Back in drama school the first role I played was that of Pentheus, torn apart after invoking the rage of Dionysus by the god’s ecstatic worshippers. So, be gentle, Maenads.

I feel eminently disqualified from responding to any of this because I’m male, old, included in the selection, white, atheist, apolitical and I wear glasses. The only thing I have going for me is that I didn’t attend university. Is that enough? Is that enough?

My tendency here is to widen the debate. So as long as we are confessing things:

Age

I sometimes lie about my age.

Every time I come across an ‘initiative for new writers/film-makers/directors’ - or even the plethora of competitions that arrive in my inbox every week courtesy of Film London (if you’re into film, sign up: http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/) - the leap of joy in my heart stumbles when I read in the small print ‘Under 25’s’, ‘Young Film-makers Only’, ’17 And Under’. I have never, not once, seen an initiative for the over 35’s.

It is as if we don’t need the encouragement. By now, as Fed alluded to, the assumption is that you’ve either made it or you’ve given up.

And yet... one of the most interesting projects a friend of mine is currently researching, to be shot as a documentary next year (with state funding, no less), is a study of some of the oldest women in the local community. Despite this epoch seemingly idolising neoteny; both intellectually, as demonstrated by the cacophonous orgies of light and noise wrapped around jejune myths Hollywood calls movies; and physically, as people, men and women both, depilate, rhinoplastify and botox themselves into the forms of children, hoping to escape death; she is spending her time tracing some of the elders of the community, repositories of wisdom and knowledge, giving them voices, recording their experiences, honouring and cherishing them.

When I was little, at a party, an established playwright was holding forth. My father nudged me forward and told him, ‘My son is trying to be a writer.’ The playwright fixed upon me a withering gaze. ‘Young people can’t write,’ he pronounced. ‘That’s not true,’ I said, my cheeks burning. ‘We can write, we just don’t have anything to say.’ I think I saw a smile at the edge of his mouth.

Now I know this would carry more weight, and sound less self-serving, if I was saying it at 14, but the voices of our elders should be revered and encouraged just as much as those of our youth. It wasn’t always that the older you get, the less relevant you become. I think this tendency is turning, particularly where I live, where the older members of the community are held as mines of information about the past, about herbal lore, agricultural understanding, et al, not to mention about human nature.

I’ve already made a commitment to live to 160, so I’m only now just getting to grips with what I want to do with my life; you know, settling down, establishing a career path, getting focused; but not everyone is as gleefully self-delusional. In the murderous ecosystem of the city, if you’re in the wilderness of your mid-40’s and trying to break in then trust me, you whippersnappers, you are invisible. There are no equivalent superlative headlines for us, no ‘Most Middle-Aged Ever Novelist Published’. You’d better not just write, but write five times as well, make ten times the effort, because you have nothing else going for you than your words. And Dionysus help you if you are a middle-aged actress. If you think there are few challenging roles for young women, in that wind-swept wasteland even my dearest 50 year old friends wander hopelessly, eyeing with suspicion offers of ‘Grandma’, ‘Friend’ and ‘Nurse’.

What is young, anyway? Why are there no dramaturgical bursaries for 85 year olds?

Dionysus was also known as Eleutherios, the Liberator, he who freed one from one’s normal self; the self constructed from assumptions, the self that dwelt within the confines of civilisation. Yet despite, this he was considered a promoter of civilisation. He was also the patron saint of the theatre.

Sex

I spell my first name ambiguously for a reason.

Here’s an interesting result on Google:

https://www.pwcenter.org/~pwcenter/opportunities.php?c=7&s=Eng

You can filter opportunities in various ways, by medium (short plays, 10 minute plays etc) by location and also by race. You can filter opportunities for ‘Women Authors’, but not by ‘Men Authors’. Is this because there are far too many opportunities for us? Would I want to enter a competition restricted to male only authors? Would anyone dare to run such a competition?

There’s an International Centre For Women Playwrights (http://www.womenplaywrights.org/) but no International Centre For Men Playwrights (ironically, a Google search helpfully asks: ‘Did you mean: international centre for women playwrights?’)

I’m being facetious, I suppose. But Catherine, and Faye in her response, raise a need to examine two distinct areas: the challenges faced by women writing and the challenges of writing for women. The first global, industrial, in need of revolution, the second personal and the work of every writer.

Interestingly the whole brief of 50/50 forced writers to focus on creating characters that must, by their very nature, withstand being played by both men and women. That opportunity contains a trap: you could write characters that are sexless, mere ciphers that can be wielded by actors to serve a theatrical structure. Or, you could take it as an opportunity to write characters that are sufficiently complex and that leave off the sociological assumptions of gender, in such a way that by being played by men or women not merely works but further imbues them with subtle but fascinating depth, as if one were shining differently coloured lights through the same crystal, and revealing hitherto unseen structures and flaws. I had that experience during Round One, as I will explain.

