winners will be announced on the last night. I'll be there (Looking forward to it, of course!!)

The Three Leaches has turned me down.

The Three Leaches has turned me down. 

Yes, that’s the correct grammar because the Three Leaches is a theatre company based in Denver, Colorado; and they run an annual ten minute play competition; and this year they didn't chose my play. That’s the play that was included in a recent festival of ten minute plays in Illinois.(see previous blogs) So what’s their problem?

But that’s it, isn't it? What’s sauce for the goose isn't necessary sauce for the gander (I think I've got my simile wrong but it’s about right).

Indeed the play that I am talking about – one that I've mentioned before (The one that I had to edit down from eleven pages to nine) also was rejected in the long list, didn't even get into the short list, for another competition which is not so far from here (that is it’s based in Britain rather than America) and one where I've been quite successful in the past.

It makes you begin to think as a playwright – what do these people want? If it’s good enough for A theatre company, why doesn't B company want to do it? It’s tried. It’s tested in front of an audience. The play I’m talking about went down very well indeed. Therefore it works – so why does no one else want it?

Well, that’s not true – I don’t know that no one else wants it, but two companies have turned it down.

In a bitter and twisted way I could start to think that these companies – the rejectors – Who are up their own competitions and have an agenda when it comes to choosing plays – and the successful quality of my play didn't even come into it, when they all met in their grubby little room to discuss the entrants.

So what do you do? No, what do I do? Play them at their own game? Try and find out what kind of plays are successful and try to ape that style – that content – that goodness knows what – or just keep on with my own style, my own content, my own goodness knows what.

The problem is that if you try to chase their tails, you are not being true to yourself; and of course it may all come out as a nasty uncreative mess.

The bigger problem is when they set a theme and you have to write something to fit that theme. Or do you? Or rather do you let that theme rollover you, and if it takes hold then go with it? But if it doesn't – then let it go.

You cannot be dictated to in the creative process. It’s just not a good idea – or rather that’s my opinion. Otherwise you start writing in a mechanical way and nothing will be accepted at all, because you haven’t put your heart and soul into it.

So you don’t take rejection personally.  They have been reading a lot of plays in these competitions – it’s now well into the hundreds for many of them – and who knows what clicks with the readers and what doesn't. 

So don’t try to second guess them. The only point in researching what has been successful in the past is to decide whether they may want to look at your work and give it serious consideration or not. No good sending off a light fluffy piece about martial tiffs, if the plays they are seeking are to do with the environment or Native American concerns in the modern day. You are wasting their time and your own by sending it in.

So write what you want to write and you will find a place that will receive you with open arms and put on your play and it will fit (if it’s a ten minute play) in with the others to make a nice neat programme.

Be true to your own self and not let others dictate to you.

The competition’s too fierce out there and the world, now with the web, far too big for you to find a place every time.

I get plays produced a few times a year – more would be nice – to be paid for them even nicer – but I don’t let the Leaches of this world discourage me. Good luck to them in Denver, Colorado – and good luck to all of you writers out there.

P.S  I've just found a competition in northern Alaska – now I wonder what they would like me to send?

Ten minute plays – a short history and a plea for them!

Why do I write ten minute plays? Well, apart from the fact that I’ve had about ten of them produced in various places around the world (which is always nice for any writer); they are an extraordinarily disciplined form of writing.

Although considering the time and energy taken up, they are no easier to write than a full length play. However with all the opportunities for possible production; it seems they may be easier to get staged in front of audiences than a full length piece.  Remember there are over thirty ten minute plays festivals world wide and there are even opportunities for them in this country with a growing interest. I recently came across a theatre company based in Brighton who have been putting on collections of them for the past two years.

My interest in the format started some six years ago, when the Pint Sized Plays was launched in Pembrokeshire – initially on a local basis - but with the internet,  it has now grown into an international competition.

The format itself is over thirty five years old and was started at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky, USA. There it has just grown and grown, until now it seems there is a ten minute play festival running somewhere in the USA every week (that’s a slight exaggeration, but nearly true).

The Short and Sweet Festival in Australia (or rather throughout the Southern Hemisphere) has a total of five major festivals  in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaya and a number of off shoot festivals. They are aiming for world domination. Watch this space.

The ten minute play has been described as “a streak of lightning” – and unlike a sketch is a true play in that it does not rely on a punch line but is structured with a beginning, middle and an end (usually with something happening two pages in which changes the initial course of the story).

The play can usually be written in any style and this can give the writer an opportunity to try out different styles . Something which might be too experimental for a full length piece.  It needs a clear narrative with characters who have a gaol that needs to be achieved.  Usually characters are limited to a maximum of four and the action needs to be set in one location. Very often the producing companies are small scale theatres –studio theatres with little resources, a small stage and limited back stage area.

The Pint Sized plays, for instance, are initially performed in pubs, so that they  need very little in the way of furniture, apart what you find in a pub, limited exits and entrances and a small selection of props.

The Heartland Theatre Company in Normal, Illinois (you may have heard of them – see past blogs) set a theme – this year it was Parcel, Package or Present – another company insist that one prop (this year it was a tennis racquet) has to be featured in some way in the play. Others want plays that fit a particular time of year – one of my plays called Closure was performed on Halloween in East London last year.

