Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 6 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

It’s brilliantly sunny outside.

I think we’re entering this April heat wave.

And it’s funny, sometimes I find the sunshine not very cheerful, which is unexpected. For some reason. I suppose it’s when I don’t feel particularly sunny and the world is sunny. It feels a little bit incongruous, and maybe I notice it more than I do in the winter when everything is grey. I suppose today I’m just. I’m not at the archive today. I’m reflecting back on my last few visits and I’m sitting in one of those moments of the creative process of writing, where I’ve just done a big chunk of work.

I’ve submitted the next draft of a play I’ve been working on for a long time to the Women’s Prize for Playwriting last week, so I’m very pleased to have submitted it. So there was this kind of big adrenaline rush and build up to the submission and getting everything to where I wanted it to be to the best it could be for that award submission. And then there’s kind of a drop. And a coming back to other projects and I’m refocusing on Crop Circle, which has been bubbling along in the background and which can now take centre stage for the next 6 months or so at least, which is exciting. And I’ve booked a research trip next weekend to go and spend some time in the very area where the Crop Circle Cafe was when I was growing up, near Cherhill White Horse in Wiltshire. So all of that is really positive. And I’m still feeling very inspired by reading Kevin’s work and Kevin’s drafts at the archives. Just on Friday I was reading through The Day I Stood Still, one of his slightly later plays that was staged at The National in 1998. And really enjoying reading, again, his notes, his process, the reflections from critics, the conversations with directors that he was having in advance of the production. It’s fascinating. And it is so inspiring and exciting. But I also had a conversation with a friend yesterday, who’s also a theatre maker in Bristol. Um, which was a really good connecting conversation. But we also shared our frustrations with the realities of getting work produced and getting work made.

And so, I think there’s something for me today. Questioning. Is it going to happen? You know, is any of this work that I write and I put down and I painstakingly edit and change and shift – Is it ever going to appear in front of an audience? And that is, you know, the question of every playwright, and we all know it’s such a competitive and lottery type of industry, really, when it comes to getting your work made and put on and produced. And it’s such an expensive process. And so not everything that everybody writes is going to go the whole distance. But it’s hard sometimes, I think, to sit in this moment of questioning. Because, I think I felt on this award and this residency with Bristol Theatre Collection, a real closeness to Kevin through reading his work, a closeness to: ohh it can happen, you know, it really can happen! You send things off and you make relationships and you keep at it. And those plays go the distance eventually, and then, you know, he gets these really incredible productions on, which is testament to his writing as well as his persistence, I think. And he’s quoted in an article I was reading on Friday, saying he always knew recognition would come, and he was willing to wait for it. And I think that’s how I felt in my 20s. I kind of felt like if I just keep grafting, the recognition will come. So I recognise that and it’s lovely to hear him sort of trusting that. And and it did pay off. But there are moments of real doubts, I think and and the reality of.

I suppose the present moment, maybe as opposed to when Kevin was writing – I haven’t done an in-depth analysis of the difference between the two and the theatre landscape and funding and appetite than you work and all of those things – but I think…

Today I’m feeling a bit low and a bit unsure and most of that is probably it’s like an after a show feeling. I’m also an actor, and I know – and a director, and I know – that kind of come down after a show and I think it feels a bit like that having finished this draft of one of my plays and sent it off, there’s a bit of a. And now what? And and it’s bringing up lots of questions and a. Bit of a kind of –

So that is honestly where I am. Still feeling inspired by Kevin’s process and journey but questioning my own and questioning what the next steps are for writers. You make something, you write something you’re proud of. And then it feels like there’s only so many avenues to go down for production, and perhaps I’m wrong about that. I’m trying to think creatively at the moment. You know. If we want to get our work staged, if we want to just put it on and test it out and try it out, with an audience. And what are the ways we can do that and what are the ways we can take agency in making that happen and in making those next steps? Not waiting and feeling powerless about it, waiting for someone else to pick it up and say this is great. So those are the questions I’m asking today.

Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 5 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

So I’m just at my favourite cafe, across the road from the Theatre Collection, and I just wanted to share, I guess, the workshop that I just ran with the Theatre Collection. We welcomed some playwrights, mostly playwrights, theatre makers and a few people who are also actors and directors, to come and hear some extracts from different drafts of My Night with Reg. As a kind of chance to reflect, really, on Elyot’s writing process and how he drafts and redrafts and the edits he makes. And the title of the workshop was What Is Lost? and, I suppose I set that title thinking about that, that old idea of killing your darlings as a writer and having to, I suppose, just occasionally, get rid of something that you really love, but which doesn’t serve the play anymore, or rearrange things or edit down or totally rewrite until the same theme is actually coming through more clearly or the same character arc or emotion.

So, that’s what we were exploring in the workshop. And then we had an opportunity for people to share different drafts of their own writing, which was really wonderful as well. And I just wanted to share tiny extracts of the three different drafts of My Night With Reg that we looked at just this afternoon. So the first one, they’re all quite late drafts of the play, quite far on in Elyot’s process, overall. But it’s really fascinating to see how much changes across these three drafts. I’ll only give you a few lines from each, because we read about 6 pages from each one, which is obviously quite a lot! But this is the earliest of the three drafts, and it begins.

It’s the very first scene of the play, the opening of the play, and I’ll just share, maybe the first half a page or so.

Scene One

Late afternoon, cloudy.  Guy is preparing the room for guests. Last minute dusting and tidying. Eric is in the conservatory painting a window frame. John leans against the doorway to the conservatory, watching him. He is smoking a cigarette. A bowl of nuts sits on the coffee table.

Guy: I refuse to die for the sake of a poke. I’ve caught every disease there is to catch many times over, and several simultaneously. I only have to wink at somebody and I get a discharge down at the clinic. They now have a whole cabinet devoted to my files. The hours I’ve spent in that place trussed up on a table, thumbing through House and Garden. While one doctor after another has gazed in amazement at some exotic fungus or extraordinary polyp. I was even accused of introducing the Super crab to this country. Very large and particularly tenacious. In fact, my doctor said it was the first case of venereal lobster he’d ever come across. He tried everything. Powders, lotions, tweezers. At one point, he even asked them to go. In the end, he suggested I jump into a pan of boiling water and serve myself up Thermador.”

So that’s the opening of the play, in this particular draft, with that monologue from Guy, and then in the next draft, as the play is developing, we get this version instead.

Scene One

Every Breath You Take by The Police starts playing as the stage lights come up. The music fades. Late afternoon, cloudy.  Guy is pouring two gin and tonics at the drinks table. Eric is in the conservatory painting a window frame. He’s listening to a Walkman, occasionally moving to the music. John leans against the entrance to the conservatory, watching him. A bowl of nuts sits on the coffee table.

Guy: You’ve got that look about you. Who was it and what did you do? No, I don’t want to know.

John: The film wasn’t up to much. Two hours of French people talking, couldn’t see the point. When’s everyone coming?

Guy: Everyone is two people. Any minute now.

John: Two people for a flat warming?

Guy: Four, including us and that suits me fine. Glancing through the names in my address book, I realised I didn’t like most of them and the rest had either split up or died. Of the ones who’d split up I couldn’t decide which partner to invite. And the dead people were no problem at all.

Handing John the drink.

Cheers.

John: Cheers. To your new flat.

Guy: Thanks.

So that’s the next version of the scene and in both of them, I should say, Guy is talking to John and John has just arrived at his flat and that probably wasn’t clear from the monologue opening of the first one I read just then.

And then this is the third – and very close to final – draft of the scene, which, if you know the play, you might be familiar with.

Scene One

Every Breath You Take by The Police starts playing as the lights come up. The music fades. Late afternoon. Cloudy. Eric is painting a window frame in the conservatory. He’s listening to a Walkman. John and Guy are standing in the sitting room. Guy is wearing an apron.

John. Am I early?

Guy: No.

John: I couldn’t remember what time you said.

Guy: You’re not, really.

John glances at the apron. Guy suddenly remembers he’s wearing it.

Taking it off.

I was just stiffening some egg whites.

John: You look well.

Guy: Do I?

John: Yes.

Guy: I’ve been to Lanzarote.

John. Oh.

Guy: You look well too.

