Why writing a play is like finding a door in a fairy tree

I’m writing this well-overdue post from the Winnebago at my Mum’s place, on the banks of the Hume Weir. It’s where I stay when I’m in near Albury, at the site of what used to be a railway station long ago. 

 Earlier, on the way to the toilet block (things are basic here: no connection to the town water supply, next to zero phone reception, and if I can get enough electricity to charge my laptop and my phone I consider it a good day*) Mum showed me a little project she’s been working on.

It’s rather delightful and it’s also a cute (possibly twee) metaphor. There’s a tree near the picnic area of the reserve that has a knot in the trunk that resembles a door. It reminded Mum of something from a fairy tale. So she and her partner found an antique door knob and attached it to the tree. It was a simple thing, but it made Mum happy. The excitement of some visiting kids sparked her off on another mission—to source a small ceramic fairy and a set of toadstools to add to the tree.

One day a lady came up to the house to ask Mum if she knew who had adorned the fairy tree, and if they’d mind if she made her own contribution. A few weeks later, another set of campers asked Mum if the owner of the fairy tree would appreciate some landscaping.

The fairy tree now has some solar lights, a cross-bar of branches in the ‘window’, a path of pebbles around it, and geraniums planted around the trunk. It is inhabited by four fairies, an ornamental worm that reminds me the worm from the Labyrinth, and a hedgehog. 

It continues to grow and change. One of the fairies fell out and broke its wings a few weeks ago. Mum glued the wings back on, and it is sitting on a lower branch temporarily, while Mum figures out where to put it. This is exactly what I’ve been doing lately while I puzzle over how to put this play together.

At the tree, some of the pebbles have disappeared from the fairy’s garden, changing the boundaries, but someone will probably replenish them soon.

The best thing about the fairy tree is that it’s organically evolved into a collaborative art project, and there’s just as much enjoyment in the process of making as there is in viewing.

In today’s workshop, I worked with a combination of new actors and actors I’d worked with on the previous draft of this script. With my director Travis, we had a table read and then started the feedback portion by going around the table and hearing each actor’s contribution. From this gentle start point the conversation built up until we were throwing around new ideas, finding solutions to problems, finding problems, finding opportunities—and finding things we hadn’t seen before. Things that, like the door in the tree trunk, were already there, just waiting for someone to add a doorknob. Most pleasingly, Travis and I were quite literally on the same page; comparing notes afterwards, we’d marked the same parts to cut or move.

It was one of those workshops that makes me realise why I do this—and why I enjoy collaboration so much.

Mum’s motivation to put that door knob there was simply because it seemed like fun. ‘I just had to,’ she said. ‘It was perfect. How could I say no to the opportunity?’ (Insert pun about opportunity knocking….)

For me, it’s the same thing—writing a play seems like a good idea. We all think that to start with, then inevitably hate the project for a while. But more to the point, we do it because—well, why wouldn’t we? We are compelled to create. Just as my Mum couldn’t keep walking past that tree, I cannot deny my urge to write.

And while we can do it alone, there’s so much to be gained by collaborating. In fact, that’s what has made me focus in on playwriting as a form above others.

So, the moral to this story, if there is one, is this:

Building a play can be a lot like making a whimsical fairy tree. All it take is an idea and imagination.

(Sometimes a suspension of disbelief.)

And as people get involved and share your vision you create something that can be shared and enjoyed by others.

And that feels pretty good too.



*I actually wrote this post on Saturday, but haven’t had an internet connection since then. Or reliable electricity.

What's happening with the Pyjama Girl?

I realise it's been a while since I gave you an update. So here's what's been happening. Redrafting, mostly.

In December, I revised the script based on the reading we held in Albury with the HotHouse ensemble.

Following this revision, I worked with some Canberra-based actors (Ben Drysdale, Cathy Crowley, Joanna Richards, Gill Lugton, Ben Crowley and Janine O'Dwyer) and director Cammy T to workshop the script and consider new possibilities for staging. Cammy T's brief was to take the script in unexpected places, which he did. This helped me get out of the mindset of the convention of actors directly addressing the audience, which is often used in verbatim and gave me ideas about how to tell the story, one which is very heavy on detail and information, in a more theatrical way.

In February I turned in a new draft, moving further away from the notion of true verbatim theatre--but at the same time, incorporating other research elements.

The next step is to go down and spend a few days doing creative development with HotHouse Theatre with the actors who will be cast in the play later in the year. It's a great opportunity to work with them throughout the process.

