The Libretto

The Law Of Conservation of Matter

2009-07-14T10:37:00.002Z

My Facebook profile said: "Jenifer Toksvig has written that song. Done. Finished. (For now. Draft one. But, you know... done.)"

James Marler replied: "When is a song ever done? (and this is a serious question for Toksvig the kick-ass musical theatre professor type)"

The Law of Conservation of Matter also applies to stories, so:

- just as matter cannot be created or destroyed, but is simply rearranged and redistributed...

- so stories and songs are made through rearrangement and then they are redistributed to audiences...

- and the audiences are made up of people who have the potential to be emotionally rearranged by the stories and songs, which they might then redistribute in some way to others...

So in answer to your question, James:

A song is done when it has mattered.

Women writers

2009-06-25T09:54:00.002Z

This article made me consider a link with something I found when prepping my archetypes sessions. Which I'll write more about later. I just wanted to get this linked so I don't forget it.

D&D sparks

2009-03-05T08:35:00.002Z

Another lovely evening of being Devoted and Disgruntled last night. If you work in, or just enjoy going to, or never really thought about but now you come to mention it, theatre then you should attend at least one of these D&D sessions.

And if you live abroad so you can't make it to London, join the 'ning' by clicking on the link above, and you can participate via message boards, blogs and chatroom online. There's a fast-growing community of UK theatre folk on there already - some incredible people, from performance poets to aerial artists to directors, actors, writers to drama school teachers to critics to photographers and on and on. Brilliant. Come and join us.

We were discussing ways in which the web can play more of a part, actually. At the big D&D events, I'm all for a live twitter feed where people can jot down thoughts and ideas and inspirations as they go, so we get a constantly scrolling screen of creativity, a catherine wheel of sparks coming out of the room, live. And those who can't be with us in the room could follow it and join in.

I want it up on a big screen in the room itself, but some people might find that distracting. I don't know. I think if you don't want to watch it, you don't watch it. But it might be like having a big TV in the room: really tempting to just sit there and watch it scroll by. On the other hand, external contributions could be made to specific topics currently being discussed.

I'm torn between a love of web 2.0 and my techno-geekiness, and the joy of actually being face to face with all these wonderful people in a big room, away from the keyboard. But we could at least have someone on a computer, twittering our thoughts for us and posting other people's responses so they can be added to the main record of the event.

We also talked about how things get actioned after a D&D event. Or if they get actioned at all. The thing is, the same principles and law of Open Space Technology apply outside the room, since they're not actually rules that someone made up, they're just observations of natural behaviour that are not only made permissable but actively shape and enable the process.

They are:

1. Whoever comes is the right people
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it's over, it's over

and 5. The Law of Two Feet: if at any time you find yourself neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, go somewhere else where you might learn and contribute.

I had an explosion of activity after the major D&D event this year, none of which actively involved anyone else from D&D, but hopefully my flurry of activity will affect other people, and they might come to a D&D, and so on. So, after the event, whoever is affected is the right people, and whatever action happens is the only action that could have happened, and however long that action goes on is the right time, and if nothing happens, it's right that nothing happens. People just used The Law of Two Feet, and so they should, because if nothing else at least they were propelled to move on somewhere else.

I'm a big fan of participatory evaluation. It's my new Thing. I wish we could do a little more of that, so we have a record of a sort, like the live twitter feed, that shows how many sparks fly off the creative friction at a D&D event, and how many fires are lit by those sparks...

Spring Flowers

2009-02-20T22:23:00.002Z

These are spring flowers, in the hope that spring she is a-coming in.

But putting them on my website is probably not a good idea, so I'll just keep them here and on Twitter.

Definitely need some spring on my website, though. It's still showing Christmassy colours, and that's done for now.

(These are the ways in which I avoid writing.)

My Birthday

2009-02-17T09:16:00.003Z

Right. It's my birthday soon. People keep asking me, so here are some things I'd like:

I have an amazon wishlist which contains DVDs, books and games.

I also have a favourites list at Etsy, where people sell handmade items. (If you're looking at the copper bracelet, I'm already talking to the person who makes them, about having one made with the alphabet on. So you could just refer to the correspondence she's having with BessieBlue.)

But if you'd rather use your imagination, then here are some helpful guidelines:

Colours: chocolates, vanillas, raspberries, plums, purples, lilacs, blues, turquoises, aquas. Greens are also good if they're muted not bright, and yellow is good in roses.