John: Thanks.

Guy: You don’t look a day older.

John: Well.

Guy: You don’t. Honestly, you’re just the same.

OK. And that’s the end of that first page of the opening scene in that final latest draft, and I just wanted to share those with you because in the workshop, obviously we read a lot more, but people found it really fascinating. To read them in sequence from the earlier draft to the later draft, and to note what has changed and what becomes what, I suppose, is either lost or buried within the text, and Elyot has a real reputation for the craft of the unsaid, of saying so much through what is not said on stage.

And I think in reading those three drafts in sequence, you can see the craft of that building. He loses more and more text and more and more of the avert statements. You know, in that very first draft, we have this very clear opening line: ‘ refuse to die for the sake of a poke.’ And we observed in the workshop tonight, it’s almost like that’s just stating one of the key themes of the play: about desire and death and mortality against the backdrop of AIDS and how people are dealing with that reality and the decisions they’re making. That is very upfront in this earlier draft and the relationship between Guy and John, although I didn’t read you sections on that, is much more established. They’re much closer already. They’re much more connected, they’re much more in touch with one another than they are by the time we get to the final draft. And their dialogue in the final draught allows the audience to discover so much more of the themes rather than having them stated upfront.

So it’s a real education for me anyway, in observing and reading through these scenes about how our plays develop or how they can develop and the craft and the finessing that happens, I suppose, when you remove text, let the dialogue lead, but keep all of that ticking underneath what’s said. Yeah, it’s just really exciting.

And I think tonight’s workshop was a really exciting opportunity to share some of that with other people, other creatives in the South West and get their input and observations. I learned a lot more about the piece, about the the drafts, by doing that and hearing from other playwrights and then reflecting on our own work and our own drafts. Sometimes it’s hard to know. I think when you’re redrafting and cutting sections of work, there’s a fear that you are just losing things and that they might – You might not be going in the right direction with the edits you’re making.  And I think sometimes that does happen. But also, I think from what we observed tonight with the playwrights work that was shared, and also what we observe in Kevin’s work, and what I’m learning as I’m doing this with my own writing with a play I’ve been writing for some time, at the moment that I’m submitting to an award next month – and I’m making some big cuts and changes based on some feedback from a mentor – I guess what I’m learning is that, by and large, most of the time, we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, the the iterative rewriting process. It allows us to maybe get those upfront statements and big themes, you know that were right in the middle of the page. It allows us to get them kind of out of our system, and then embed them beneath the text in a later draft. And that seems to happen fairly naturally, often. Which is exciting and gives me some trust in my own process and in my own rewrites.

Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 4 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

So, back in the reading room today. I’m just finishing off, going through my My Night With Reg boxes, of which there were so many. And preparing for next month’s workshop as well, which I’m looking forward to running for local theatre makers, writers, practitioners, researchers, during which I think we’ll look at some materials from from My Night With Reg, because I think they really -There’s such a depth of material, here, about Kevin’s process for that play, particularly.

But before I finish my time with Reg, I wanted to share with you, I suppose, what I’ve gleaned of what might have been some of Kevin’s emotional journey with trying to get this play produced: with writing it, rewriting it, corresponding with potential directors and venues, because I found it particularly enlightening and, and also just emotional to read, for him, some of the correspondence that he had.

So. There’s one venue that he’s corresponding with with a lot, Hampstead, and he obviously has a contact there: Jenny Topper, the artistic director at the time. And and their correspondence reads that there’s definitely a friendship there, an old connection. And I haven’t found huge detail about that, but it’s certainly in the way that they they write to each other and and I get the sense from the correspondence that there’s been continued communication about My Night With Reg, that Jenny’s been really, really interested in the play and its development, and has been supporting it in many ways. And there’s a letter that Kevin writes to her in 1992. And he writes it, and then he rewrites the letter, so I can see him drafting that communication, as we all do, I think with important communications to to venues, to funders, really trying to get the wording right and the tone right. So he writes it and then rewrites it. And and what he ends up with is:

“Dear Jenny. Up to now, it isn’t coming together as I’d have wished.”

Oh sorry. First he writes, “Dear Jenny, Reg is being a bit of a bugger”, and he keeps that line from his original draft.

