Script Reading

Occasionally I'm asked to read scripts and I've just got a new batch. The number of unsolicited scripts floating around at any one time must be in the thousands. Every theatre company, no matter how small, has more than it can handle, but the majority of them get read, sometime, by someone, and sometimes that someone is me. I'm happy to do it. I feel an obligation to do it because my stuff worked it's way out of the pile because someone took the trouble to read what I'd sent them. There is an amazing amount of rubbish to be ploughed through, but I read them all because I don't want to be the like the bloke who didn't sign the Beatles, and every now and then you come across one that grabs you and there's a real buzz. When that happens you put in a recommendation that it be read again, and someone is on their way to getting noticed.
But I can't pretend that it isn't sometimes a frustrating exercise.

Top Tips.

• There are probably enough musicals about Dracula and Princess Diana and yours might be the definite one, but I doubt it. Though a musical that had both Dracula and Princess Diana in the cast list might be a winner.
• Plays about playwrights who can never get their plays put on are unlikely to be put on. You'd be surprised how many I've read. The best - and I use the word loosely - was about a writer who kidnapped a member of the Arts Council, the man's real name was used, because he had turned down a grant to the playwright. An indication as to why the Arts Council hadn't supported our bitter and twisted writer could be sensed in the final third of the play when having got his nemesis trussed up in a lonely cottage miles from anywhere, he talked to him about the play he'd wanted to write with the grant he didn't get and then let him go.
• Try and visit a theatre once or twice before writing a play. It helps if you have a vague idea what goes on. For example - Plays use real live actors (one hopes) and there are all sorts of petty regulations concerning their well being that have to be observed. It isn't really practical to expect one of your cast to be tied by the ankles and dangled above the stage for the whole two hours whilst being periodically attacked by a cattle prod(sic), even if you have seen something similar in the cinema.
• Don't send in plays that need a cast of twenty eight to a company that specialises in small scale touring.
• Never write a character you don't want to play yourself. If you're not interested in them, who else is going to be?
• Plays are about people. Not your own personal outrage. Not lists of statistics. We only understand the sufferings of millions through the experience of the individual as someone said much more succinctly than I've just done.
• And remember it's a craft - it has to be worked at. Rewrites are a good idea.
• Writing a play is hard work. But if you're serious about what you're doing don't look for other activities to distract you when you start to feel down hearted.

Ah... Right.