In the meantime, I've been performing a trilogy of short monologues called Dead Beauty Queens. I've created three different characters: the ghost of a murdered beauty queen, a killer, and a wannabe. Dead Beauty Queens is being performed at the Ice Age Theatre festival, as part of the You Are Here festival.

Photo of me by C. Jackway.

Unsurprisingly, this is a side project that has been inspired by the work I've done on the Pyjama Girl project. In the course of research I was struck by how many beautiful women were murdered.

The public reading held at HotHouse was in the week following the violent murder of Jill Meagher. Earlier this week, as I prepared for my first performance of Dead Beauty Queens, I was driving in to work listening to the news on the radio. The first story was the latest on the court case of Oscar Pistorius, the South African athlete on trial for murdering his model girlfriend. The second news story was about beauty queen and murder victim Alison Baden-Clay; her husband's murder trial was underway.

This all makes me think that not only is the Pyjama Girl's story important to tell; it will always be important not to forget.

A letter to Arts NSW

Update: Stoked to hear that common sense has prevailed. Arts NSW is giving HotHouse Theatre transitional funding for 2013 (at the amount originally requested) so HotHouse can continue making and presenting locally and nationally significant work. Also goes to show that writing rantypants letters (see below) can help.

It was amazing to see the surge of support from across the country and the good folk at HotHouse reckon the enthusiastic and widespread letter and email writing campaign to Arts NSW and Arts Minister George Souris had a definite impact on this decision. They sincerely thank the local community in Albury Wodonga and the national industry for their support during this tumultuous time.

Well done to everyone at HotHouse and chookers for the 2013 season launch next week!

I am writing to express my outrage at the appalling decision of Arts NSW to defund HotHouse Theatre in 2013.

Beyond the concerning absence of fair process and transparency from Arts NSW, this decision further undermines the value of the arts in Australia and isolates people living in regional Australia.

Wayne Swan said no Australian should be disadvantaged because of their postcode. Growing up in the postcode of 3691, I experienced the isolation, social exclusion and lack of opportunity that the federal Government has worked so hard to tackle in the past few years.

I wasn’t good at sport, so I didn’t fit in. I was so shy and socially undeveloped that my primary school had me tested for autism. In secondary school, I felt acutely disadvantaged because even with distance education, my school of 1000 students was unable to offer the same curriculum as metro schools.

Then I discovered drama. Through the arts, I learnt how to express myself, think critically, interact with others and other crucial life skills; I wouldn’t be where I am today without theatre.

At 16, I did work experience at HotHouse and saw how it was doing so much with so little. Telling local (and national) stories, providing emerging artists with their start, and building an organisation of influence and high regard. Transforming a tin shed into a significant arts venue.

The effect of arts may not be easily quantifiable or tangible and that is precisely why government funding is so vital.

Denying funding to such a key organisation is not only emblematic of the recently popular myth that the arts don’t matter in a country where sport is king—it’s heartbreaking.

The fact is, HotHouse has experienced sustained growth and remains a valued institution, by the local community, by artists, and nationally.

Art is not fat that can be trimmed. 

If you’re not willing to put a price on it, then how can artists? By devaluing the work of a vital Key Organisation you set a dangerous precedent for a slide into a cultural wasteland. A far call from the vision for a creative Australia that had bi-partisan support at the Australia 2020 Summit.

Here’s my stake: I’m an emerging playwright who has spent 2012 developing a new work through the Australia Council JUMP Mentorship program.

HotHouse, which remains one of the few remaining companies specialising in the development of new work and supporting emerging playwrights, was to produce this new work.

In fact, just a few days ago, I was delighted to proofread the publicity artwork.

Today, I was devastated to learn that once again regional Australia has been sidelined. The message seems loud and clear: you don’t matter.

Regards

Emma Gibson

What I'm doing now...

No, this blog hasn’t gone dark. I’ve come to the end of my Jump Mentorship, so have been allowing the dust to settle post-acquittal.

Thus I reach the end of phase 1 of this project. More on that later.
First, I want to acknowledge the great support I got throughout the Jump mentorship process, particularly from Jan and David at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, and of course, my mentor Colette, who warned me of the Dark Side but then trusted I had enough of the Force to be able to decide myself whether or not to cross over. She’ll shortly be rewarded with an utterly heinous Scandinavian snow globe, which I expect will take pride of place on her mantelpiece.

Not this snowglobe though, sorry Coda.

Here’s what I’ve learnt:
• Dream big
• Work hard
• Have integrity
• Take up every opportunity you can
• You can’t please everyone all the time (so instead: write a good play).

