#37 - On Dignity and Drama
Hello,
This week I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the work I like to create and the ways that differs from both what you're taught and err what might be lucrative. As a dramatist, I guess I'm suppose I'm meant to be transfixed by content and drama but I think my obsession is texture and tone, perhaps due to my starting out as a (film) director.
I love tone. I love to have a feeling created and to sit in it. It's one of the great joys of creating work for theatre - they're dynamos of feeling, charging the space with an emotion and holding it there, flowing through the audience. As I've spoken about before (I'm going to say that a lot when writing these newsletters - in fact I'm probably made this warning already) I also think theatre and dramatic mediums generally are a great dignifier of people of stories, if not just for the sheer cost of making it happen. Keep this in mind, it'll become relevant in a bit and errr apologies for my attachment to capitalist systems of value but that's only part of it, promise! Especially considering this next part...
When I was younger, I was determined to make good, mainstream work. It probably helped that I didn't have theatre in my life at this point and so my influences were primarily from the cinema, and specifically the type you could wanted to see with family or friends. I was so committed to this that I would deliberately not let myself get too sucked into the world of art house films because I was scared that I'd like them and more scared that if I’d become obsessed with their aesthetic and dramatic modes (not that I knew those were the terms I was thinking on then) then I would never make work that was commercially viable or widely seen.
And then when I was 18 I accidentally saw Tokyo Story at a university screening and it changed both my life and my tastes. It's a slow film, with no real great conflict or action, that tracks an old couple as they head into the city to see their children. I cry every time I watch it. Not from the drama but the humanity. The proximity. And again, the dignity. It was a short skip from there to being a 22 year old applying to doing a short film course and earnestly expressing my deep love for the works of Ingmar Bergman. I was f*cked.
After a few years working, I eventually re-entered higher education and did a Masters at Central School of Speech and Drama in writing where I was taught properly about such things as the classic dramatic paradigm and three acts and five acts and what have you an this was brilliant and so useful and entirely not what I was interested in. I even started to discover I wasn't hugely enamoured with the concept of a singular protagonist and wrote my MA dissertation precisely about how dramas that don't centralise one person's experience felt more truthful and necessary to the world today. I was really f*cked.
This all came to bear somewhat when I was writing An Adventure for the Bush and had the freest hand tonally and dramatically that I'd been given so far. I talked relentlessly in the development of that play about Tokyo Story and I couldn't quite articulate why but I knew I wanted a lot of it to feel like that, especially the more it drew on. A life starting with fizz and verve and expectation then settling slowly into rhythm of the grave. Earlier this year I spoke to an older playwright who I like and respect about An Adventure and he told me that while he enjoyed the play, he'd hope for more drama in it. I sort of resented the suggestion though I understood where it came from and it dropped me into a real thought pit about intention and what you want to put into the world vs what is the better craft. And in fact, what craft even is. I felt I crafted that play with great intention and work...but if craft means pushing characters towards the objective - obstacle - solution paradigm then no it wasn't that.
Sitting in that pit, I asked myself what was the source of both wanting to make the play that we did and my emotional response to that playwright's innocuous, fair comment. Eventually I realised: Though I am of course interested in moments of change and conflict, fundamentally I didn't want characters to have to justify their presence through their dramatic worth. It felt undignified, like having to dance for attention which I knew they already deserved. I wanted them to be witnessed. Observed. I wanted to revel in the proximity. The intimacy. I feel so many works by and about cultural minorities or underrepresented folks are pushed towards drama to justify their place at the table when that observational quality is indulged for so many other stories.
And with this play specifically, while I think some struggled with us putting those characters into such dramatic circumstances but with relatively quotidian personal experiences, this to me was the whole point and the truth of the interior worlds of that generation - they lived through extraordinary times but their lives in themselves were not extraordinary in dramatic terms (which to me, paradoxically, is an extraordinary juxtaposition).
I don't know. Obviously not everyone will feel the way you do about your characters and worlds and part of the reason you are taught the fundamentals of drama is because - like with humour - it draws you in and makes you invest in something and someone you don't necessarily have an affinity to. That stuff is important and that technique is incredibly useful. But just sometimes the harder and more necessary challenge is to push people to witness without getting a dramatic 'hit' from it for their trouble.
The good news for people who have paid me to write dramatic writing (I know some of you are reading this newsletter and are probably worried) is that - hey - a big part of me does want to make good, mainstream work. I just want to broaden the mainstream space. Audiences can take it and the appetite is there.
