Episode 3 of Polly Tisdall’s audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’

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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 3 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.

Jan 2025: Pinning it Down transcript

I’m just opening one of my green boxes.

I’ve been through quite a few of these now and I suppose having slightly got over the kind of initial excitement of just seeing Elyot’s notes and his handwriting and all of that kind of fun bit of delving into this archive, I suppose what’s really striking me now is how rigorous Elyot is, how he questions his decisions as a writer and really grapples with how he’s creating meaning and what it is that he’s trying to say and he really tries to get to the bottom of that. And that’s just really helpful to see.

So just one example of him playing with structure and trying to pin himself down: I’m going to share with you some notes that he’s made here when he’s playing with some ideas for a piece. He’s written ‘a possible through line, a person who’s always let things drift, been taken advantage of, suddenly decides to affront’. He’s written affront, but I presume he means confront, anyway, ‘affront his destiny, resolutions, new lease of life, change of surroundings and lifestyle, etc but then’ those are in capitals, ‘but then fate takes the upper hand and he falls a victim to cancer but keep it comic also cancer rather than AIDS, because that’s another irony he decided to remain celibate but look how good it does him. PS The Lover is a shit’, brackets, ‘may be a prostitute’, close brackets, ‘and’ in capitals ‘he inherits everything and’ in capitals ‘he fucks around despite AIDS. The Russian roulette syndrome. So lots of AIDS chat, but cancer’s the killer’.

So he’s kind of sketching out there, I guess the whole, the whole structure in a very broad brushstrokes, but really getting down for himself on the page what this is going to be and how he’s going to up the stakes. And then he’s written later on, a few pages on, the whole sequence of the play is of plans being thwarted. And then he’s noted to himself, ‘put into dramatic action above ideas – a plan is worked out, only to be dashed’.

So it’s just really evident here that he’s got this idea, he’s got this sense of it, he’s got this character. He’s working out what the ironies are of the piece and how he can really stretch that and emphasise it. And then he’s noting to himself that has to be visible, we have to see it happen in the action of the play. So he’s a very – he seems very conscious or keen to make conscious for himself what is he’s trying to say and how he’s going to do it.

And maybe that’s just obvious that as good playwrights, we should be doing that. Good playwrights in sort of quotation marks. Who knows what that what means, what a good process looks like. But it’s very useful for me to see because I think most of the time when I’m thinking about a piece or writing a piece, I’m not always that clear about exactly what it is I want to say. There’s often several things, a number of things that are kind of crowding in that I want to say or I want to draw attention to, but it’s quite rare that I that I think I go through my ideas and my action in this way and consider how to amp it up. Or the best way to show that theme. I think that’s absolutely something that I should be doing and I want to approach this next play, The Crop Circle Cafe, as it’s working-titled a bit more in that spirit, I think it needs it. I think the idea that I have for that piece requires more of this type of thinking.

—

Right, so I’ve I’ve come home after my visit to the archive today and on the back of that experience of looking at how Elyot plans, or at least begins to structure and how he asks himself those questions and tries to to pin himself down. I’ve tried to do a similar thing with Crop Circle Cafe and I realise I haven’t shared in this audio diary yet even the starting point concept, so I should do that.

So my initial idea, my starting point for the Crop Circle Cafe, working title, is this cafe that I used to go to when I was? Maybe about 12? with my family on an A road in Wiltshire and it was quite a, it was sort of like a temporary hut sort of style building at the side of the road. But the owner had done it up inside with all these photos of crop circles and all this kind of paraphernalia to do with alien sightings in that part of Wiltshire. And I’ve always remembered the cafe. We only went there a few times but I found it fascinating as a young person, and I still find fascinating that kind of mash up of beliefs, I think, and superstitions and ancient traditions and rituals and military land that all coexist in that part of Wiltshire, very close to where I grew up.

Yeah, and so the idea for the play is to set the action in that café, though it will probably change shape and be be a bit different within the play than it was in real life. And to bring together these characters, who all have very different relationships to land and very different ideas about the supernatural and the spiritual. And to bring them into conversation with one another, and it might be I think, they may well form a sort of science fiction book club or a group that explores conspiracy theories and they all become tight friends. But then I think things are going to go very wrong for them. And I want it to be comic. But also I think it will touch on some quite dark and some difficult tensions as well.

So this is what I’ve just been scribbling down really for myself inspired by Kevin and his process is what is the central question for me in Crop Circle Cafe. And I’ve just written, ‘is it the one that I’ve pitched which is about belief and land and how our beliefs shape our relationship to land and the actions that we will take to protect it?’ Because I think that is what it’s about as a play, but that seems quite big and I guess I’m asking myself now what’s the starting point within that big theme.

