Thank you so much to the team who helped us to record our panel event Reflecting on Playwriting Prizes at Soho Theatre – unfortunately, technology let us down and we had no volume on playback. We are so sorry about this, and completely share your disappointment, but we have used some of the content and questions raised in the discussion to shape this insightful article from Dr Rachel Clements.
In early November 2024, Soho Theatre gathered representatives from a group of significant playwriting prizes (Alfred Fagon Award, the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Papatango New Writing Prize, Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award, Theatre503 International Playwriting Award & the Women’s Prize for Playwriting) to discuss the role of these awards for industry and individuals. During this conversation, the idea that the judges were seeking out “bold plays” circulated. This provoked curiosity and questions –maybe a little frustration too. What might boldness mean? I don’t speak for any of those panellists or prizes (and if you’re submitting to any of them, look at their calls for submissions closely, since they are overlapping but not identical) but perhaps I can try to nudge a few windows open on the wider question.
Several decades of watching, reading, studying and writing about theatre, and over a decade of working with writers during the early stages of their craft’s development has taught me this: plays are exciting because there are so many different possibilities, both in what they are and in how they are made. Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill doesn’t have a whole lot in common… well, with any other play by Caryl Churchill, let alone with An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch, or with Misty by Arinze Kene. None of these plays is any poorer for being unlike the others. Playwriting doesn’t have a rule book – thank goodness – though there are plenty of aspects of craft that tend to work, and many writers benefit hugely from knowing when to cleave both towards and away from these. Indeed, it is the plurality of theatre that makes it possible for us to hope that we will experience something that surprises us, something that we’ve not encountered – or not quite like that – before. Creating something that contains a moment where your audience might go ‘Woah!’ doesn’t involve a reinvention of everything in the theatre (though by all means, go for it), but the plays that I’d consider bold are all distinctive in one or more of the following aspects:
Audience and expectations
Look at how – and at what speed – plays teach their audiences the conditions and rules of their worlds. Just looking at opening pages might be useful. By rules I mean things like: where are we, when are we, who’s there, what’s their relationship with one another, and how do we find out or understand the answers to these? These questions matter – as does the pace at which they are answered, which makes a big difference to the tone and feel of a play. Compare the opening scenes of Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen amd Robert Holman’s A Breakfast of Eels, for instance. After the prologue, Kwei-Armah’s piece swiftly sets ups a key plot tension of the play between Deli – whose takeaway restaurant is the setting for the piece – and Digger, who might be gun-wielding but does not own the space. The opening pulls us straight into the world of the restaurant, making sure that we have a sense of the dynamic between these men, which the rest of the play develops; it sets up Deli as the centre of the piece in order to explore inter-generational tensions with his father and his son. Holman’s play similarly opens with two men on stage, and a clear immediate set of circumstances (they have a funeral to attend). But the question of who Francis and Penrose are to one another is less immediately answered – or rather, it seems to be answered (they are both referring to Daddy), but almost as soon as this familial relationship is in the air, it is troubled (why will the other mourners be looking out for Penrose, but not Francis?). Indeed, this question of who they are to each other drives the whole of the play, not just its opening moments. Both plays build their worlds quickly but they keep different questions in play. Beyond questions of plot and character, though, I also mean: how is this play talking to its imagined audience? Who are we, in relation to the play’s world? How are we being called in, positioned; in the creative act of making theatre, what is this audience being asked to bring or do, and how do we know? Bold plays, one way or another, invite their audience to think and feel with and through them.
Form
There are different possibilities – and pitfalls – depending on the sort of piece that you’re writing. You contend with different parameters, and run up against different technical and formal challenges if, for instance, you’re writing a closed-space, closed-time play two-hander (like David Eldridge’s Beginning), if you’re writing a closed-space, open-time drama with a mid-sized cast (like Dominique Morriseau’s Skeleton Crew), if you’re writing an episodic piece spanning multiple locations and many characters (like Hannah Khalil’s Scenes from 68* Years), if you’re playing with several kinds of theatrical form within the same play-shaped container (like Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview). Once you have a sense of the kind of play you’re crafting, you can lean into and make the most of that form’s potential. Understanding form is really vital and you might look at James Fritz’s and Carmen Nasr’s pieces on form and structure and I’d hugely recommend participating in Dan Rebellato’s workshop on form on December 9th.
Gear shifts
Also: read the rest of the play to see whether it adheres to and builds from its early expectations, whether it changes direction pointedly, or whether it pulls the rug out from under the audience entirely: none of these is inherently a better move, but they make for very different types of piece – compare Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, for instance, with debbie tucker green’s ear for eye, with Ella Hickson’s The Writer. The first is theatrically interesting because it takes an initially simple device – a short temporal jump in the conversation, with no scene break – and extends it until we are leaping years, accelerating wildly; it becomes bold because this formal device is connected to the play’s central concern about the hastening climate catastrophe. The second is bold because its three parts are formally very distinct but cumulatively build an argument about the history, legacy, and present of racism at macro and micro levels. The last is bold because its repeated gear shifts ask the audience to recalibrate what they’ve seen even as the next scene is unfolding (Sarah Kane’s Blasted is perhaps the most often-cited version of this kind of approach). In all these cases, and many others, the form is part of the meaning; the form makes meaning. In other words: the shape of the play is integral to, and is driven by, the ideas that underpin the piece.