Having researched Tokyo Story and its dramatic mode for this newsletter, I came across the concept of Kishōtenketsu which is a structure that operates with complication but not necessarily conflict in the way we conceive of it in most dramas. More about it here, here and here.
END OF DAYS
There's a lot of talk on social media about how it's the end of the decade (which I have somehow only just realised whoops) and asking the question: "What did you do with it?". My memory is catastrophically bad but as it turns out my very first event entered on my gmail calendar was on May 7th 2010 so, a few months aside, I have an exact map through events of how I ended up where I am. I realise I forgot to do the Lucas facts thing so maybe instead people can suggest a random date and I'll tell you exactly what I was doing then and try and tie it back to my writing 'career'.
WHO TWO
It's been announced that I'm writing on the next season of Doctor Who and I have nothing to say about that really but it would feel weird to not acknowledge it. Thankfully, while it was still intense this time, I wasn't in the middle of rehearsals for the biggest play of my career to date so it's a bit easier to take. I
Oh one thing I would say: Nida Manzoor is a boss and I'm glad she's directing on this season.
KITTY KORNER
So I have two cats, Pretty Cat and Chill Cat. Pretty Cat, who is the bigger of the two (and possibly had a Maine Coon dad?) is a thoroughly strange boy. I've spoken before about how inheriting a pet from someone else means you spend a lot of time accidentally unearthing trauma and trying to decipher the origins and meanings of their odder behaviours. Pretty has a cavalcade of these, the oddest of which is his aversion to drinking water unless you are both in the room and interacting with either the water or him. Perhaps he drank from a bad puddle in the past and needs the reassurance, much like I won't drink tequila alone anymore? (Maybe one should never drink tequila alone.)
Chill is going in to have his teeth out on Monday and it's been pointed out to me that might be the end of his dry food days...which is not great for me, especially as I'm away a lot over the next few months and dry food makes the burden on carers a little easier. Still, I hope the little guy feels better after it at least. Fingers crossed...
x
If you're new to Patelograms and like what you've read, you can subscribe by clicking here.
If you're an old hand, thanks as ever for taking the time.
This week I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the work I like to create and the ways that differs from both what you're taught and err what might be lucrative. As a dramatist, I guess I'm suppose I'm meant to be transfixed by content and drama but I think my obsession is texture and tone, perhaps due to my starting out as a (film) director.
I love tone. I love to have a feeling created and to sit in it. It's one of the great joys of creating work for theatre - they're dynamos of feeling, charging the space with an emotion and holding it there, flowing through the audience. As I've spoken about before (I'm going to say that a lot when writing these newsletters - in fact I'm probably made this warning already) I also think theatre and dramatic mediums generally are a great dignifier of people of stories, if not just for the sheer cost of making it happen. Keep this in mind, it'll become relevant in a bit and errr apologies for my attachment to capitalist systems of value but that's only part of it, promise! Especially considering this next part...
When I was younger, I was determined to make good, mainstream work. It probably helped that I didn't have theatre in my life at this point and so my influences were primarily from the cinema, and specifically the type you could wanted to see with family or friends. I was so committed to this that I would deliberately not let myself get too sucked into the world of art house films because I was scared that I'd like them and more scared that if I’d become obsessed with their aesthetic and dramatic modes (not that I knew those were the terms I was thinking on then) then I would never make work that was commercially viable or widely seen.
And then when I was 18 I accidentally saw Tokyo Story at a university screening and it changed both my life and my tastes. It's a slow film, with no real great conflict or action, that tracks an old couple as they head into the city to see their children. I cry every time I watch it. Not from the drama but the humanity. The proximity. And again, the dignity. It was a short skip from there to being a 22 year old applying to doing a short film course and earnestly expressing my deep love for the works of Ingmar Bergman. I was f*cked.
After a few years working, I eventually re-entered higher education and did a Masters at Central School of Speech and Drama in writing where I was taught properly about such things as the classic dramatic paradigm and three acts and five acts and what have you an this was brilliant and so useful and entirely not what I was interested in. I even started to discover I wasn't hugely enamoured with the concept of a singular protagonist and wrote my MA dissertation precisely about how dramas that don't centralise one person's experience felt more truthful and necessary to the world today. I was really f*cked.