Flowers: yellow roses are my favourite. Also fond of fruit, and always happy to receive that as a gift.

Fresh fruits: apples (russets, braeburns, cox's are the best), pineapple, mango, bananas, sharon, cherries, blueberries.

Metals: always silver, never gold except in very occasional circumstance, and usually old gold. Certainly never bright gold. Copper bracelets are good - best if engraved, or elaborate, or silver-plated on top.

Materials: pref wood, then glass (if coloured, blue or green is good), then stone, then paper. Rarely metal unless jewellery, see above.

General: If it's paper to write on - blank, not lined. If it's ink - black, not blue. If it's fabric to wear - soft to the touch. If it's a bag of some kind - long shoulder strap so I can wear it over my head and shoulder, where it's least bad for my back. If it's shoes - size 5 (38). If it's clothing that needs a size, please don't buy it, I'm still losing weight.

I also love anything nautical, most folk music, and things that don't take up space like donations to charities that support British wildlife, woodland and waterways. (I'm already a member of the Waterways Trust, but you could still make a donation.)

If you don't like those, I also like the Landmark Trust and, because of Dad, donations to the British Heart Foundation are always welcome. Finally, in Terry Pratchett's name, please make a donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

But best of all, just drop me an email or something, and don't buy me a gift. I don't have room for any more stuff, but I always have room for the good wishes of friends.

Ten Minute Musicals

2009-02-15T16:56:00.002Z

Had a chat with my lovely friend Tim Saward recently, about a ten minute musical he's writing.

The thing is, limitations are good. They're useful. If you're writing something that must be a specific length, that becomes a tool you can use for the creation of the story.

Take, for example, the ten minute format, and I’m looking at this in very traditional musical theatre terms for now.

Any story will probably have three dramatic beats in it, so you’re potentially looking at three lots of three-minute beats, and a three-minute beat is a typical musical theatre song length.

So you could have a maximum of three songs in it (or three more structured song-moments within a sung-through format).

There’s a reason why songs are typically three minutes long. The audience needs time to get into the moment, understand the question and hear about the answer. Again, three beats.

Considering you’ll be stretching out the words because they’re sung - essentially inflating words with emotion – 60 seconds is time enough to understand the situation the character is describing and to connect with them emotionally. Then it’s time enough to journey with them to the mid-point of the song, and then time enough to journey with them through the aftermath of that mid-point.

Yes, information could easily be given in less time. A few words of dialogue might suffice in illustrating that character’s journey, but you have to allow a little more room and time for the audience to connect emotionally with a song.

It is possible that you could make that work in, say, two minutes. Basic AABA is four sections long, so thirty seconds per section may still give you the dramatic format that we know enables the audience to connect emotionally.

Any less than that per song, and you’re looking at finding non-traditional ways for the audience to access the emotion. It’s absolutely possible, but it needs to be considered.

Sticking with the traditional format, some examples of possible structure are therefore:

- 3 songs of 3 mins plus 1 min dialogue

- 3 songs of 2 mins plus 4 min dialogue, in 2 sections of 2 mins (or just totalling 4 mins)

- 1 x 3 min song in the middle, at the moment of dramatic friction, plus dialogue either side at 3.5 mins each (or just totalling 7 mins).

You also have to consider the passage of time. Will this be ten minutes of real time, or will some time pass between scenes? Bearing in mind that accepting the passage of time requires a bit of work on the part of the audience, this might hiccup your story unless you make a deliberate choice to use it as a device that will actively serve the storytelling rather than simply facilitate it.

For example: two characters meet up as children, then as adults, then when they’re elderly. The audience is asked to jump ahead decades each time, and to imagination what those characters might have been through in those decades.

The passage of time could used to facilitate the story. This, then, is a story about two people who have always been perfect for one another, but were destined not to be together until much later in life. Perhaps it just wasn’t their time until then, or maybe it just didn’t work out until then. Whatever the reason, the middle section gives the audience some hope that they will get together, but they don’t until the end. The resolution comes at the end. The passage of time simply allows us to visit their story at three different points in time.

Or the passage of time could be used to serve the storytelling. This, then, is a story about two people who have always been perfect for one another, but were destined not to be together until much later in life because of what happened in the interim periods that they didn’t know about each other and were never able to clearly communicate.