Easy to write? Yes and No. If you have a good idea, you can write a draft script in just over an hour, when the muse takes you. But then comes the hard work, as with any play – the rewrites and the editing. And remember it does have to fit – be shoe horned- into a ten minute slot. Some companies say no more than ten pages (If you write eleven, they stop reading!)  – some companies insist on no more than 2000 words or even less.

All of this needs careful crafting without losing the initial impetus for the work.

Several books have now been written – in America of course – about the writing of the ten minute play – that’s how important they are taken in that country. And collections of them are published –  again in America– but there are small beginnings in this country. My own collection Nursery Rhyme Crimes was published last year for instance. Pint Sized Plays are bringing out an anthology of their plays later in the year.

From all of this you’ll gather I just love writing them – and they don’t stop me from tackling larger pieces – but in tackling them I’m able to use all the lessons learnt from writing the short pieces. Want to have go? – Good luck and enjoy!www.doc-watson.com

What a difference a continent makes!

Not long after I was contacted by Normal in Illinois, USA (see previous blog) about being one of their winners, I was then contacted by a gentleman who was going to direct my play. He was emailing me to introduce himself; to say that he'd been one of the judges of the competition and how he had chosen to do my play amongst all of the others. He said that he felt that he had to share with me  his background and  even how he ended up in Bloomington, Illinois which is down the road (in American terms) from Normal - and:
I am now an adjunct professor teaching a freshman writing course on Bob Dylan as well as Introduction to Dramatic Literature for the School of Theatre Arts.
And so on - telling me that he was about to audition for the play and that he hoped that he might contact me during the rehearsal period to ask any questions etc.
I was touched by this approach and also that my play would be seen for 16 performances at the Heartland Theatre. 16! wow - that is a lot of performances for an evening of ten minute plays - but then I've just been informed by Fusion Theatre in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that of their sixteen performances in June of their ten minute play winners - four performances have already sold out and they haven't even announced the winners yet, because of the number of entries!
It's a whole different ball game over there - and you have to realise that we are talking amateur theatre. This is not professionals doing this, but the same kind of volunteers, as in this country, running a theatre group, choosing plays, choosing directors, actors etc - building scenery, collecting props and selling tickets etc.
But compare this with my recent experience in this country.
I was the winner of a recent ten minute play competition over here and was invited to attend the ONE performance of the winners plays - on a Saturday afternoon.
When I got there in the morning (we had been invited to attend a morning rehearsal), we were told that they hadn't advertised the event, because they didn't know what the quality was going to be like.
There were no directors allocated to the plays - and cast members were in several plays. There had been no time allocated in the theatre space until that morning -  and my cast told me that they'd rehearsed in their kitchen!
Although the winners and the runners up had been invited to attend the rehearsals and for a buffet lunch, it seemed to come as a surprise to the organisers that we had all turned up!
It seemed to me - but possibly I was beginning to be jaundiced by the whole affair by this time - that they had scurried around at the last minute to come up with something to do with us.
The runners up were given a workshop(?) and the winners were given a talk by a professional - which seemed to have little to do with writing ten minute plays, or so it seemed to me - I may have missed something in translation.
We have been promised ( and still waiting for) a recording of the event and were given complimentary programmes on the day. But the actual treatment of the winners  - seemed to say, "we don't know what to do with you - because you're writer and we don't normally have to deal with writers, we just get on with putting plays on."
So yes, I am comparing like with like in that everyone involved in these competitions both sides of the pond were amateurs - but there seems to be a world of difference in treatment of us, writers!
I have to say in defence of British amateurs that this is not the case all of the time.
I had a wonderful experience last November, when I was invited to attend the performance of my one act play in Cornwall. But then of course they were on their own ground - their own theatre - and very enthusiastic about their competition which was judged in part by a professional actor.
We can get it right in this country, when we apply ourselves.
But that was a half hour play - not a ten minute one. And I think therein lies part of the problem.
We are only just coming around to  a phenomena of playwriting which has been growing in America for the past thirty five years!! The ten minute play.
In America alone there are dozens of these competitions - I enter one almost weekly - and now the phenomena has spread to Australasia and the Indian Sub-continent, where  Short and Sweet plays have  been expanding their influence for the past ten years! They hold thirteen competitions a year.
In this country we are virgins in this area - because groups are not convinced that audiences will go out to see an evening of ten minute plays - just as there is a reluctance to put on one act plays - except for the festivals of course. But then of course that is groups contributing and attending. You are virtually guaranteed a full house.
So where am I in this ramble?
Well, I suppose I should like to say that if there are any groups out there contemplating running a competition, then please think about the winners and what you are going to offer them by way of performance and respect. Remember that they will have spent a lot of time, effort and creativity in writing that play - and perhaps a ten minute play doesn't deserve a prize or cheque, but it does deserve something! It deserves time and energy in rehearsing and production, it deserves having a decent run of performances to test the piece more vigorously, and it does deserve the playwright being involved in some way. The Internet brings us all closer together and allows me the chance to submit plays to Alaska and  New Delhi, as well as in the British Isles.
If you don't think you can provide this, then please - please don't do it!