This all came to bear somewhat when I was writing An Adventure for the Bush and had the freest hand tonally and dramatically that I'd been given so far. I talked relentlessly in the development of that play about Tokyo Story and I couldn't quite articulate why but I knew I wanted a lot of it to feel like that, especially the more it drew on. A life starting with fizz and verve and expectation then settling slowly into rhythm of the grave. Earlier this year I spoke to an older playwright who I like and respect about An Adventure and he told me that while he enjoyed the play, he'd hope for more drama in it. I sort of resented the suggestion though I understood where it came from and it dropped me into a real thought pit about intention and what you want to put into the world vs what is the better craft. And in fact, what craft even is. I felt I crafted that play with great intention and work...but if craft means pushing characters towards the objective - obstacle - solution paradigm then no it wasn't that.
Sitting in that pit, I asked myself what was the source of both wanting to make the play that we did and my emotional response to that playwright's innocuous, fair comment. Eventually I realised: Though I am of course interested in moments of change and conflict, fundamentally I didn't want characters to have to justify their presence through their dramatic worth. It felt undignified, like having to dance for attention which I knew they already deserved. I wanted them to be witnessed. Observed. I wanted to revel in the proximity. The intimacy. I feel so many works by and about cultural minorities or underrepresented folks are pushed towards drama to justify their place at the table when that observational quality is indulged for so many other stories.
And with this play specifically, while I think some struggled with us putting those characters into such dramatic circumstances but with relatively quotidian personal experiences, this to me was the whole point and the truth of the interior worlds of that generation - they lived through extraordinary times but their lives in themselves were not extraordinary in dramatic terms (which to me, paradoxically, is an extraordinary juxtaposition).
I don't know. Obviously not everyone will feel the way you do about your characters and worlds and part of the reason you are taught the fundamentals of drama is because - like with humour - it draws you in and makes you invest in something and someone you don't necessarily have an affinity to. That stuff is important and that technique is incredibly useful. But just sometimes the harder and more necessary challenge is to push people to witness without getting a dramatic 'hit' from it for their trouble.
The good news for people who have paid me to write dramatic writing (I know some of you are reading this newsletter and are probably worried) is that - hey - a big part of me does want to make good, mainstream work. I just want to broaden the mainstream space. Audiences can take it and the appetite is there.
Having researched Tokyo Story and its dramatic mode for this newsletter, I came across the concept of Kishōtenketsu which is a structure that operates with complication but not necessarily conflict in the way we conceive of it in most dramas. More about it here, here and here.
END OF DAYS
There's a lot of talk on social media about how it's the end of the decade (which I have somehow only just realised whoops) and asking the question: "What did you do with it?". My memory is catastrophically bad but as it turns out my very first event entered on my gmail calendar was on May 7th 2010 so, a few months aside, I have an exact map through events of how I ended up where I am. I realise I forgot to do the Lucas facts thing so maybe instead people can suggest a random date and I'll tell you exactly what I was doing then and try and tie it back to my writing 'career'.
WHO TWO
It's been announced that I'm writing on the next season of Doctor Who and I have nothing to say about that really but it would feel weird to not acknowledge it. Thankfully, while it was still intense this time, I wasn't in the middle of rehearsals for the biggest play of my career to date so it's a bit easier to take. I
Oh one thing I would say: Nida Manzoor is a boss and I'm glad she's directing on this season.
KITTY KORNER
So I have two cats, Pretty Cat and Chill Cat. Pretty Cat, who is the bigger of the two (and possibly had a Maine Coon dad?) is a thoroughly strange boy. I've spoken before about how inheriting a pet from someone else means you spend a lot of time accidentally unearthing trauma and trying to decipher the origins and meanings of their odder behaviours. Pretty has a cavalcade of these, the oddest of which is his aversion to drinking water unless you are both in the room and interacting with either the water or him. Perhaps he drank from a bad puddle in the past and needs the reassurance, much like I won't drink tequila alone anymore? (Maybe one should never drink tequila alone.)
Chill is going in to have his teeth out on Monday and it's been pointed out to me that might be the end of his dry food days...which is not great for me, especially as I'm away a lot over the next few months and dry food makes the burden on carers a little easier. Still, I hope the little guy feels better after it at least. Fingers crossed...
x
If you're new to Patelograms and like what you've read, you can subscribe by clicking here.
If you're an old hand, thanks as ever for taking the time.
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