If the ignorance of each others’ lives in those interim periods is specifically the thing causing them not to be together until the end, and we as an audience share that ignorance with them, then we are part of the story. Through internal moments, we might realise something that they don’t realise, and oh! the frustration of seeing the middle meeting, and working out what’s going on, but seeing them part without gaining the knowledge we have!

This also serves the story-as-musical, because the information about those interim periods can be given to the audience as internal moments, and internal monologues maketh for musical theatre songs.

Also, interestingly, internal monologues can make for less strictly-structured musical theatre songs. I know it has a musical structure, but Billy Bigelow’s ‘Soliloquy’ comes close to this possibility.

In the same way that ‘Beautiful’ has no rhymes, which makes it right for a character who would never sing a romantic love song in a musical, a simple internal monologue doesn’t necessarily have to be restructured in order to work as a musical theatre internal moment.

Verse/chorus is the second option to consider when thinking about songs for this kind of format, because what verse/chorus does so brilliantly is expand on a single emotion without having to make a choice or a change.

To make verse/chorus work, it has to happen at least twice, and the chorus preferably three times, but the final time works well as a repeat. Five sections, possibly 20 seconds each – this format can be much shorter and more snappy, because the whole song is available to the audience for connection with the emotion. That’s a little over 2.5 minutes, which means a potential four songs in a ten minute musical – although I think that’s a little much.

But what if a monologue became a verse/chorus song? There will generally be an obvious hook, which will lose nothing from repetition, but it does refine the more rambling thought-process aspect of a monologue. Which is a brilliant aspect of traditional musical theatre lyric-writing, and the simplification is there for a reason: to leave space for the music to do some of the work.

But what if we didn’t refine? That’s certainly what Mort needs in his I Want moment. He’s not a boy who has his thoughts refined into short, sharp lyrics. He’s not poetic, either.

He has a train of thought, and to him, that IS emotion.

So choosing the right kind of character is also a limitation of a ten minute musical, and one that can serve you well. You could pick people who don’t naturally fall into the traditional musical theatre song format world, and use those unique character traits to influence the structure of the writing, which will only serve to support their uniqueness even more.

I’m rambling, because I’ve never written all this stuff down before, but this is what happens at the beginning of the process of crafting a way to explain what I know about these things. This is how Play-Doh began.

So watch this space, or the MMD message board, because I’m cultivating a class on the ten minute musical.

Educating Writers

2009-02-15T16:43:00.003Z

I have to do it. I have to write about the education of writers, because we don't have it in the UK yet.

Don't get me wrong, there are people making a real effort to provide for new musical theatre in the UK. Here's what we have, to my knowledge:

Mercury Musical Developments
Craft Seminars

I teach one-off sessions for them quite a lot, as do other people, but they are one-off sessions. They're often poorly attended because not everyone lives within reach of London, and because a lot of people who want to write new musicals don't know that there are things they need to know. I mean, they don't know why they need to know them. Or they think they already know them. So they don't go.

Besides, a one-off session is easy to miss due to having dinner with a mate, or the footie being on, or the rain. A whole course of sessions, much harder to miss for the same sort of reasons. You have to actively say that you do not want to go on a course of Musical Writing 101, and for that you need much more of a reason if it really is something you want to do.

MMD is not at fault for this. They just don't have the money to do anything else right now. But they listen. They do listen. They let me go to board meetings and they agree that teaching craft is really important, and they thank me for my enthusiasm and they try very, very hard to find the money for a full course.

I love them, but they don't have the answer right now.

Goldsmiths College, London
MA in Musical Theatre

They run a musical theatre course that splits into two strands: producing and writing. The producing side is currently lead by the lovely Chris Grady (who does other things to support new musicals, see below). The writing side is currently lead by the lovely Julian Woolford and his writing partner, Richard John.

As far as I understand it, the course is either one-year full-time or two-year part-time. I'm not sure if writers are lead through any craft 101 classes, but I suspect not much of that goes on because there isn't time, and they don't have the resources.

The whole course is overseen by Robert Gordon, a delightfully warm and enthusiastic supporter of new musicals whom I met for the first time the other day, to talk about this very thing. He would, if he could, set up a whole institute for the study of the writing of new musicals. That's what he's trying to do, in fact, but he's struggling to find the funding even for a summer school, let alone a full-on institute.

Speaking of summer schools;

Theatre Royal Stratford East
Musical theatre writing summer school

Under the guidance of Philip Hedley, a summer school has been run for many years to encourage and facilitate the creation of new musical theatre that features contemporary themes and contemporary music.

