Big Mouth: In Defence of New Writing

Violet columnist Kate Collins criticises the re-hashing of old plays

Kate Collins

You don't have to be Shakespeare to write theatreWIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Cambridge theatre scene, as we know, is crazily busy. However, something seems a little amiss.

I understand the reticence people have about student writing. Directors may be hesitant because they don’t think a new play will sell well. People see Sarah Kane’s name and think, “I know her, that play will be good.” However, new writing is something I am, to put it simply, AGGRESSIVELY enthusiastic about. So, if the following feels like a rant – I don’t apologise.

I was having a gander at who’s on the CUADC committee, and noticed that while there were reps for actors and producers and so on, there was no writers’ rep. Tenacious investigative journalist that I am, I dropped them a message asking why this was. A lovely bloke whose name now escapes me wrote back, “it’s not in our constitution to have one.” Further sleuthing (I clicked a mouse a few times) led me to this constitution, and on the very first page, it states that CUADC aims to “foster and encourage new writing”. To me, that suggests they should have someone to champion writing talent, to organise development and create more platforms.

The Downing New Writing Festival and Smorgasbord are good, but why stop there? Encouragement of new writing should be more visible in Cambridge theatre. Perhaps that’s why every time a new season brochure comes out, it seems to include a hell of a lot of stuff written around the 1960s. Stuff that my gran and granddad used to go and watch of an afternoon at the Floral Pavillion in New Brighton when they were young and fancy free. (Southern Translation: a theatre that did panto, in a place that was like, but not as good as, Brighton). All I’m saying is, put down your Vienetta, and pick up your pen.

“What about a play that is relevant to today’s society because it was written in today’s society?”

There is of course a merit to reviving old plays. I have no issue with people putting on shows that are exciting, daring, and have enthusiastic and passionate teams behind them. But sometimes you’ll read in the show synopsis, ‘a play that is as relevant to today’s society as it was 20 years ago.’ That’s great and all, but what about ‘a play that is relevant to today’s society because it was written in today’s society’?

When you’re constantly fishing from the same pond of writers, you’re not addressing the fact that there might be some stagnant water here and there. There are, of course, hundreds of blindingly well-written plays, but there’s also a massive distortion in where those voices are coming from. The majority of playwrights heralded in British theatre are white men.

Cast a glance at what’s been written in the last ten years, and there is suddenly a bigger variety of voices telling a huge number of stories. Last term, Scene was massively successful at the Corpus Playroom, and it just goes to show that there is a demand for new writing, for stories that reflect what matters not only to their writers, but to their audiences, plays that are relevant and important.

What’s more, I believe that student writing should get better. But it can only do that with support. There’s a stereotype in student written plays for kitchen sink dramas. New writing on our bigger stages has shown us that we need to embrace the full potential of the theatre. The director Dawn Walton (if it’s not her, it’s someone else, but I think it’s her) has a saying: “burn your sofa.” By all means, write a kitchen sink drama, but surprise us with it. One example that springs to mind is Alistair McDowall’s Brilliant Adventures. It opens with a council house on an estate in Middlesbrough – so far, so predictable. However, McDowall burns his sofa down to the ground when he throws a time machine into the corner of the room.

The theatre is teeming with possibilities. It’s completely infested with potential. It’s a good kind of disease, and I don’t think it needs vaccinating with Arthur Miller. I want it under my skin. (Almost as much as I want to be better at metaphors)