I’m still, I mean, I’m just exploring at the moment I think, what I’ve written here is ‘people trying to come back to the land in different ways. The green quest.’ There are some flawed ways of returning to the land, but they’re not necessarily ignoble, but they are in tension with one another, these three people. And then I’m considering, I suppose, for each character what that means.

There’s a lot that I could share with you, but most of it at the moment is really just ramblings because I’m, yeah, going through each character, trying to work out their relationship to the land, I think. And how is it that each of them is trying to come back to the land and what does that mean for them? But this has been very helpful to give myself space to ask these questions because it’s actually helping me unpack the action of the play to you know, how am I going to, as Kevin was discussing for himself in his notes, how am I going to show these tensions? How are they going to rear their heads in the action of the play? And I think I’ve got some ideas.

Episode 2 of Polly Tisdall’s audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’

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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 2 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to episode 1, please head to our earlier blog post.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

Dec 2024 Dreaming in Doodles Transcript

So today I’m in the Reading Room at the archive about to delve back into three big green boxes full of scripts and programmes and press cuttings and letters. And I’m still focusing on My Night with Reg. One of Elyot’s most famous plays, as I mentioned before, and at the moment I’m just really intrigued to understand as much as I can about his process of writing that play.

And I’m just looking back through my notes over the last few visits that I’ve made here and one thing that just keeps coming back to me and standing out, which is less about the play and more about, I suppose, as playwrights, how we dream. Even as we’re making notes to ourselves.

There’s a note that Kevin Elyot’s written after lots of different ideas of what form the play could take and ideas for through lines, many of which are very comic. He’s then made a little note in capitals, it’s sort of like a doodle. And it reads ‘Miriam Margolyes, Alan Rickman in Making It by Kevin Elyot’. And then he’s done a similar thing with My Night with Reg. He’s sketched out a playbill which reads ‘Coming next at the Bush Theatre’.

And I think there’s just something so human about these doodles. Maybe they seem egotistical, but I don’t know how real they were for Kevin, or how fantastical really. I may well come to find that out, but I think for me they just resonate because as artists we have to dream and we have to dream big and dare to imagine that this, these notes that we’re making in a spiral bound notebook in our house or in a cafe somewhere, or in a library, however mundane they might seem, we have to imagine them growing into something so much bigger and so much more public. And we always have to think about the audience and about the actors and about all of these elements that are going to come together to make our writing live. And I just love seeing these, these doodles, this sort of dreaming by doodling that Elyot does in his notes to himself.

—

So, I’m just in the little kitchenette for staff and volunteers, that’s just outside the Theatre Collection Reading Rooms. And once again having a little break, some tea and yeah, I’m still thinking about this idea of dreaming and it’s making me consider how I dream, how I kind of I suppose find my way into the vision, the big vision for the stories I want to tell and what helps me make that live, particularly in the early stages. I’m really right at the beginning with this new play that I’m thinking about and that I pitched for this award.

And at the moment I know that there are three characters and I’ve got a kind of sense of where they come from. One of them, I think is very much this Wiltshire woman. This lady who lives very rurally, who I mentioned in my last audio diary. And then I think I’ve got a Bristolian, a young man. And then an American as well.

So I sort of know that much, but when I’m dreaming into those characters at the moment, I’ve realised, very different to the notes I’m finding in Kevin’s scribblings, I’m casting them with with people that I know – with friends, other actors who I know from drama school, for example, or people that I’ve worked with before and that I have had fun working with. And that’s interesting, I suppose in some ways it’s making me think, should I be dreaming bigger?

And that’s not because I don’t want to work with my friends and with those people. But there’s something interesting about what Kevin’s doing there I think when he’s dreaming about his plays and who might perform them. I feel like he’s thinking really big. Whether or not that ends up happening, whether he gets Alan Rickman, in fact, I know now from looking through the productions of My Night with Reg today that he doesn’t get Alan Rickman on stage for that. I don’t believe Alan Rickman ends up in any of his work that I’m aware of so far, from my reading of his notes. But maybe it’s about helping him to think really big and to believe in his work.

And actually today I had a little sneaky Google in the middle of my my archive research on Kevin because this has got me thinking that I think very local with my work, which is maybe a good thing. But I don’t really go out there and consider what are the big theatres who run playwriting schemes and where could I be sending off my scraps of writing to?