Assisted by two of the finest musical theatre writing guides in the world, Robert Lee and Fred Carl from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, this course has resulted in material that has gone on to have a professional future, and substantially enhanced the catalogue of British Musical Theatre, going a long way towards shaping what British Musical Theatre could be.

But not far enough. Because it's a summer school, and there's only so much you can do. And because they have funding that I presume is tied to various hoops through which they must jump. It's certainly my understanding that not everyone with any kind of work would be eligible to join the course.

Chris Grady Dot Org
Month of Sundays

The lovely Chris Grady - he's a friend, can you tell? - runs a course of classes that happen on consecutive Sundays (and one Saturday) across a month. I've lead one of those sessions, twice now, and whilst you can get some stuff done in one day, it's just not enough time to properly address Craft 101. With time limitation, you have to do much more telling than showing, which is just not good guidance for creatives.

Again, Chris would do more if he had more money. He's constantly trying to do more, even as I write. But he needs funding.

And of course, understandably, no-one shares. Everyone has a little tiny pot of funding, and either they won't pool it for fear of losing it entirely, or (more likely) they can't pool it because it's been given to them, and them alone, and they already had to jump through however many hoops to qualify for it in the first place.

To my knowledge, no-one has ever said, "Here's some money that is specifically for guiding writers and composers in the study and development of the craft of writing musical theatre, the discovery and development of their individual own artistic voices, and the exploration and development of British Musical Theatre."

But that's what they've done at NYU, with American Musical Theatre. It's exactly what they've done. And not only has some global commercially successful musical theatre come out of it (the book of 'Wicked', for example) but also - and frankly, more importantly - hundreds of artists have not only developed their artistic voices, but also found out more about who they are as people, and how they fit into their families, their friends, their communities. (Even their countries, if you want to get all American about it.)

They've become more accurate and confident communicators, more generous and willing collaborators, and they are now more open to, and more likely to, and more able to incorporate creativity into everything they do. In and of itself, new musicals aside, that is a great achievement for the NYU program. An amazing achievement.

So British writers can do what I did, and go to NYU, and study the craft. Except they'll be studying in an atmosphere of AMERICAN Musical Theatre. Not British. They'll be studying at the Mecca of American Musical Theatre, in New York, the home of Broadway, and in the company of American writers and American guides.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love American musicals, and I loved my time there, but there are British writers - hundreds of them! - who would love to be writing new material for British Musical Theatre.

And it doesn't exist.

I know, Stratford can point to shows it has nurtured, and rightly so. That is British Musical Theatre, but it's localised, and it's not widely publicised, and it's one venue, one show at a time. What we need is a change in attitude towards new musicals - hells, a change in attitude towards musicals generally would help.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber has helped. No, come on, he has. The fact that the musical theatre reality TV shows have been so very popular has really helped the genre.

But new musicals?

There are companies offering opportunities for the staging of new work, in many ways. MMD offers readings and workshop opportunities. Chris Grady runs the George Street festival of musicals in Edinburgh. There are all kinds of smaller companies offering writers the chance to put their work up on its feet. Which is great. It really is.

Except for two things. First, it's almost impossible for those producers to find work that is sufficiently competent in terms of writing craft, because no-one teaches the craft to any degree of usefulness in the UK. And second, the writers have to be left to their own devices in the actual presentation of the work, because said producers can't raise enough money to pay for professional actors, directors and so on, so the writers are given an empty space and a time slot, maybe some lights, and some publicity, and that's it.

That's not it. I mean, that's great. But the writers are busy directing their own work - which they don't know how to do, even though it is possible, but it's a skill, and it can be taught! I can teach it! Except no-one is offering me much opportunity to teach it, other than one-off sessions, which really isn't enough time to guide people to understand the process for themselves so they can put it into practice without a guide being present when they go through the process themselves.

They never have a guide present. So from whom are they learning? How do they know what you can learn from a reading, from a workshop, if they have no writer with more experience to help them? Or give them a director with experience of helping a writer develop their work. Which is a skill, a different skill for a director than directing an existing text. It involves some dramaturgy. And where are the dramaturgs?! Again, a different way to learn, but just as powerful a guide in the writing process as another writer, or a director.

You just need someone who knows more about the process of developing new writing than you do. Someone who knows what the writing process is about. Someone who can bring some objectivity to it for you. Otherwise you can have all the readings and workshops you like, and you'll never grow.

