Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sam Burns on August 4, 2009 at 5:39

Agreed. Young and new ain't synonymous and it's a pretty offensive set-up on the whole. I was 26, nearly 27, when I decided I wanted to get into playwriting, and that's the wrong side of 25 if you want to take advantage of the producing theatres' main routes in (courses, festivals, etc.) I could've been 70 and I would've needed the same degree of guidance as a 17-year-old.

Permalink Reply by Othniel Smith on August 4, 2009 at 21:28

An excellent article and, for once, some responses that don't make me want to go out and purchase a flame-thrower.

Is it hopelessly naive of me to imagine that the most important criterion for those theatre companies who read unsolicited submissions is the quality of the script?

Permalink Reply by Terry Victor on August 11, 2009 at 8:18

New = Fresh
Young = Fresh
When I was fresh I was full of certainties: I didn't see the shades of grey.
Now I am refreshed everyone sees my shades of grey and nothing is certain.

As a young writer I'd have had the confidence to decry the future me - the older me hasn't got the heart to blame my historical self. In fact, I'm embarrassed not to honour the political certainties of my youth. As a writer I am more honest... now that I'm not quite so fresh - but 'discovering' me won't bring anyone the long term 'development' glories of a new young bandwagon.

New = Young is a financial and administrative 'certainty' - a self-fulfilling prophecy at the very least - in the accounting minds of arts strategists.

In the chicken/egg interface of creative (as opposed to economic) endeavour which comes first: a younger and more diverse audience or younger and more diverse writers?

Enough. I'm trying to see both sides of the argument. That will never do.

Permalink Reply by Deborah Powell on August 12, 2009 at 3:13

Hope you don't mind an observation from a returner to non-fiction writing (who also happens to be a commercial strategist!)...

Yes, new can mean young, but surely it can mean other things too:
'new' can mean latest;
'new' can be a genre change for an established or maturing writer;
'new' can mean a category-defying piece of work.

Each of these categories have development needs & life-cycle requirements of their own (for both writer & audience). The writer's journey & the audience's journey with the piece should be supported in whatever 'new' field we are talking about.
If these needs are being ignored there is something very surprising & very wrong with an industry taking such a narrow/incomplete view of their horizon ... a classic, classic case of myopia!

And those existing Arts Strategists Terry mentions ? Well they should wake-up to a massively missed opportunity, else they are indeed sleeping on the job!

Permalink Reply by Lucy Davies on August 11, 2009 at 22:00

Fantastic subject for a forum Philip. Here are my random contributions:

1. I was at the opening of Peter Gill's new play in Bath yesterday. He's 70 later this year and the play is beautiful and extraordinary (in my opinion: look out for reviews from today). It's pretty scandalous that such a leading writer / theatre-maker / talent / human being is having his first new play in 6 years produced in a small studio theatre space in Bath, not on the main stage at the NT / Royal Court etc etc. I would lay a big wager that if a 19 year old had written this exact same play it would be there.

2. It's an ironic paradigm shift that there was a time when no theatre could get an audience AT ALL for "new writing", especially for a completely unknown writer. It's a marketing triumph that this is now the one ghetto that an audience, often new to theatre, will turn up to. (This is a good thing, but there needs to be a new shift to pull back towards the mid-career writers - and this needs to happen in the marketing depts too)

3. Most of my favourite novelists (and the world's) are women who started writing in their forties after their kids had gone. Lyn Gardner mentions Caryl Churchill and Bryony Lavery. Social change means women are having children much later and this has a big impact on creative lives. What's going to happen to Polly Stenham if she has a kid or 2 at the height of her career?

4. You get better at everything thought-based the more experienced and older you are, and you get wildly radical after 60.

5. I don't blame development culture, I blame Battersea Arts Centre! A lot of young writers used to end up in play-readings or workshops etc as they honed their craft, but the cult of the "scratch" performance and the general mass of young theatre-makers wanting to DO something has pushed all the emerging talent - directors, designers, actors - into rooms above pubs and into main house literary depts asking for cast-offs. I spent a lot of time giving plays that were too "small" to produce at the places I worked to young companies and venues. This is a good thing, but it meant that new, invariably young, writers were rising alongside their new young director / actor friends. So in a way it's up to that generation to keep them on the journey. When those young directors are running buildings they have a duty to produce Polly Stenhams's fourth unfashionable play.