Raise the Curtain
By Steve Newman

The very idea of starting a small professional theatre company in Stratford-upon-Avon-- and dedicated to new writing-- is, apparently, an idiotic one, at least according to the BBC who proclaimed, after seeing my play Ancient Pinnacles (about Walt Whitman), that it was quite mad to do what we were doing, that people didn't start professional theatre companies anymore! No? If only they'd said something sooner. 

It all started just before Christmas 1997, when two other Stratford playwrights and myself met in a local pub one lunchtime-- The Garrick Inn, next to Harvard House-- to compare notes, and down a few pints of Flower's best bitter. Now, for anyone unfamiliar with British drinking habits, Flower's best bitter is one of the oldest in the country-- 1829-- and a beer which, in the 1950s and 1960s, used to be served warm from lead pipes, but is now served cold from plastic pipes, and is a beer that can make you do things you'd never-- ever-- do if you drank tea, but then you'd never do anything if you just drank tea. 

The two other playwrights were Reg Mitchell and Ian Harris. Reg was a gritty Yorkshireman in his 70s, who'd produced more than eighty plays in his native county, plus a very successful adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations in Stratford. But what Reg really wanted to do was get his original work produced. Ian Harris was, like me, a man turning 50, an ex-priest (a job he could have handled well if it hadn't included religion), and an ex-BBC DJ, who was now working as a cleaner, but with a superb screenplay recently optioned by a London producer. But like Reg, what Ian longed for was to see his play, The Big K, performed. I was working at any job that came my way and had just seen my jazz musical Am I Blue? premiered at the RSC Fringe Festival-- an experience that aged me prematurely I can assure you. I was now fired-up as a writer and eager to get my Whitman play staged. 

Some three or four pints later we agreed to create The Bird of Prey Theatre Company-- something of an antidote to the dreaded Swan of Avon-- and that Reg's play Hallmarks, a two-hander about the relationship between Dr. John Hall and his wife Susanna Shakespeare, just had to be our opening production. As you can see the beer hadn't dulled our marketing senses completely. 

By the end of the afternoon we'd booked a hall in the Shakespeare Centre-- adjoining Shakespeare's birthplace-- to premier the play on Shakespeare's birthday 1998, booked rehearsal space, pretty much settled on the cast, agreed the price of tickets, arranged sound and lighting, found a stage-manager, designed the poster, insured ourselves, arranged all the required licences, written a press release-- and begging letters pleading for sponsorship-- hired costumes, lost our nerves, found them again, and shook hands across a hastily written constitution that would have made the Founding Fathers proud, which, if nothing else, attests to the quality, and strength, of Charles Edward Flower's great invention! 

When the effects of the beer had worn off there were no regrets, and by the second week in January 1998 Reg was well into rehearsals. We had very little money-- er, no money at all to be precise-- but tickets sales looked promising. Most importantly we knew we had a good show on our hands. 

If this all sounds like an episode from a bad TV soap, it's not meant to. We were deadly serious in our attempt to make those hard, solitary months of writing, and re-writing, come alive on the stage; and having decided that we would each direct our own work there was an added sense of commitment (and stress!) to see each play through to performance. 

For a playwright, directing is an extension of the writing process and can be as scary as hell. When an actor stands up and reads your words for the first time your reaction is invariably one of abject disappointment and regret and a realization that you are a crap playwright and have written some of the worst lines in dramatic history. All you can think about is how you are going to tell the actors that the whole thing has been a ghastly mistake, that it must stop, and stop now. But you don't, and as the days and weeks go by and the actors are easier with their roles, and begin to know their lines, and actually start acting, your confidence comes back in a big way. 

Your characters, which have been paper inventions until now, take on a life of their own, have a physicality, and during breaks in rehearsals, and in the pub afterwards, tell you how they couldn't possibly say such a line in such a way. It's at this point that the playwright/director must listen, and decide if something must change or stay the same. A playwright cannot afford to be too precious about his or her words-- remember that a play, like a film, is a collaborative effort-- and if a change makes something stronger, makes it work, makes it more real (unless you don't do real), then make the changes. Remember, as the director, you can always make the actor who made the suggestion work twice as hard and twice as long. That's only fair, surely? 

And then, after weeks of rehearsals and a great deal of fun, the first night comes along and you have to face a paying public who-- and you know this - are only there to criticize you and see you fail. It doesn't matter that friends tell you paranoia is a dangerous emotion, you don't care; you're going to wallow in it, drink it, enjoy it because everyone is out to get you, to knock you down, and keep you there, face down in the mud! It's a fact! Something must be done. 

So, after a few-- quite a few-- glasses of wine, and with the show about to start, you make up your mind to call the whole thing off, that everyone can have their money back, should have their money back, you had no right taking it in the first place. You stand up and are about to make an announcement when it goes dark, and there's music, and, and someone is saying your opening lines. It's all too bloody late. You just want to die, but instead drink another glass of wine. 

Then you hear people laugh at your jokes, and somebody whispers in your ear: 
"Well done." And you whisper back: "Thank you, but I knew we had a good show." It's only then, with the play powering away, and with the actors looking awfully cocky, that you wished you'd chosen to become a priest, religion or no religion. But it is all worth it, and you don't suffer alone. 

When the novelist and Whitman biographer, Philip Callow, came to see Ancient Pinnacles he was rather taken aback by a Whitman who walked, talked, laughed, sang, and cursed. In the interval he politely, but firmly, accused me of portraying only the aggressive side of the poet's character. But by the end of the play-- with a second half that does explore the softer, more vulnerable aspects of the poet-- Philip seemed genuinely convinced (thanks to some superb acting) by my Whitman. As Philip explained later, he'd lived with his idea of the man for more than ten years and found my characterization, and a living, breathing man, hard to take. 