It's not your fault. You just don't know what you're doing.

I didn't know what I was doing when I was given the opportunity to work with a bunch of drama students for an afternoon. But I very much wanted them to get something out of the process, and to know how much I appreciated what they could give me, and then I had to figure out WHAT they could give me, and what I could give them, and the more I thought about the process itself, the more I discovered about my own writing, and about the creative process of actor-and-character, and about collaborative theatre as a whole.

And I could share that. Given writers, given a space, given some time.

We could teach the craft! Lyrics 101 - what is AABA, how does it work, what can it achieve as a dramatic songwriting tool? Book 101 - how do your choices about the revelation of information affect the audience's emotional experience of a story? Music 101 - what is prosody, how does it work, and what can you do with it to tell a story?

We could guide people in the process of collaboration! We could enable people to hear and give constructive critique in order to benefit their own work and the work of other writers! (And to save their souls from the damnation of self-criticism!)

We could help people find and develop their own creative voices! Not voices they copy from America, or from the past, but voices that are truthful, from the town they live in and the people they know. From the fish & chips and the loving of the underdog, to the stone-clad beaches that you can't sit on, and the writing of a stern letter to your MP. From the green and pleasant to the dark satanic.

There are currently several British writers on the NYU course, and one of them told me that she wasn't sure whether to stay in America after graduation, or come back to England. Which would be better, in terms of musical theatre writing? I despaired, because I know what the sensible answer is: stay there. There's more opportunity. More support. More of a foundation.

But I said - come home. Your voice doesn't come from there, it comes from here. It can't echo there, but it will echo here. You speak this language, your heart beats this rhythm, your voice sings to England. Come home.

And I thought, well, everyone else is trying to raise funding, jumping through hoops by talking about broadening the industry by offering more opportunities of exposure for new work, but the new work has no guide and the writers have no guide, and all we're doing is filling the market with work that's too raw and confused and directionless.

They're all working really hard, but no-one is filling in the foundation. No-one who is a writer is helping writers full-time because nowhere is letting us do that.

So I don't have a choice now. It has to be me, and it has to be soon, and I don't care who it is or where it is or how it is, I need three things in my life:

- To eat
- To have shelter
- To guide

So I'm going to get a job. In a bookshop. In a library. As a researcher. I don't care. And while I'm doing that job, I'm going to be there for writers of musicals. So come home to me. And to everyone else who is trying to make things happen for you, but since there's no foundation for writing, no home for the craft of writing itself, no safe place prior to the audience getting their emotions into it... I will be that home.

I will make sure that you have a home to come to.

PS: This is not a new idea. I proudly inherit this role of being the British home of musical theatre writing from George Stiles. When I got back to Blighty after NYU, I was desperately alone and lonely, so I managed to get George's number through a friend of a friend, and I called him.

"Hello." I said. "You don't know me, but my name is Jen and I write musicals. I just got back from NY and I'm amazingly lonely. Please would you be my friend?"

And he said yes. But George is a bit busy these days, and although I know he absolutely is the friend of everyone who writes musicals, he also has a career to pursue that is frankly more successful and time-consuming than mine. So drop me an email and I'll send you my phone number and be your friend, in lieu of George Stiles. (I'm not quite as talented or lovely, but I'll do my best.)

The Social Value of Art, in Two Words

2009-02-10T21:43:00.002Z

This is most of a post I wrote on the GMTWP digest, in response to something written by Joel Derfner. (Who is a beautiful writer, and a gorgeous person, and whom I thank for sparking thoughts in me.)

I don't see myself having a responsibility as a writer. Not in those terms. I see myself just BEING a writer. It's sort of hard to explain. I am one. I can't be anything else. Even during long periods of not writing a word, I'm a writer. I never wanted to be one. I mean, I never planned it. I just am.

Mind you, BECAUSE of the fact that I am one, I do have some responsibilities. I'm responsible for the work. No, I'm the caretaker... no, the conduit. I have the opportunity to be responsible for opening up and letting stories flow through me and onto the page. I don't HAVE to do it, but I have the ability to do it, and I can take responsibility for that ability.

If I do, that means letting the story come out as it chooses to, not as I think it should. Oddly, in being a writer of fiction, I have a responsibility to reality. If it doesn't have the ring of real to it, it becomes inaccessible, and if I'm choosing to act as conduit to the page, then I'm choosing to act as conduit through which the performers can connect with the audience, and vice versa.