And maybe I should be doing more of that. So I looked up the Royal Court, which you would have thought that I would have done many times before, but I haven’t. I’ve been very focused on Bristol and the South West and I think that is great and I’m very passionate about regional work and I want to write stuff that is about this region in many ways, and can be staged here. But it is good to think a little bit beyond my immediate surroundings, I think and beyond the people that I know because it sort of puts an onus on the writing, on the work, to be excellent. It feels like a challenge. So that’s where I’m at and I think that’s the inspiration that I’m taking away today is to think a little bit bigger.

Forkbeard Fantasy – Rabbits, Monsters, and Other Assorted Props

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By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist

Using the reading room space to check the objects.

When we last left off, I had been through every box in the Forkbeard Fantasy Archive once and was beginning to infiltrate the digital archive.

Well, I got distracted.

January started with our annual closure week; a week in which the Theatre Collection is closed to the public to allow us to give the collection some TLC and do the jobs that we don’t normally have time for. It was suggested that while the reading room was empty, I should use the extra space to condition check and clean the Forkbeard objects.

The Square Dancers proudly displaying the square dance shoes.

Forkbeard Fantasy were known for their use of elaborate objects in their productions, many of which were later displayed in the Museum of Forkbeard. Objects were vital to Forkbeard’s work. Even their street theatre relied on large props. After all, what would The Great British Square Dance be without the Square Dance shoes? (For those unfamiliar with the production, The Great British Square Dance involved three members of Forkbeard and one unsuspecting member of the audience putting on shoes attached to a large wooden square and attempting to perform a series of dance moves.)

Miss Edwards being allowed to dangle in the Museum of Forkbeard.

Storing the objects brings its own set of problems. Many of them are of unusual shapes and sizes, meaning they require custom-made boxes. No box will suffice for some of them. For example, the seven-foot-tall bunny costume, which has been separated into parts and wrapped in Tyvek. Miss Edwards is still causing us some trouble as she needs to be stored upright but is unable to support her own weight. At the Forkbeard Museum she was allowed to dangle from a rope attached to her head, but this is impractical in our setting. I’ll keep thinking…

As the objects were originally created for plays, they were rarely created to last. The spring shoe from Forkbeard’s first big production, The Rubber Gods Show, was only intended to last for a few months. Hence it was made from a cheap metal spring which has since become very rusty. Now that we hope to keep it in perpetuity, we are left with the challenge of preserving something that is already degrading. Another good example is Moth from On an Uncertain Insect made in 1978. Moth was designed to be held in front of a lamp and its shadow would appear on stage. To make the shadows appear gradated, some parts of moth were made from semi-transparent materials. The wings are made of parchment paper, while the body was made from jelly. Unsurprisingly, not much of the jelly from 1978 has survived and there is little guidance available on how to preserve food stuff in an archive.

Dancing Frankenstein!

Food is not the only material that can degrade. As part of a production of Frankenstein, Forkbeard made a model of Dr Frankenstein, Igor and the Monster. When a button on the front is pushed, they dance. I know that I’m not supposed to have favourites, but I do and it’s this. However, to make the models dance, it requires 3D batteries. Batteries can degrade and leak, which would then cause damage to the object. But without the batteries it doesn’t function. So should the batteries be kept? In this case, it was decided to keep the batteries separate from the object so that if they do leak, they won’t damage the model.

Mammon, happy in his new home. But what is he?

Then there are the questions of classification. Take Mammon, the God of Dosh from Invisible Bonfires. Mammon would sit on a custom-built table with a hole in the middle. An actor would then climb inside Mammon and operate his mouth and light up shoes from the inside. Does this make Mammon a puppet, and thus a prop? Or is he a costume? I’m still working out the best way to define him in the catalogue.

Despite their challenges, the objects are one of the highlights of the collection and really bring Forkbeard’s work to life. While we could only accept a selection of the objects that were housed in the Museum of Forkbeard, we did make a 3D scan of the whole museum, which can be accessed here. There are various ideas and plans for how to use this scan, so watch this space!

Student Placement at the Theatre Collection 2025

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This academic year we are welcoming two more UoB students, Keir and Madalena, to undertake the annual Artist-in-Residence placement with us. This entails learning more about how archives work, and engaging with in-depth archival research to create a piece of work inspired by the Theatre Collection holdings. Below are the first of their blogs, as they navigate researching in the archives and developing their ideas into proposed scripts.

Keir:

As a third-year Theatre and Film student, I am currently undertaking a placement with the Theatre Collection as part of my Professional Development in Theatre and Performance module. This Artist in Residence placement has provided a unique opportunity to engage with archival materials and explore how historical resources can inform contemporary creative practice.