Thematic questions and big ideas
I suppose what I’m saying here is: if bold plays have anything in common, it is that the playwright knows, and has a handle on, what they’re doing and why the story they’re telling is best served by the form they’re shaping and working with. This clarity and confidence might be there from the get-go. Or – more likely – it might arrive gradually, as the play takes shape and you work through redrafts. Either way, these plays are clear about both their dramatic question (that is – what the story is) and their thematic question (what the story is really about). I think it’s likely that – particularly in relation to playwriting prizes – the underpinning ideas are especially important. Boldness doesn’t necessarily mean that shocking events occur in the story (though they might). It means that the piece has an interesting heart. It means, that a writer is following their curiosity, their passion, their anger, their concerns, something that feels urgent to them right now. Katharine Soper’s Wish List – which won the Bruntwood Prize in 2015 – is an excellent play which was particularly resonant at that moment because the play’s central concerns spoke so clearly to – and were such an insightful critique of – the impact of austerity politics on the most vulnerable (in this case, a pair of siblings who were working on a zero-hours contract, and negotiating changes to the benefits system). Diving into things that vex, trouble or interest you – things that you’re passionate about – doesn’t mean needing all the answers (or proving that you know everything about a subject): a play can think with, or show something to, its audience. Plays are part of broader public discourse, which is why one of the questions that you may well want to think about your answer to is: why this play, this set of questions, now?
Making Space
One of my favourite things about playtexts is the way they are, simultaneously, complete artworks, enjoyable in their own right and, also, absolutely provisional and incomplete gestures towards multiple – even multitudes of – possible performances. Bold plays, I’d venture, enjoy the two-ness of that, and find ways to walk the edges of both. One main way that writers do that is by developing the skill of creating space for the other artists who work on making theatre. Focus on writing – rather than directing, acting or designing – your play. I’ve seen plenty of writers make their redrafts much stronger by learning how to pare back the moments where, initially, they were trying to do it all on the page. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that your play doesn’t need stage directions at all (though it might not – Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis has had an extraordinary range of productions, at least in part because it throws such a creative gauntlet down to anyone who approaches the text), or that it should look sparse. But the more confident you can be in your creative collaborators (actual or imagined) and the more space you give them, the more space you’ll create for your work to take its own shape and the braver you’ll be able to be. Alistair McDowall’s All of It gave Kate O’Flynn the task of following a character from birth to death in one sentence. It’s astonishing.
Character
Speaking of character: there are so many ways that playwrights are, and can be, bold here. Stories, experiences and lives that have not tended to occupy the centre of the stage are – for so many reasons – vitally important. So too are ones that kick hard against stereotype – Kimber Lee’s Untitled F**k Miss Saigon Play was a good example of a play that, start to finish, railed against the racism of orientalism in mainstream media and ‘canonical’ representation of Asian characters, using its own acts of repetition as a means to conjure up and critique. Are you opening up the world by diving into the stories of one (eg Overflow, by Travis Alabanza) or two (eg Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh) characters? Seeing what can happen when a group of characters get to know one another (Circle. Mirror. Transformation. by Annie Baker)? Using a glimpse into the experience of a plethora of characters to build a big picture (truth and reconciliation by debbie tucker green)? Talking directly to the audience (Chris Thorpe’s There Has Possibly Been an Incident), or undoing ideas of character utterly (Attempts on Her Life by Martin Crimp)? Something else? If anything unites the examples I’ve just offered –– it’s that in each case there’s a clear sense of rationale for who we meet, and how, and why.
Image and gesture
Some plays stick with you because of the images and gestures they contain. David Greig’s San Diego has an opening monologue – suggestive but not prescriptive in terms of design – full of verbal images of a transatlantic flight, greylag geese, and lost children. Edward Bond’s Saved has its infamous pram, yes, but also its closing image of the attempt to mend a broken chair. Plays can call things to mind without them happening; they are collective imaginings. And also, theatre is a doing place, a place where every action matters. In Far Away, Caryl Churchill gives two characters the job of making increasingly outrageous hats. The hats make sense in terms of the story and the big ideas of the play, but the actions of hat-making (millinery is full of things that slice, bash, snip, manipulate, pierce, splice) are also absolutely loaded with meaning-making potential, and build the atmosphere of the piece. As far as the playtext goes, this is a great example of theatrical economy and trust: Churchill leaves figuring out all the specifics of this to production – she doesn’t tell the actors when or whether to cut or hit their materials – but that doesn’t diminish the craft that’s gone in to creating the images, actions, and circumstances of the play.
If any of this is making you feel less than heartened, or less convinced of your work and your ability then maybe this will help: the call is for bold plays, not for flawless ones. Writing a play is a brave thing to do in the first place; sending it out into the world is a necessary action in order for the text to become theatre, and is also an extraordinarily courageous gesture. Leonard Cohen suggests that you ‘forget your perfect offering’ and that might be wise counsel. The call for boldness is a challenge, certainly, but it is also an invitation: it’s permission to try your own thing, to do what works for your writing, and not to worry too much about fitting into a pre-existing model. There are many ways, as I hope I’ve suggested, in which a play might be said to be bold – so be true to yourself, your ideas, and your play’s world: follow your interest and your passion. If you take anything from the request for bold work, maybe make it this: people are open to being excited by what you create, and they want to hear your voice.
About Rachel Clements…
Rachel Clements is a Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Manchester, where she has supported students in their writing for performance since 2012. She convened the first three years of the MA Playwriting (2020-23), and writes about contemporary playwriting (she is currently working on a book on the writing of Robert Holman).