International Residency 2007

So here's a brief account of my experience at the 2007 International Residency for Emerging Playwrights at the Royal Court...

Week 1
I arrived in London and met the whole team at the Royal Court. There were eleven writers from eleven different countries – a quick glance at all of them
Olivier Choinière (33), Montréal, Canada
Katerina Rudčenková (31), Prague, Czech Republic
Ram Ganesh Kamatham (me - 26), Bangalore, India
Elie Kazam (37), Baabda, Lebanon
Noé Morales Muñoz (29), Mexico City, Mexico
Paul Ugbede (27), Jos, Nigeria
Maria Manolescu (26), Bucharest, Romania
Jean Tay (32), Singapore
Vanessa Montfort (31), Madrid, Spain
Lorenz Langenegger (27), Zurich, Switzerland
Wael Qadour (25), Damascus, Syria

Highlights of the first week included a meeting with playwright David Hare – who spoke from the heart about his experiences on writing about the conflict in Palestine and how impossibly difficult it is being a playwright (its true!).

We also had an incredible session with playwright Martin Crimp, who walked us though a few illuminating exercises about his obsession with language – we focused on two extracts from Carol Churchill and Harold Pinter – both ferociously political writers. What fascinated me is the extent to which both writers have experimented with language and structure to serves ideological ends. This also explained a lot about Crimp's own dramaturgy. Honestly, Crimp is the Merlin of UK dramaturgy. He's a wizard, with his long white hair but more importantly with his sophisticated writing style.

We also saw a couple of productions – a previously unseen play of Harold Pinter called The Hothouse at the National, and Tony Kushner's behemoth-opus Angels in America – Part 1 at the Lyric Hammersmith. And a quirky production called Food by Joel Horwood at the Battersea Arts Centre, about the topsy-turvy trajectory of a celebrity chef in his quest for perfection. The week ended with a night out at Shunt, thanks to its Artistic Director David Rosenberg which was an awesome night club underneath London Bridge. It was a true case of underground counter-culture, with long musty corridors and dark corners under archways!

Week 2
There were three big highlights in the second week.

The first was the meeting with Harold Pinter. (So there you go, I've met a Nobel Prize winner – I can die happy now!) The session was thought provoking for many reasons.
Pinter urged us to speak out and directly challenge oppressive power structures in our respective countries. He also offered his view on the UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq. It prompted me to question the relative importance of individual opinion in different cultures. (To be stark in Bangalore no one really gives a shit what you say, unless you say the wrong things.) I offered the instance of Ratan Thiyam as someone who creates extremely political theatre but in a symbolic and non-confrontational way. I'm no expert on Thiyam, but what he has managed to achieve in Manipur is remarkable. Pinter acknowledged the validity of that approach, but urged 'directness'. This is still something I haven't figured out, but will probably engage with in greater detail, in the play I'm working on.

The second was a chance encounter with a Polish radio operator from World War 2. As part of an exercise called London worlds – international writers paired up with UK based writers and explored a corner of London that offered a self contained world. This was remarkably similar to the process that I used to release the play Into Stone – with my trip to Fort Aguada. The basic idea is to saturate yourself in a physical space and respond dramatically to the stimuli that you receive from the space.

Well Louie – the Polish radio operator we bumped into had more than a story to offer – he actually pulled out photographs of his old army unit and I recognized the familiar outlines of a number of the planes in the photos– including Spitfires and Flying Fortresses. Then he pulled out two objects that literally blew out my skull - a German Iron cross and a torn piece of a Luftwaffe flying jacket. – both carrying the Nazi swastika. There's definitely a play in here somewhere, when I get around to developing this idea.



The third was a trip to the Tate Modern Art Gallery with my director for the residency, the most excellent Raz Shaw. We managed to see the Salvador Dali exhibition and one painting in particular – the Invisible Man hit me over the head with an idea for my play.

Dali paints a surreal landscape with what appears to be a disembodied man floating in it. But what is most striking is how parts of the man are actually merged into the landscape, what appears to be a waterfall, is actually the fingers of the man's hand.