During the first month of my placement, I have had the privilege of immersing myself in the archives of esteemed theatre practitioners. My research has spanned figures such as Ian Smith, Nola Rae, and The Kipper Kids, each of whom has left a distinctive mark on the world of clowning and physical theatre. Engaging with their materials – ranging from performance notes and annotated scripts to photographs, recordings, and personal correspondences – has provided a fascinating window into their creative processes, performance philosophies, and the broader theatrical landscapes in which they worked.

Initial research in the Theatre Collection.

These archival explorations have been instrumental in shaping my initial ideas for a script, allowing me to consider how historical clowning techniques and comedic traditions can be adapted for contemporary audiences. Clowning, in its many forms, has a remarkable ability to transcend language and cultural barriers, and I am particularly interested in how archival research can illuminate the enduring power of physical comedy. My current focus is on developing a comedic script that blends historical influences with a fresh, modern approach, exploring how the essence of clowning can be reinterpreted for today’s theatre landscape.

Beyond script development, this research has sparked broader questions about the role of archival material in creative practice. How can performance archives serve as active tools for contemporary theatre-making rather than simply as records of the past? How might forgotten or overlooked elements of clowning history inspire new modes of performance? As I continue this placement, I am eager to explore these questions further, experimenting with ways to bring archival discoveries to life in new and unexpected ways.

 

Madalena

Hello, I’m Madalena and I am also working as an Artist in Residence at the Theatre Collection for my Professional Development in Theatre and Performance module, alongside Keir. As a final year Theatre and Film student, I wanted to find a way that I could incorporate my love of film while still being involved in and inspired by theatre. So, I am grateful that this placement has provided me with the opportunity to explore the theatre archives and use my research and inspiration to write a screenplay.

I have a particular interest in culture and fashion during the 1840s to 1870s. I first looked through some letters that were written during Henry Irving and his wife’s separation, but was more attracted by the idea of reseaching less well-known theatrical figures. Archivist Jill Sullivan very helpfully pointed me towards a collection of five uncatalogued boxes (BTC80) detailing the careers of sisters Annie and Jessie Bourke, and their cousin Eva Watson in the 1860s and 70s. Within this collection are over a thousand letters written to the actresses from admirers, and I have only scraped the surface by reading plenty of those that are in box one! Learning to read nineteenth century handwriting has proven to be quite a challenge; sometimes individual letters are written very differently to how we would write them now. So it definitely has been a learning curve getting used to the writing, but once you are acquainted with it, the content of the letters can be quite rewarding and even entertaining to reveal. For example, in the small amount that I have been able to decipher so far, there are plenty of men who sent multiple short letters to Annie, asking to meet with her, only to follow up with one asking why she wasn’t replying to them and what they had done to anger her.

BTC80-1 A few of the Bourke letters

Though there are many more letters than I may have the time to read, it has been insightful getting an idea of the specific type of language and wording that was used in the nineteenth century, as I aim to write the dialogue of my script in the same way. I do not yet have a narrative in mind for the screenplay, but the content of the letters I have read so far has inspired me to possibly include verbatim extracts from them, perhaps in a comedic montage.

There is much more exploration of BTC80 that I would like to do, to begin conceptualising a narrative, and I am looking forward to seeing what I may discover within the collection.

 

‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ by Polly Tisdall

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Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary 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.

Polly’s audio diary is available to listen to here: ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ or via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.  We’ll also post episodes on our blog page with transcripts, with the first episode available below:

Speaker 1 (Polly Tisdall):

Bristol City centre. Just got off the bus, after wending my way through Fishponds and Eastville and St Pauls and just loving all the colourful leaves. This is my favourite time of year and I’ve got that kind of sense of beginnings, I suppose that I get still, like a new school year.

I still get that at this time of year and it feels a bit like a first day at a new school, and I’m just winding my way up Orchard Lane and thinking this maybe isn’t the quickest way to the Theatre Collection, but never mind.

Going on a little adventure.

Found the many, many, many steps past Trenchard Street car park. I remember this.

This is the route, the very steep, huffy, puffy route up to the Theatre Collection. At least it’s the one that I know. I have come up this way before.

And there’s something about coming through Bristol this morning with my mind half in the play that I’ve pitched for the Kevin Elyot Award that I’m going to be writing (Ahhh!) in the next year. And having that in mind and thinking through one of the characters I’m interested in potentially exploring in the play, it’s all very early days.

But I think trying to see the city a little bit through her eyes and imagining some of her impressions of Bristol if she was coming here for the first time, which, I think for that character she lives very rurally. I don’t think she gets to the city much and Bristol’s kind of her big, big city on the horizon.

