Dramas in a crisis: England’s theatres commit to new plays at perilous time for arts
‘It is really, really awful for playwrights at the moment,” says Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder, co-artistic director of new writing company Box of Tricks. Amid declining commissions and threatened literary departments, there has been a flurry of dire pronouncements about playwriting, with much of the discussion focused on London. Away from the capital, however, smaller companies are finding creative ways to support playwrights.
In Manchester, Box of Tricks has brought together hundreds of northern writers through its PlayMakers Network, initially set up as a response to the pandemic. The network offers support, guidance, feedback and connection, as well as providing free hot-desking and workshopping space for members. It runs targeted schemes for playwrights, the most recent of which is Accelerate: a nine-month development programme for northern writers over 35, culminating in work-in-progress performances at Home in January.
As Tyrrell-Pinder explains, Accelerate was created to address the “strange middle ground” that older writers find themselves in “where you’ve been doing it for a bit but now you’re too old for the young playwrights’ schemes”. The company’s data showed there was a drop-off in engagement and opportunities for those over 35. The 12 selected for the programme have a range of experience: there are seasoned screenwriters, performers who are making the move into playwriting and one woman who has started writing plays for the first time in her 50s. Tyrrell-Pinder hopes the initiative “shifts the stories that we think are valuable”.
Over in Hull, the company Middle Child is passionate about developing the theatrical ecosystem in the city and stemming the “talent drain” to the capital, says artistic director Paul Smith. It has offered a range of free and paid development opportunities for playwrights, including scratch nights, free writing and rehearsal space, and workshopping support. This summer, it’s scaling up its ambitions with Fresh Ink, a new playwriting festival that is sharing stories by, about and for the people of Hull.
“We’re aware how hard it is to get your second or third commission, because often theatres are looking for the newest name or the youngest name or the first-time writer,” says Smith. At the centre of the festival are six new commissions selected from an open call. These scripts will be shared in a scratch format, with the hope that either Middle Child or other companies will pick them up for full productions. Alongside this, the festival will provide support for writers of all ages and career stages. Smith’s hope is that Fresh Ink will “become a part of the cultural calendar – not just in Hull, but nationally”.
Ali Pritchard, outgoing artistic director of Alphabetti theatre in Newcastle, hopes to make a similar national mark. Since its founding in 2012, Alphabetti has been a miniature powerhouse of local talent development. Pritchard says that “north-east artists rely on Alphabetti” as a proving ground for work that then feeds into larger theatres. One of the most distinctive features of the theatre’s programming model is its pattern of three-week runs for main shows – something almost unheard of on this scale outside the Edinburgh fringe. As Pritchard explains, these longer runs have numerous benefits: breathing room for artists, more time to develop audiences, and the ability to invest in access measures such as captioning and audio description.
The model is not without its challenges. While some shows have run at an average audience capacity of 85-90%, others have been stuck at just 20%, which Pritchard acknowledges is “pretty heartbreaking as an artist”. But these longer runs also allow for Alphabetti’s response writing programme, which Pritchard describes as “the feather in our cap”. During the first week of a main show run, playwrights are invited to see the show and write a short drama in response. From these submitted scripts, one is selected for a week of paid development with a writer and an actor and is then shown as a curtain closer in the final week of the run. In many instances, this first opportunity leads to further support.
One thing these artistic leaders agree on is the importance of process, not just product. Speaking about Accelerate, Tyrrell-Pinder says the company didn’t want writers to panic that “I’ve got to produce something at the end!” By allowing a period of dedicated writing time in between the development sessions and the final sharings, the pressure is taken off. One of the intentions behind Fresh Ink, meanwhile, is to “let people peek behind the curtain”. This was born out of Middle Child’s scratch performances, which have attracted a majority of audiences from outside the arts, showing “a clear appetite for seeing work in its early stages”.
These initiatives all demonstrate the agility of smaller companies. “It’s hard for some of the bigger theatres to take that first risk on an unknown voice,” says Smith. Pritchard suggests that large theatre organisations are “like an oil tanker: if they need to move their style of work it takes them a long time to turn around”. Alphabetti, on the other hand, is a “rubber dinghy” (“I was going to say yacht,” Pritchard laughs, “but we’re definitely not classy enough to be a yacht!”) that can move much faster in reaction to what’s happening elsewhere.
But what matters, ultimately, is getting work on stages. Smith insists that Fresh Ink “only has value if the work exists beyond the festival”, while Pritchard is keen to stress the number of response programme writers who have gone on to have full plays produced. These include Charlotte Small, whose short response piece was developed into a longer script that was then staged as a main show, and Steve Byron and Gary Kitching, creators of the popular two-hander Bacon Knees and Sausage Fingers. For Tyrell-Pinder, meanwhile, the next challenge after the Accelerate programme is finding ways of putting on the writers’ plays.
As we approach the general election, everyone I speak to is adamant about the need for a new government to support the arts. Tyrrell-Pinder decries the “systematic devaluing of the arts” under the Tories, while Smith and Pritchard both observe how much harder things have become in the years since establishing their companies. As Smith puts it, the arguments for funding the arts have been made over and over; now is the time for action. “The talent is there, the ability is there, the statistics are there – everything is there except the increase in funding.”
Fresh Ink festival runs 20-21 July in Hull. Alphabetti theatre hosts a festival of new work, Let’s Create Not Apply, 6-30 August.