Here’s an interesting thing I learned whilst on a visit to the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin, about the evolution of the image of Dionysus in Grecian art. He wasn’t always a swarthy, bearded god surrounded by ecstatic women. That depiction came later. In the beginning he was a soft, voluptuous ambiguity, both male and female. In art ‘he’ was thus depicted. In text ‘he’ was described as ‘man-womanish’.

Words

One, tiny, barely stapes-sized bone of contention: I put words in no-one’s mouth. I place them on paper and you can choose to speak them or not.

Of course the overarching criticism is that the entire theatrical infrastructure is dominated by a selection committee inherently male; and it is through their choices that women are asked to perform the words of men; that is a valid issue to be explored. However you may be interested to know that in a parallel industry, that of publishing, the majority of gatekeepers; editors, agents, buyers; are women. As someone with pretensions in that field it is something I have learned I should bear in mind but not feel intimidated by.

But from down here in the gutter with the rest of us, sharing pen nibs and scraps of parchment, all of that is irrelevant. We are all writers, we are all evolving and learning together. Those of you who say you are not writers are liars. As Faye and Catherine explained, it’s not a thing you are, it’s a thing you do and, with Fed’s encouragement, they did. The more you do, the better you get. Further, the particular genius of The Factory is that it provides actors the opportunity to be writers-in-the-moment, either explicitly as when performing in The Seagull, or at a more subtle level when taking on roles without prior preparation.

The reason I started to write was not so much a desire to have others perform my work, but because I couldn’t find anyone writing the sort of things I wanted to perform. This contention was much more thematic and stylistic, since I have very clear ideas about what I want to see on stage and no-one I knew was doing it. In order to do that, though, one needs to become comfortable with first principles.

So to address this idea of male writers who furnish women with stereotypical roles, or roles in which they cannot exercise their talents; and, indeed, female writers who do men the same injustice; here’s my rule of thumb:

Any writer, male or female, who fails to provide in their characters full, engaging, complex and challenging roles is not exhibiting sexist bias but bad writing. For me that is a more profound and shattering criticism than one of gender assumptions.

One of the discussions during the 50/50 workshops was of how roles could, or should, be played by both men and women. I recounted an experience I had had during Round One, last year.

I brought along several pieces; The Dialogues, a gender neutral set of duologues; The Misunderstanding, a duologue with a male and female character; and A Quick Myth, specifically written for two women.

Working on these various pieces with three brilliant actors, Kate A, Lucy C, Joanna C, I discovered something intriguing. Whilst the characters in Myth and Dialogues work reasonably well because their themes are heightened to the point of the mythological, The Misunderstanding was specifically written for a man and women, the story specifically gender biased, the themes specifically addressing undertones of sexuality, longing, rejection. What happened when both roles were played by women?

It got better.

As I alluded to above, the roles I had seen as male and female were suddenly illuminated in a new light. Entirely new resonances in their relationship, entirely new, more dangerous areas opened up. Assumptions about the extra-textual world shifted kaleidoscopically. And I wrote the bloody thing.

Does this mean we should all write gender neutral roles? No, I don’t think so. I think it means we should write for human beings, rather than ciphers. We should write better people. Willy Russell, one male author who does write profound female characters, revealed he got his insights as a child, hiding under the kitchen table, listening to his mother, aunts and their friends talking. There is no invisible barrier between male and female insight into each other’s worlds, except when created by our assumptions and those imposed upon us. If we tear apart these assumptions, all that remains is endless exploration and encouragement. For this reason our respective muses are our consorts: a woman has her animus, a man his anima. We each have within us the capacity to step between these worlds. Our goal is to become whole.

Other names for Dionysus include: Dithyrambos, The Double Door; and Sabazios, The Shatterer. Pentheus was torn apart because he banned the worship of Dionysus - his cousin - the androgynous God of ecstasy and civilisation, the forest and the theatre. Pentheus means ‘man of sorrows’.

Debate

I think James’ questions are valid, vital and worthy of exploration. I’m also of the opinion that debate is delicious; action, ecstatic.

What about a future project that calls for submissions from men and women, from younger and older voices, that demands parts written for characters female, male and those in between, for juvenile and mature parts? Then the game is to cross-cast them, to rehearse them, to provide feedback about them, not in order to chastise the writers about their gender or age assumptions but to explore the idea of fully fleshed out characters.

It will be uncomfortable and challenging, I would imagine. Painful. Insulting on occasion. But, by Dionysus, richly rewarding.