Quite interesting to think about, even though I know the city really well these days, what she would make of my morning and the route I’ve been on and all these steps.

  1. And I’m here! ‘Theatre Collection, Archive and Museum of British Theatre and Live Art, Visitors Welcome, Admission Free, University of Bristol’.

And for those of you who maybe have never been here or don’t even know quite where it is, it’s not far from Park Street. And it’s a sort of a quite amazing building, with a rounded front and, sort of, I guess you would call them crenellations along the front. So it looks a bit castle-like, a little bit magical and it’s time to step inside.

So inside you come into a big panelled room, you can probably hear it’s a little bit echoey and quite exciting and someone’s coming down the stairs to greet me….

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Theatre collection. We have your items for you, if you’d like to follow me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

———

Speaker 1:

Wow. So it’s been quite a fascinating morning.

I’m now standing just outside the reading room of the archive, just having a quick cup of coffee and refreshments because no food or drink is allowed in the reading room itself, with the materials from the archive, which is understandable.

And just reflecting on my first foray into the Kevin Elyot Archive. I asked for a lot of different materials really for my first day, mostly around My Night with Reg, which is one of Elyot’s most famous plays and I definitely asked for too many things!

I’ve got 4 big boxes. Blue boxes of materials around My Night with Reg, all sorts of notebooks and planning from Kevin as well as different scripts and drafts and also some screenplays from when My Night With Reg became a film. And each folder is just beautifully organised and wrapped up with, like, sort of canvas ribbon which might be very, very familiar to people who work in archives a lot. But this is all quite new to me and quite exciting.

And it feels a little bit like being given some gifts and treasures from Kevin’s work and his process.

And really today I’ve just looked in detail at two of his notebooks of his very early starting point ideas that become the play My Night With Reg.

But what’s fascinating looking through the notebooks is seeing that actually a lot of the ideas that surface in My Night With Reg start their life in other plays, in other ideas for other plays, for short sequels or sketches.

And they’re all just jotted down. And these themes keep popping up and reoccurring.

Some ideas that Elyot clearly didn’t want to lose, and he’s written notes to himself. Like ‘Don’t forget the tomato sauce theme’.

And it’s really reassuring and exciting to see, as I suppose somebody who is right at the beginning of their journey with playwriting. Because I’m thinking I’ve got notebooks strewn with some of those sorts of notes and not as detailed as Kevin’s, and certainly not as many notebooks. Not yet. But there’s a familiarity to me in seeing those process notes to yourself and all these questions he’s asking of himself and of his characters and of his ideas. There’s lots of question marks in brackets.

And I think that’s something that really strikes me about the process of playwriting. Certainly for me, where I’m at right now with thinking about the play that I’ve pitched for this award that’s in its extreme infancy. And also, I suppose as you go through a process: that you’re always in conversation with yourself.

A little bit like I am in this audio diary. You’re always in conversation with yourself.

Asking yourself things, bucking yourself up. There’s some really encouraging notes that Kevin has written to himself where you can see there’s been a burst of enthusiasm about the project and he’s written:

Oh! ‘My Night with Reg could be a real event. I just need to write a really good play’. And find the right set of characters and there’s like 3 exclamation marks. And that burst of energy feels familiar to me too, as a creative.

The moments when you get really behind yourself and really fired up and then other moments where you start to lose the plot and wonder if you have anything to say at all.

And that also came up in these notebooks. At one point, Elyot had scribbled down an idea for a play that was about a writer who actually had absolutely nothing to say.

And wow, that sort of stopped me in my tracks. Because isn’t that every playwright’s greatest fear that actually, we have nothing of interest to say?

So of course we don’t know, but I wonder if Elyot came up with that idea in one of those moments, or reflecting on those moments in the creative process, where you really doubt yourself as well.

———

And that’s it. I’m back outside the Theatre Collection, standing on the chilly streets, looking over at the very lovely Greek bakery. Looks very tempting.

First day of my residency through the Kevin Elyot Award, done!

Those questions that Elyot asked himself. All of these question marks at the end of sentences and what ifs. I’ve noticed he does a lot of writing out of ‘what if’ kind of paragraphs, of just ‘what if this is the through line?’

‘What if the dishy guy is somebody they never meet?’ Question mark.

Just as he’s scribbling to himself.

And already it’s really made me want to just go and write my own questions of my own characters, my own sort of ‘what if’ paragraphs. So I think that’s what I’m going to do now. I will pop across the road, maybe treat myself to a hot chocolate from the Greek bakery, and do some writing.