(Bear with me. It’s a big post.) 

I think it’s fair to say that last week damn near killed me. But I am alive and well, albeit my body clock has not yet regained normal functionality. Apologies for my disappearance from the bloggerverse.

Last week passed in a blur between work and The SBW Stables, Griffin Theatre’s home in Kings Cross.  It’s Griffin’s 30th birthday and they celebrated with a week-long programme of events, and I ended up there five nights of the week. The only event I missed (regrettably) was the closing street party, due to an engagement party (my own, so I couldn’t sneak out unfortunately!) I hear that a good time was had by all, and I hope Griffin makes it an annual event!

On Monday night it was my weekly dramaturgy session at Griffin with my wonderful director Sarah Giles. She is the current director in residence at Griffin and we are making the most of her time there, hopefully working towards a workshop in the coming months. We seemed to have perfected our dramaturgy sessions – will blog in good time on what actually makes for ‘good dramaturgy.

Tuesday was of course the Griffin Award announcement. It was no surprise to me that Lachlan Philpott was the winner after I walked into the foyer, saw his mum there and realised Lachlan was still in Ireland. Lachlan was one of the Australian tutors  at World Interplay, and is a brilliant writer as well as a fabulously fun human being. His play, Silent Disco, was a response to his work as a high school teacher and his desire to accurately depict modern relationships between teachers and students, as well as treating teenage characters with dignity and respect. As a high school teacher in a previous life, I connected with this well and truly. I adore Lachlan’s writing style and loved Colder, his Stablemates show at Griffin last year. The only minor issue I had was that at times I wanted to see certain moments that were only described in the play. Apart from that it was fantastic to see plays being written about young characters, which is so rarely done.        

Wednesday night was my one night off. I spent it by trying to draft and watch Apocalypse Now for the first time. (It was suggested as homework for my play) I only got through an hour of it before I crashed and burned (ie. fell asleep on couch) and took an early night to prepare for the inevitable lack of sleep on Friday.

Thursday night was spent at The Stables celebrating the launch of Short Circuit, a new  collection of short plays published by Currency Press. The collection is comprised of 7-On’s The Seven Needs (each titled from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), Seasons by the 2008 Griffin Resident writers (Nicki Bloom, Sue Smith, Jonathan Gavin, Rick Viede) and The Fates by this year’s residents, Ari Lander, Catherine Ryan and Kamarra Bell-Wykes. It was wonderful to see Hilary Bell’s play Shelter performed on the night (featuring her mother, actor Anna Volska, directed by John Sheedy). A discussion panel on the nature and rise of the 10 minute play followed, chaired by Lee Lewis, with Augusta Supple, Tom Holloway and Alex Broun. There were several interesting debates on the topic, namely the instance of competition playwriting (ala Short and Sweet) vs festival curatorship (Brand Spanking New). (I have to say I am firmly in the anti-competition camp). Again, that whole topic is for another post. 

And now to the Generator. In short, it was great, I survived, and I would do it again.

Now for the detailed version. We met at Griffin at 6.30pm on Friday night. My Friday had been full of high emotion and more than a little personal drama and work stress, so I was longing for a Friday night drink. I had to mentally steer myself away from this idea, for fear of complete failure if I fell asleep or got too tipsy before embarking on my ten minute ‘masterpiece.’ As luck would have it though, as soon as I entered the foyer I was offered a drink. (“To settle the nerves!” I reasoned. Beer was the smarter choice, no sleepy red wine tonight!) The six directors were Theatre Forward, NIDA’s 2008 graduating class who have formed a creative alliance – Kate Revz, Morgan Dowsett, Mark Grentell, Imara Savage, Dave Harmon and Sarah Giles. The five other playwrights were Tamara Asmar, Stephen Graham, Jess Bellamy, Nakkiah Lui and Kit Brookman. I had joked for a week that I would either get Kate or Sarah (as I already work with them on my current plays)   

We waited for playwrights and directors to arrive – nothing like traffic nightmares on a Friday – until by 7pm we were ready to get started. Box 1 had 6 envelopes, each holding one word titles. Box two had a director’s surname and the headshots of 2 or 3 actors. We chose from each box and held our envelopes nervously before ripping them open all at once. My title was ‘Foot.’ Others had ‘Once’, ‘Class’, ‘Step’, ‘Tear’ and ‘Bill.’ My second envelope revealed that I would be working with, surprise surprise, Sarah Giles. My three actors were Caroline Craig, Garth Holcombe and Lyndon Jones. We already make a great team, so I would say we had a minor head start on the others. Each writer and director team had 20 minutes to brainstorm before the writers trotted off home.

Sarah helped me articulate every thought relating to ‘Foot’ I could think of, while I scribbled them down and eliminated ideas that didn’t quite explode off the page for me. By the 20 minute mark I had two clear ideas that we were both excited about and I whittled it down to the one that seemed likely to bear the most theatrical fruit. In a nutshell – a woman has a restraining order on her ex, though it operates in a backward kind of way. Instead of staying far away, he has to stay within one foot of her. My play was to encompass her attempt to go on a date, with her ex by her side.      

Off I trotted home, ruminating over my idea all the way. I ordered some food, set up my notebook and laptop, red bulls and lollipops (courtesy of supportive friends) and logged into twitter so I could document the crazy process. I was lucky that one of the other writers, Nakkiah Lui, stayed on twitter all night with me. It is a lonely, bizarre process, and it was so good to have someone to keep checking in on that was jointly experiencing the evening. The writing process was relatively smooth going, though the drafting was long and over-drawn, owing to the fact that my brain got progressively slower and unable to handle nit-picky editing. I think at about 4am I came to the conclusion that it was never going to be perfect and I should just send it off. I didn’t get to sleep until 5.30am, with the unfamiliar noise of birds waking up and the sun rising, to make me realise that my body was really, really confused. I attempted sleep but it was fitful, all the while receiving excited messages and phone calls from Sarah and other generator members with questions like “Do you have a frilly jacket?” and “We might just have to change a line here and there.” Honestly, I couldn’t remember what I had written, and replied as much. On waking in the afternoon, I debated whether to open my word doc and read what they had been rehearsing all day, but I thought that might completely freak me out, so stayed blissfully ignorant.

It’s a curious thing to sit in an audience and watch your play being performed, sometimes not knowing actually what happens next. Some small additions were made by the actors, and many moments were not how I imagined them, which is practically expected in the theatre, and is what I love it for. None of the writers were feeling particularly confident, but there was an overwhelming sense of – “Ah well, what can we do?” We were really lucky to have such a supportive crowd behind us in the theatre, and they were packed like sardines to see the show. (Which should make this an annual event, hey Griffin?) Of course, we were also blessed with skilled directors and some pretty open and amazing actors (most of them off-book!)   

I won’t try and deconstruct every play on the night, but I will say two important things; 1) somehow there was the perfect mix of comedic, tragic, intellectual, dark and silly plays, and 2) not one play bombed. I have had so many conversations with people who were there on the night who all remarked that every play was highly enjoyable and had something interesting to offer. I think there is something in this time-pressured writing. Sometimes we have too long to ruminate as writers, sometimes we dilute our works that could once have been punchy, short and powerful. I had a brilliant time and I would be the first to put my hand up for it if I had the chance again.

To those who are still reading this, thank you, but I will stop here. I could go on forever it seems! Comment me if you want more info on the Generator.

So thank you Griffin for a fabulous week at The Stables, celebrating Australian theatre, its talents and history. I’m sorry I missed your 30th, but count on me next time you feel the need to throw on a party hat.

Happy writing,

Jo