It occurred to me that elements of character can actually be embedded within the external landscape of the piece – in a sense the subject occurs as a result of the mixed perception of the fore-grounded body part and the backdrop which negatively defines additional features. That's a lot of bullshit for – everything's mixed up, but you can separate individual elements on a closer look. End result – surreal and scary!

We also saw Rafta Rafta at the National – where Harish Patel was going on about 'tatti' – and about ten people in the audience were falling off their chairs. Also ran away from Othello at the Globe, which is the advantage of being a groundling.

And everyone went on a day trip to Brighton where the beach was full of pebbles and there was an awesome ride called the Booster on the pier which shoots you up a hundred feet in the air and spins you about while doing so. A memorable moment occurred when suspended upside down a hundred feet up in the air, the sea and pier became the sky and the sky became the ground – quite a Dali moment.

Week 3
This week was when fatigue was really beginning to hit. Highlights included a meeting with Tom Stoppard who spoke a bit about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and how great work is often created in the complete absence of the knowledge of dramatic technique. We also had a meeting with Simon Stephens who did a neat workshop on dramatic action, and whom I prodded a bit about his play Motortown. I quite like the play which is really hardcore and revolves around a soldier who has just returned from serving in Basra. In fact I quite like Simon Stephens as a writer and as a writer-mentor and will be keen on seeing where he goes from here. I also wandered around St. Katherine's Docks with my writer's writer Meredith Oakes and had baked scampi for lunch.

We then dived into rehearsal which I will deal with in more detail in another post.

Week 4
The last week was the culmination of all the work done so far. We all presented ten minute extracts from the work we had been doing in rehearsal. It was an awesome presentation with 10 minutes from eleven different worlds presented at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. Three hundred people showed up to see it! This was a bit weird because I presented a section of the play which was really the toughest part well into the second half, which was not in the least bit audience friendly.
We were working on moving between the three stories and finding ways to make the collision of stories coherent – which we did, (at least it got clearer in my head). This extract however is coherent only with knowledge of the play itself. A lot of people who saw the extract went – huh, too complicated to follow.
This annoyed me a bit because the extract was really about the breakthrough we made in rehearsal and not really a neat cut and dried ten minute trailer for the play. Of course it was complicated, why do you think I needed to workshop it!
But anyway all I can say to anyone who was befuddled – wait till you see the play at full throttle, it will all make sense (or if I goof off will continue to be nonsense permanently!)

We were all pretty sentimental by the end of the whole thing and I really miss the whole gang of writers. Apparently we were quite a politically aware lot and many of us were writing either covert or overtly, about specific political issues. I do wonder where we will all be in a few years time!

Edinburgh
That's all for the International Residency. My next stop was the Edinburgh Festival where I had a chance meeting with David Greig the Scottish genius playwright. He's really quite amazing and his plays are really in a different league.
I managed to see a weird mix of things. I saw a brilliant play called Long Time Dead by Rona Munroe at the Traverse, which was remarkably similar to my own play Crab!
It was a controlled and beautiful character study that made me wish I was a better writer on Crab!
I also managed to see Will Adamsdale: The Human Computer – a daft interactive stand-up piece that was really funny. I ate some haggis which was fun in a masochistic way.
Also saw a guy on a ten foot unicycle juggling fire, a man dressed like a tree levitating a crystal ball, a bunch of American Indians in full costume playing the Braveheart theme, and many many drunk Scotsmen.
What better way to end this most intellectual sojourn than a trip to the Circus of Horrors where I saw some pretty crazy stuff that's not discussed in polite company.

I snuck in a quick trip to Nottingham to do some climbing – but the weather was poor and I ended up doing indoor climbing – where I discovered I was fat and incompetent as a climber after a month of English Breakfast and non stop writing. The fact that I am a lousy climber is not a new discovery, but it sure as hell doesn't stop me from loving it!
Now onto redrafting – Into Stone, due in three months!