Bird of Prey's first season was a huge success, with all three plays well received, but it was becoming obvious that the three of us had different ideas about how the company should continue in the future, and arguments flared as to whether we produce new work by other playwrights or produce classic plays, even Shakespeare! In the end, and rightly, it was agreed to produce the work of other writers. 

Since 1998, the company has produced 14 new plays, seven of them by new writers who submitted their work to us on spec, something I'm very proud of. Sadly, in 1999, Ian decided that professional theatre was not for him, and left to concentrate on screenwriting. Ian's The Big K was an excellent play, and Ali Troughton's performance as the fading Hollywood star, Irma Kaskade, awaiting execution on death row, superb. 

But even when the play was performed at the RSC's The Other Place, Ian could not face seeing his own work performed and spent the entire performance outside listening to jazz on his Walkman. It's a hard old game. 

By 2000, with another good season behind us that included Reg's Love Letters in Four Acts, an enthralling piece about Chekov, my own plays (Portrait of the Artist and A Summer Garden, about the English composers Edward Elgar and Frederick Delius), plus American playwright Kristina Downing-Orr's mad comedy, Shrink Resistant, it was clear Reg was unhappy with his own work, and wanted to concentrate on Shakespeare. This he has done ever since, producing lavish outdoor productions around the town. 

With Ian and Reg gone I took the decision, in 2001, to revive two of my earlier plays, Ancient Pinnacles and Portrait of the Artist, with the clear aim of getting them staged at the new RSC Summerhouse. Re-staging them would then give me time (ha! ha!) to get my new play Across The River, about Ernest Hemingway, ready for production in January 2002. 

It was an ambitious plan, but I now had a repertory company of gifted actors who were prepared to give anything a go. We rehearsed Ancient Pinnacles and Portrait of the Artist back to back, and after four weeks played both shows to an invited, non-paying audience in a small private theatre-- deep in the beautiful Cotswold countryside-- as a means of attracting sponsors. We then went all out to get the shows into the RSC Summerhouse. 

Having the RSC in your back garden is something a playwright cannot ignore, and I'd taken the opportunity in the 1990s to appear in three RSC productions, most memorably Sir Peter Hall's 1995 Julius Caesar. I was playing a non-speaking citizen of Rome who, during one rehearsal, decided to speak. 

Hugh Quarshie, as Mark Anthony, had just put on Caesar's blood soaked cloak and was about to start his famous speech when I blurted out: "Sir Peter, I wonder if, when Hugh starts to speak, I might reach out and touch the bloody cloak?"

There was silence. Shit, I thought, that's the end of my acting career. But then Hall's deep tenor voice came out of the darkness of the stalls: "Yes, try it. If I like it I'll say nothing."

So I did it, and as Hugh, streaming tears roared: "O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests..." I reached out and grabbed a corner of the bloody cloak and held it to my face. Hugh faltered, watched me for a couple of beats, touched the blood himself, then smearing it on his face continued: "...glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure," and so on. It was magic. Silence from the stalls, then: "Good, keep it in."

And we did, for over 70 performances. And when the show traveled abroad-- sadly without me-- that little bit of "business" stayed in. 

I made many friends at the RSC during that show-- and this is good advice for any writer-- made sure I kept in touch with them. When the chance came to get my two plays produced in 2001, those friendships paid off. Ancient Pinnacle was performed at the RSC just a few days after 9/11 - I thought of canceling but decided against it-- and the very subdued audiences who came to see the play, with its epic American themes of optimism and hope, seemed to go away somewhat fortified. I've never had the heart to produce the play since. 

Having a coterie of gifted actors means I can write for specific people, as I did with my Hemingway play, creating parts that were a joy to see come alive, especially Guy Adam's Hemingway. My company now has actors aged from 17 to 85. 

A new wing of the company, Historic Productions, is currently producing a new play-- written and directed by myself-- about Oliver Cromwell, with the action taking place around the dining table of The Shrieve's House here in Stratford, where Cromwell is thought to have stayed on several occasions. The audience will be between eight or ten paying guests who will enter the dangerous world of the 17th century, and join Oliver Cromwell, plus a few others, including me as Major General Thomas Harrison, for dinner-- just five days before the battle of Worcester in 1651-- and be part of a theatrical experience they will never forget. 

And I believe it is this latest venture-- after nearly twenty years of learning to write, produce, and direct-- that will bear financial fruit. The dinner table format, pre-sold to groups of friends, and to the organizers of corporate events-- who are always looking for new ideas-- is undoubtedly one of the most intimate theatrical situations imaginable, and one of the most satisfying. 

We already have several new works being written that will, with the Cromwell piece, form a formidable repertory of work that can be performed in any hotel, or in a family home, anywhere. And we have bookings, too! 

So, don't let age, or fear, be a barrier. If you are a playwright and want to start your own professional theatre company-- and it must be professional-- just do it. It will be hard work, bloody hard work, there will be times when you will wonder why you started, it will be both costly and rewarding, you will fall out with actors, fall in love with other actors, go mad, become sane. And above everything else, you will know if the stuff you put on is any good. You won't need to ask, you'll just know. 

Oh, and whatever you do, don't take the advice of the BBC. 

Sponsored links

Ring binders

 

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer!

How to find a book publisher

Home

Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007 Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
Please contact the authors if you'd like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must listen to Barney sing the "I Love You, You Love Me" song over and over again.

writers writing software