Yes, they’re all platitudes and yes they’re things I already knew. Not to sound like a know-it-all. I think they’re things most of us know—but putting them into practice is often a different story.

The biggest accomplishment for me this year is the way I view my craft. I still want to be more disciplined and structured. I keep telling myself that I want to write for at least an hour a day—but that often doesn’t happen. Instead, I’ll spend hours on the laptop researching, editing, planning —because often, those types of things consume more of your time.

So I’ve learnt to write when and where I can. I’m very fond of 30-minute creative bursts. In fact, on my lunchbreak today I jotted out an early draft of a scene in my notebook sitting in the grass at the park across the road from work.

I also feel like I’m getting more involved in the arts community, and I’m definitely spending a lot more time at the theatre. That’s where I’m headed tonight.

So I no longer view myself as a hum-drum dabbler. I don’t think I’ll be getting Nobel prizes anytime soon either, but I do feel like I’m slowing clawing my way out of the metaphorical womb to one day become an ‘emerged’ (past tense) playwright. Though I don’t think the development journey is ever really done.
So, where to from here?

I’m still researching and am meeting an interview subject this weekend. Following a successful reading in Albury in October, and good feedback from actors and audience members, I’m working on the third draft as we speak.

I’ll be workshopping that with some actors and a director and then we’ll be having a reading at the Street Theatre in Canberra, in front of an invited audience.
From that—well, I’ll then start work on draft 4.

Early next year, I’ll start development activities with HotHouse Theatre, which will produce the pyjama girl play almost exactly 12 months from today.

It seems like a long way off, but part of the beauty of writing plays is the collaborative aspects and partly because of this, the development process can take time. For me, the average length of time I spend writing a script is a year on average. The last one was closer to 2.5 years. It was an epic though, to be fair, and what I’m terming my ‘apprenticescript’.

I learnt a stack from that. I’m learning a stack more from this one, and I know there’s more exciting stuff waiting for me next year.

Hearing voices

A few days ago, I sat in HotHouse Theatre's studio space and heard the play read aloud by actors for the very first time, which is always a thrill. It’s also terrifying. Much like an amusement park ride (including the sensation of butterflies in my stomach immediately before).

Hearing other people give voice to the characters has helped clarify the story for me—and more importantly, the voices that are missing. I know I have more work to do on the script. I know this gives me wonderful opportunities.

And while I couldn’t stop myself from making some small revisions, I also know that it’s important to leave it with the actors for now and see what they find in the script, without the writer in the room.

While I’ve shot back to Canberra for a few days, director Travis Dowling has been working with the HotHouse actor ensemble and the delightful Susie Dee, as well as HotHouse artistic director Jon Halpin, to prepare the public debut of The Pyjama Girl play.

It’s a great opportunity for audience members to see something so early in its development and have their say on it—and this is important to me because many people in the community have expressed a sense of ownership or connection to the story.

At the same time, the talented emerging actors taking part in the read are getting to learn more about the process of developing and workshopping a script.

When I hit the Hume Highway on Friday night (the same road travelled by the Sydney detectives in 1934 when they were summoned to investigate the murder of the woman found in the culvert) to travel the familiar road to Albury/Wodonga, it will be with a great sense of anticipation.

So, if you’re in the area, head along to the Butter Factory Theatre (Gateway Village, Wodonga) to hear HotHouse present a rehearsed reading of The Pyjama Girl. Twice! 3 pm and 7 pm. Entry is a gold coin donation, going to Betty's Place Women's Refuge.

Verbatim theatre and the road to the truth

Now, as we all know, we often find ourselves on unfamiliar roads. Not sure how we got there, but fairly sure it will still take us to where we want to go.

I set out out on a journey to write a play about an event I think has played an important part in the consciousness of the community.

I thought the best way to do that was through an on-stage documentary, and I chose Verbatim Theatre as my form.

Verbatim Theatre is a specific type of theatre that involves interview people connected to a particular event, and then using those transcripts (and other ‘found’ materials like newspaper articles or court transcripts) to fashion a script. It’s an area that has long fascinated me, but I’ve never written a script before, so this has been a great opportunity to learn about it for me.

But here’s what I’ve discovered: the pyjama girl—the story I think needs to be told—is perhaps not best suited to the verbatim form. 

This is, in its simplest way, because verbatim depends on getting the words from people who experienced the event. This of course, is challenging because a) not many of the people who lived in the area at the time are still alive and b) how connected to the pyjama girl—the actual girl—are the residents of the Albury area anyway? It’s argued often that she wasn’t a local, and that the killer can’t have been a local, otherwise he would’ve known about the apparently bottomless pool of water a bit further down the road. A much better place to dispose of a body.

