CRAFTING A DRAMA by Chris O'Connell

None of the plays I’ve written to date has ever been informed by any formal set of rules. I haven’t trained, or been taught to be a playwright. I write from instinct. Every playwright has a different way of working, and that’s the major point to estabish: no single method is sacred, because it’s about what works best from a personal point of view. My method is not written out, I do it a bit differently each time. There are no magic rules, I don’t map everything out, I don’t create a plot and then write a play, and I don’t imagine the backstory of each character and write it out on cards and stick them to the wall! I just write words, and try and reply to them; from this process comes a play which just like a well baked cake, or an elongated pregnancy, is usually ready to come out. It’s apt that as I write this I’m due to begin as 2nd tutor on the M(Phil) Playwrighting Course at University of Birmingham, 2004/05. I’m looking forward to the year as a tutor because I think I’ll learn as much as I’ll be teaching. Plays are an endless mystery, and such finely tuned beasts, balanced between a need to ‘lead’ and a need to ‘allow’ an audience; by this I mean the necessary voice of the writer that leads the audience into a world of question and challenge, and the necessary quietening of the writer’s voice to enable the gaps in which an audience can think and experience for themselves. Life is not like a play, yet I think we do assimiliate our lives in the same ways that we assimilate the world of a truthful and compelling piece of theatre; any play I set out to write is always dedicated to the principle of a drip feed, and the gradual unpeeling of layers. Life has complexity, and so should theatre. Over the last ten years I have managed to establish my own system, and I have written what I would describe as about ten good plays. Each of them has begun in the same way. This is a list of the stages I go through: 1. Stimulus. - Most of my ideas come in reaction to the outside world, either through newspaper reports, news, stories, or people I meet. I don’t tend to think of who or what to write about; the idea will usually evolve because something has moved me. In 1996, I wrote Big Burger Chronicles, which was inspired by two newspaper articles I read on the same day - one was about the mining town of Seaham where 18 people in two years had commited suicide in reaction to the loss of their work and the breakdown of their community; the other was about a burger chain, pretty corporate and pretty American, who brought in a proposal that decreed if there were no customers in the shop, staff shouldn’t be paid. As a consequence, on a quiet night some staff were earning perhaps a pound an hour! It was a short lived proposal, but the obscenity of such crass greed rang bells when set against the tragic story of the collapse of the community in Seaham. An idea for a play that evolves like that is one that I’m fired up to write, and one that I quickly become commited to finishing. If it feels honest and truthful, the job is so much easier. 2. I make loads and loads and loads and loads of notes. A note book and a pen, and lots of thinking time. I hardly ever settle down to outline the plot, or structure first, because it’s important from the beginning to know what sort of world I’m going into, how the play might be expressed on stage, what the set might be, if there’s a need for music, how many characters I might need to tell the story, and who the audience are. I’ll often go backwards and forwards with this sort of thinking, making notes that contradict each other, or build on each other. Finally, what I hope will emerge is the rough outine of a story, and an experience. 3. Next, is atmosphere and theme. Structure, plot and character are still to come. At this stage, I’m trying to pinpoint the mood of the play; how dark, how shaded, the colour, the texture; if it was a piece of music, what would it be, if it was a country in what part of the world would it be? What is the mood of the ‘world’? What do I want the audience to feel? 4. At last...character! Who are the sort of people who can, or would exist in the world I’ve imagined? Whose story will be told? What are the character(s) needs, what do they want? Who else will enter their world, and what relationship will be most interesting, or most dynamic between them? Under what premise can these characters exist? Do they know each other? What is at stake for each character? Ultimately, how does the story I’ve imagined change them, and how does the world of the play work on them? 5. Location is important. Are we in a drawing room? I hope never! A lot of my plays use multiple locations; but other people’s plays work just as well in a bedsit or a flat. My advice is just to be sure that if you choose a single location, that the play can stay ‘active’ and not get dragged into the rhythm of an Eastenders script. It’s a theatre space you’re creating for, not a television screen, and theatre is physical! 5. Having pulled together these above ideas (not necessarily in the order I’ve written them), I then start to wonder how it’s best to tell the story. Should it be wrapped up in a straight forward linear narrative, the beginning, the middle and the end, and all from one person’s point of view? Or what about flashback? Or is this the sort of play that demands a more filmic approach with short elliptical scenes; alternatively, maybe the energy of the piece can be caught in longer played out scenes? And how many days are needed to tell the story? Does it happen in one day, two, or over a week? Are there years to travel? I don’t always believe in structure for the sake of it; structure should in some way be connected to the play, otherwise it can feel tricksy. In 1999, I wrote Car. It’s about the theft of a car by four boys, and the effect it has on their lives afterwards. It’s about chaotic lives. I decided that a good structure would be one that used short scenes of quickfire dialogue that moved the narrative backwards and forwards in time; the idea behind this was that the audience’s experience watching the play felt in some ways like the chaos and the thril of a car theft. 6. And finally, I’ll start to write. I churn out a lot of dratfs, constantly looking to refine rhythm, language, over written and under written sections, and to test the logic, the heart and the truthfulness of the play. This is best done, in my experience, through workshop with a bunch of actors and a director. A lot of writers don’t want to open their work up to actors and directors, but I’m always excited to spend three or four days taking one of my plays apart, because nine times out of ten I end up with something better! I won’t write to commitee, and there must always be a time in workshop where you stick to your guns when you feel you’re right and the others are wrong, but to be closed off to new directions and new impulses from other artists always seems like an opportuntiy missed. Theatre, after all, is a truly collaborative process. I don’t know what the greats would think of my system - Shakespeare, Checkov, Ayckbourn, Kane - but it seems to work for me, and with every play, in every way, I think I’m getting better! Chris O'Connell, August 2004 Chris is a writer and artistic director of award-winning Theatre Absolute [www.theatreabsolute.co.uk]. Plays for Theatre Absolute include: Car, Raw and Kid. Car and Raw won Fringe First Awards for Outstanding New Work and Innovation at the Edinburgh Fringe Festivals 1999 and 2001 respectively. Car won a Time Out Live Award for Best New Play on the London Fringe, 1999.