Playwrights advice at Derby Theatre: be persistent

Published: 21 February 2018
Reporter: Steve Orme

Amelia Bullmore, Zodwa Nyoni and Amanda Whittington at the Meet the Playwrights event Credit: Steve Orme

Stick at it and don’t be disheartened by the almost inevitable rejections you will experience—that was the message from three prominent writers at a Meet the Playwrights evening in the Studio at Derby Theatre.

The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain held its first regional event and the playwrights spoke about how their careers started, the process of writing and how they get work.

Amelia Bullmore is a writer and actor who appeared as Gill Murray in the TV crime drama Scott and Bailey as well as being head writer for its fourth series. Her first play Mammals was staged at the Bush Theatre and toured the UK.

She said she has mixed thoughts whenever she is writing a new piece. “You will be revolted by it and think it’s rubbish. You’ll think ‘this isn’t worth saying. It’s all been said before but better.’ But then briefly you might think ‘this is brilliant’.”

Poet and playwright Zodwa Nyoni was the 2014 writer in residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse via the Channel 4 playwrights’ scheme. She said writers had to start with confidence.

“I have paper from floor to ceiling. I have a box of paper for each play. As I start building up the play, I remove the paper.

“But I also say to myself at some stage ‘what are you doing? This doesn’t make sense!’ I’m happier to write a draft and keep rewriting that draft over and over again.”

Amanda Whittington, one of the most performed playwrights in the UK, is known for Be My Baby which is a GCSE and A-level choice in English literature and theatre studies, The Thrill of Love, about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

She said, “there’s no set way to be a playwright. That’s very liberating but it’s underpinned by anxiety. I work with that fear.”

She pointed out that the process of writing a play is defined by the timescale. “With radio, you work for six months on a play whereas a stage play can take six years. Sustaining it can be a problem.

“There’s a marketing-driven culture because people want to know what they’re buying. It’s only in the second draft that you get a shaft of light and then you know where you’re going. You never finish a play—you just run out of time.”

When asked by moderator Nick Wood how they obtained work, Nyoni said, “what I learned early on was the art of networking—just getting out there and meeting people.”

Whittington added, “work comes from the relationships I’ve built up over 20 years with theatres and directors.”

Bullmore advised the audience, “just do your best and don’t get hung up about your work.”

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