The Orchard Project, day 4- writing ‘Thrown’ with Mike Bartlett

Mike Bartlett & I are on a writing retreat, working on Thrown, a play-with-music for the Royal Court.  It will have two rehearsed readings as part of the Court’s Rough Cuts season, for which you can buy tickets here.  Mike’s new play, Cock, opens at the Royal Court on 13th November 2009.

If you’re a regular reader of my thoughts [Hi mum!] you might have read that I’m not a big fan of musical theatre. However, as someone who both writes music and plays, I’m well aware of the power in both artforms; this all came to a head around a year ago, when Mike Bartlett asked me to collaborate on a play he was writing, called Thrown; it was still in development then (as it is now), and he was also interested in finding ways to allow dramatic action and music to interact and inform each other, without ending up with what we both perceived as the superficiality of musical theatre.

In true socialist fashion, the first thing that I did was to write A Manifesto.  As with nearly everything that sets itself up in opposition to something else, it’s a flawed statement of intent, but it did succeed in fixing a lot of the thoughts that we wanted to work on.  What with the usually hurried process of rehearsing for a reading, we had a limited time to get things together, and lots of my/our high-faluting ideas had to be left by the wayside, in order to get something performable ready in a couple of days.

So, fast forwarding to now- Mike and I are now in the town of Hunter, NY in the Catskill Mountains, courtesy of The Orchard Project and the Royal Court Theatre.  We’re here to work on the project some more and, in particular, make our links between the musical and theatrical elements clearer, bringing in some of the manifesto thoughts that we’d had to leave out of the play’s earlier incarnation.

What we’re striving for, while we’re here, is a piece of work in which the form and content inform each other- there should be a dialogue between the narrative of the play, and the structure we’re creating in order to tell that story.

Prior to coming here, I was a little baffled as to why the Court thought it was a good idea to send two English people, writing a play about England, and living within a 1 hour bus ride of each other, off to the Catskill Mountains, at great cost and inconvenience.  Having been here for a few days, though, it seems clear: what The Orchard Project have is a large number of artists in a small area, for a short period of time, all of whom are keen to talk about their practice, and to learn from the experiences of others.  Late-night discussions have become a commonplace, and it’s clear that there are a lot of extremely passionate theatremakers coming up through the colleges and universities.  I don’t think Mike and I would have been able to do the work we have so far, had we not been in this environment. It really is good not to have to be in London, sometimes.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say while I’m here; in particular, I’d like to talk a little more about how Mike and I are working on the play.  If, god forbid, you happen to have any questions about any of this, please do leave a comment and I’ll answer as fully as I can.