And then he writes:  “Up to now it isn’t coming together as I’d have wished. This is a great disappointment, as the idea has been with me for so long. And I’ve always thought it had potential. I don’t want to abandon the project. I’m still convinced there’s a good play in there somewhere. I’d like to wrestle with it for another month or two to see if it emerges. I look forward to hearing from you. Love.”

So he writes that letter to Jenny in ’92. And presumably continues working with the piece and keeping in correspondence with her about it. And then, in the same box, I came across this letter in July 1993 from Jenny to Kevin.

The letter runs to 4 paragraphs. And so I imagine that she has also taken some time over the writing of it. She starts off by apologising for the wait that Kevin’s had before receiving a considered response on his new draught. And then very quickly comes to her point, which is that she doesn’t think that it works. She acknowledges that this news will be a blow to Kevin and says that she did really want to like the draught. But then explains that she just cannot get interested in this version of Guy’s story and goes on to say that she feels unmoved by him and the other characters, and that they lack an emotional centre. And then her third paragraph states that she doesn’t know where to go from here. She observes that a recent reading of the play that Kevin’s had must have given him a particular agenda, but that she thinks, possibly in attempting to please everyone after that reading, he has lost the tight, driven writing and the atmosphere of the piece. And ended up with something a lot less interesting. And then perhaps hardest of all to read is that she then finishes the letter with kindness. She welcomes Kevin to come and speak to her again when the dust settles and she signs off “with love and regret”.

So when I first read that. In the box that I found it in, I, oh, it’s like a gut punch, you know, it’s a punch to the stomach on Kevin’s behalf. And I could just imagine how much effort and time and relationship and connection and readings, by the sounds of it. And work and edits had gone into this process. And then after a long wait, by the sounds of it, as well, this is the response he gets from the venue that I assume up to that point had been the most interested.

So I just thought it was so enlightening about what all of us as creators and artists experience and and I don’t know which draft Jenny was talking about there. Which one she’d seen. Not that long after he does manage to get it on and – And I think that that’s really telling as well, that we just don’t know. It might just not be for that one person who’s reading it, you know, it might not be to their taste. And there’s something in her letter as well. I think about when a mentor or a venue or a contact has read several drafts of a play. If, actually, it becomes harder for them to fall in love with the final draft, or the next draft, because they’re aware of some of the process and they can see some of the lines being moved around and maybe they’ve got attached to how things were in previous drafts, I don’t know.

But it was really a a punch for Kevin. It must have been a really, really discouraging part of the process. And then, what I find heartening, but also surprising and kind of miraculous, is that obviously he goes on: he pushes on beyond that feedback. Gets it on and then has this huge success with it, not just in this country but also internationally and a few years later there are runs in Berlin in Sydney. It goes to the States and –  And Berlin in particular, he has correspondence there with their artistic director. Who let’s him know how well the the run is going, how well it’s being received by audiences.

There’s this lovely postcard that I came across from Steph, the artistic director in Berlin:

“Dear Kevin, I’m very delighted to announce a revival of My Night With Reg, not in our studio, but in our [in capitals], Big House. Good news, aren’t these? Yours, Steph”.

So it really feels that with Reg, Kevin runs the whole gamut of huge disappointment – tonnes of work, getting the sense of getting nowhere, presumably – And then a complete turn around, a complete transformation, and it’s making me think about how emotional and vulnerable the process of playwriting and sharing work with people is. But it’s also made me think about the need to do that.

I think sometimes I’m afraid of sharing my work, particularly in drafts where I don’t feel it’s perfect. But then of course I never feel it’s perfect. So I’m afraid of sharing it and letting people read it and putting it out there because I’m afraid of that feedback potentially, or that negative feedback or things that people say aren’t working. But actually, it is all part of the process and and it might well be that, despite flaws, a venue or a programmer, a reader, is still invested in the play, or despite their feedback, it just might not be for them, and for someone else. So I think reading this process of Kevin’s in these correspondences clarifies that for me, you know. Not everybody will see potential in new writing, but you just need one person. One well-placed person who does fall in love with it. And then, I suppose, anything can happen.