Our first, exciting Factory Feedback Thing was rolled out for the benefit of the Hampstead 5050 project writers.

33 pieces were submitted by 16 different writers.
24 people turned up and of those 9 were writers.
We had 3 hours so there was no stopping for more than a stretch and a cig.

The routine we worked out for this inaugural outing of the Feedback Thing was that we listened to each piece being read (at a bit of a lick) by our obliging readers then responded in turn around the circle taking no more than 30 seconds each. This routine was mainly dictated by the pressure of time but that pressure, in the circumstances, turned out to be an excellent obstruction - focus and energy were very high.
The writers also asked, before the readings, for attention to be paid to particular areas of their piece.

What this meant, was that each respondent would inevitably not have time to say or formulate each point they wanted to make - or to engage with others’ responses - so we will be taking some of the discussion further here, in threads. (Below.)

These were the pieces we looked at:
EVAN - Twelve
JOHN - Poll Tax Riots
NIRJAY - What They Were Gassing on the Street (4.30)
ELENA - Spaceman-A Love Play (9.50)
KOBNA - The Last Magic (6.30)
ROSA - Before Blur Got Big (4.30)
ALAN - Adventure Playground Leeds (6.50)
PAUL - Underwater Love
STEVE - Euro 96

And that was seriously all we could manage in the time we had. Not bad.

I wrote this blog and then trashed my computer and lost it so I am now starting again. All I can remember were the three subtitles I came up with:
"Bran Pit", "Style and Story" and "Briefs Outside Pants".
I wasted two hours holding my head in my hands which was time that could have been better spent - come with me now back to the beginning.

BRAN PIT

TC has this charming and quaint analogy he uses about a Bran Tub. It’s a bit parish fete but it works. He talks about “first-balling”… that is, sticking your hand in the Bran Tub and picking out the first ball you touch. That first ball is your initial Good Idea - your First Response. But what happens if you go further, past the next ball and the next and the next? Till your whole arm is buried deep in the unknowable depths of the Bran Tub and your fingers are sweeping past heavier and denser shoals of bran, past those strange fish no-one has ever seen with torches hanging off their foreheads, weird fiends who lurk in dark pools, where you have to wear a special suit to prevent yourself from being crushed by the weight of distance between you and the world.
There.
If you go there, you see, I think this is what I was after - you get Bran Pit.*

This little idea pervaded the evening one way or another, which is at is should be. Most of what we saw were first drafts and in a first draft a writer is still finding their way around the bran tub. Pissing in dark corners. Clutching the First Ball.
For many respondents it was time to get on and tell the story that the writer clearly wanted to tell. Or choose which story, of several in one piece, was the one.

This applies in many different ways - but it goes to really examining what is the impulse behind the piece. If it was to illustrate an event or a period of history, then your work, darls, is cut out.
If it was to show how cleverly you understood the brief then, hon, you is on a hiding to nothing.
But I am betting it is not, in the case of any of our writers, either of these things, not when push comes to frappe - it is to tell a story, scratch an itch.
So locate and scratch.

The general note was it is ok to be in control of your material. We have seen again and again how specificity is rewarded - especially in this environment where, deprived of the usual tools, tying the action down seems so elusive an achievement. If the writer really is in touch with the action of the scene it can go in any direction. The looser this commitment, paradoxically, the less the actors have to chuck themselves at.

It is the writer’s choice to take responsibility for the story - the brief might lull us into thinking areas of fluff can be combed out by the competent actor. Several times it was said of a piece: "I don’t think you should worry too much about that - it’s my job as an actor to sort that out.” But my personal view (and I'll get heated about it) is, as a writer, the last thing I want from the actors is a hand-patting attitude of: “I’ll take care of the tricky bits... don’t you worry.”
They are MY tricky bits.
Thanks.
I’ll keep them in, sweetie, work them out and make them impossible.

To augment that note I’ll add this from Simon Stephens in the Observer on the weekend: “It is the playwright's task... to change the question from 'Why is this happening to me?' to 'Why am I doing this?'”

STYLE AND STORY/ BRIEFS OUTSIDE PANTS

When the brief becomes the drama:
The brief needs to be kicked into touch or left outside the door whining because finally we are not really interested in how the writer fulfills the brief - we want the story. Again this note (which I have this morning decided is the same note) is appropriate for this stage as we are still, generally, getting the hang of balancing the What with the How.

The response: “What an interesting project/ way of working/ way of depicting that historical event…” lets us and our audience off the hook. We are just lying around basking in our cleverness. Rather we are after a connection with the drama, the story, an event in space and time that an audience and a set of actors share. For god’s sake let’s not have or expect anyone admire our work.

While it is great to see writers really stretching what is possible - let's not forget simple can also be a triumph.

“What the play is about” is a verboten area in this project - and in the Factory generally. But if I am reading a script and I really can't see what on earth the writer is going on about, if I feel I am being made to guess or I am being left out of something esoteric - then I am going to a) switch off or b) demand an explosive and life-changing pay-off.

Abstraction and poetry are fine - in fact often excellent and wonderful. But it is easy to believe that poetry is the artistic act of holding cards close to the chest. TC often evokes the story of Scylla and Charybdis. (See glossary.) The trap on one side is to do the audience’s work for them and explain everything - on the other hand the opposite trap is to take NO responsibility for how “accessible” the material is and let them “make of it what they will”. In both cases we (the audience) won’t much care to bother - mainly because it doesn’t look much fun playing that game.
I express it like this with some caution because neither are we in the business of second-guessing the audience’s needs, but we do know that when we work with honesty we steer a sure course between these two monsters.

In each Act of the Factory's Hamlet, the players are given an "obstruction" by the MC. This is an instruction that affects the way that Act is played. It might be that you may not touch the ground while you are speaking, or you have to sing everything, or you have to use members of the audience as puppets - but what we are striving to do is have the play triumph over the obstruction - we try to incorporate and explore that obstruction so that eventually the audience, and we, forget it and get on, instead, with the play.

I think I called that “briefs outside pants” for no good reason at all.

There. What I have learned above all is never try to write your lost document from memory. Just go back to the beginning and rely on the still unsatisfied need to say it out loud. Go back to the scratch.


*Bran - you see - in your pits.**
**Pits, as in, armpits.