So what I’ve got is second hand information. It’s important to note that rumours were flying thick and fast and we, as human creatures, are all biased—even me, as a playwright.

One of the things Verbatim Theatre seeks to do (something that current affairs journalism often fails at) is to present information in a way that allows audience members to take away the truth.

But you’re seeing that through my filter.

So, what I’ve figured out is that this story needs a little bit of fiction in the way it is presented. I haven’t altered any facts about the pyjama girl, but I have invented a character to give us an idea of what the pyjama girl, whoever she was, might have been like. After all, she could have been anyone—and that’s one of the points I make in the current script.

My mentor, Colette, explained that in Verbatim Theatre, the playwright speaks ‘with’ not ‘for’ the characters.

But by creating a character, and constructing a voice for her (based on research), I am in fact, speaking ‘for’ the character.

Which means this play is not what we would strictly term Verbatim Theatre. It is, however, still research informed.

And I don’t mean this in the way Hollywood movies claim to be ‘based on a true story’.

The shape will change as I work with HotHouse to develop the play, but all the interviews I conducted with people in Albury and elsewhere, and extensive research I’ve undertaken, in libraries, museums—and of course, the Albury LibraryMuseum—have played a part in building the current script.

Ultimately, I want to use theatre as a way of getting to something truthful. But it’s unlikely there is anyone living who knows that full truth of the pyjama girl mystery. 

ANOTHER overdue blog: Stockholm

And another international excuse.

I'm sure I project an image of a glamorous jet set life style, but I assure you this is absolutely not the case. In fact, I'm typing this from my couch with a snuggie blanket over my knees and my cat at my feet.

In August, I went to Sweden for the Women Playwrights International Conference. It was awesome. It was utterly inspirational, and in has indirectly changed the direction of this play. More about that next time.

Personally, I reckon I’m pretty terrible at networking. The very word terrifies me. Standing around in a theatre foyer gossiping or discussing the show I’ve just seen comes naturally, but tell me to sell myself or my work – in the same theatre foyer with the same people standing around – and I discover my gob suddenly glued shut.

In Stockholm though, I gained confidence in talking about myself and my work. Suddenly it was okay, because by being at WPIC, I felt I deserved to call myself a playwright. For me there are two reasons a) I realised how important it is to me and b) I felt my writing must be a little bit okay given my script was one of 100 selected from around the world to be presented there, though I was absolutely in awe of the people around me, particularly the enormously talented Australian contingent.

Swedish actors perform my play (not the pyjama girl)

Speaking of, I'm going to defer further description of Stockholm adventures to two other lady playwrights of my acquaintance, Zoe and Jenny, with whom I shared a squealing reunion on a cobblestone street in Stockholm)--go on, read their delightful blogs. 

Taking on my identity as playwright was a big breakthrough. Second major breakthrough was the realisation that we’re lucky in Australia. Sure, European countries have fabulously structured theatre industries, where actors have wages mandated by experience and in some places working in theatre is the type of career choice that won’t break your parents’ hearts. Necessarily.

BUT I realise how lucky I am to be able to create work just because I want to create it. Not because it needs to be created out of protest. Not because it is the only way to have an issue heard. Not even because it is a tool for education and community building. But simply because I have something I want to say.

Theatre is a wonderful tool for all of those things. Of course I can still write political theatre. But I can also write a romantic comedy if I want to. The freedom to be purely creative is not a luxury enjoyed by playwrights the world over, particularly female playwrights. Freedom of expression is another issue entirely.

We all know the power of theatre, and the conference theme, the Democratic Stage was apt.

As an emerging playwright from a non-metro city, I felt like a grade 6 moving to the big school—there is so much out there that I don’t know about the industry, both in Australia and overseas.

In Egypt, where theatre is telling the stories of revolution that journalism failed to tell; In India, where theatre teaches people that it’s okay to have a daughter, in the ten countries across the world participating in an international theatre project built around the shocking fact that domestic violence kills more women worldwide than cancer.

And this made me realise just how important it is to tell the story of the Pyjama Girl. 

I was lucky enough to attend a research-informed theatre workshop run by some wonderful Canadian playwrights. One of them, Tara Goldstein has written a book on it Staging Harriet's House: Writing and Producing Research-Informed Theatre. Now, back in Australia, nearing the end of the JUMP project, I've been reading this book as I redrafted the script and have come to an important realisation. The play I'm writing is not verbatim at all. It cannot be. 

And on that cliffhanger... I'll leave you until next time.