So for me, the key thing is to remain open. I sort of do a class on this, too. Someone asked me to run a session called "The Art of Storytelling", and he actually offered to pay me a little money for those few hours, so I agreed before I'd even THOUGHT about it, and then I had to bloody think about it.

I tried to make it as simple as possible, mostly for my own benefit, so I could figure out what I wanted to say. Also, I tried to make it all factual rather than my own personal interpretation. (I knew I would fail, but it was a helpful simplifying tool because I'm looking for something more universal.) Here it is in brief:

I think stories exist in three forms:

a story told
a story heard
a story known

Actually, that's a circle rather than a list. Any of them can come first: you hear a story, you know it, you tell it. You make up a story in your head which you now know and can tell to someone else, who hears it. And so on. But I'm working in the order of that list for now.

The first one, a story told, is told for a reason. The sharing of a story might be for moral reasons, to try and make the world (or one person's life) a better place. It might be for self-confirmation, like he-said-she-said stories over coffee. Whatever the reason, there's usually an emotional desire driving it: the way the emotion is expressed is in the telling of the story.

I'm choosing to call that confession, for now. An emotion is confessed into a space that is created between story-teller and story-listener by the story itself.

The story then becomes a story heard, by the listener, who must have a reason for listening if they are, in fact, listening. That reason is based on a connection they want to make, with the story-teller, or with the story, which is (I think) usually based on some kind of emotion.

So I'm choosing to call that the connection stage.

Now the listener knows the story. They made an emotional connection with it (and/or with the teller) and they now have some knowledge, a story, a tool that they didn't have before. I call it a tool because the confession was emotionally driven, the story rode out on emotion, the connection was emotionally driven, the story rode in on emotion, and therefore catharsis is taking place.

Regardless of whether we're aware of it or not, even loathing the story is an emotional catharsis of some kind. It's unavoidable if you chose to listen to something.

So here's the journey of storytelling, for me: confession, connection, catharsis.

I should say that I think it is possible to stand there while someone tells you a story, and not actually hear a single word of it. In fact, another thing that appears to be true is that you can best hear yourself. Or rather, you can only hear yourself in any story. It may be that your way in is obscure, but without a connection to yourself, I suggest that you have no way into a story and therefore won't listen.

And it seems to me that in order to be a storyteller, you should be aware of how listening works. (Hence my wish to be aware of how learning works in order to understand teaching.)

So I told the Art Of Storytelling class that it seems to me that, AABA aside, The Rules Of Writing has two misleading words: Rules and Writing. I think it's more like The Rules Of Hearing, or rather, The Habits Of Hearing.

Because, I realise now as I write this, never mind responsibility, I don't think it's my ABILITY to change people. I don't think I can teach anything, but I can open up a space for other people to access if they want.

I can make a confession. It will help me. I'll feel lighter.

It might help others because I went first.

Most of all, though, when someone tells you how THEY feel about something, if you recognise that feeling, you feel... heard.

So I don't think I should have asked what art is. I think I should have asked what art DOES.

It listens.

Language

2009-02-10T21:41:00.003Z

This comes from the idea of freedom and I wrote it while I was watching Obama’s inaugural speech.

Art is compassion
Art is generosity
Art is listening
Art will listen to you
Art is personal - it’s about you (because you are the one connecting with it)
We all need to talk in times of fear
We all need to talk in times of joy
We need to talk and we need to be heard
We need to be understood and made to feel welcome with our emotions, no matter how irrational we fear they may be
We need to feel that we are not alone

Art doesn’t give you choice, it gives you the freedom to choose.
Art doesn’t give you freedom of expression, it gives you the freedom to express.

This, finally, links into something that might be a language to describe the social value of the arts.

Peter Hall’s Diaries: the social value of the arts

2009-02-10T21:29:00.004Z

This section is about the social value of the arts.

In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:

“The eternal question returns like a nightmare: why should we pay for the arts?”

He answers thus:

“Because art can keep our society healthy…”

HOW?

“… what is a minority today becomes the majority position of tomorrow.”

HUH?

“In the seventies… Art was as important as education.”

WHY?

“People without children paid taxes to provide money to educate other people’s children.”

GOOD POINT, BUT NOT AN ANSWER.

“If we don’t subsidise the arts, we shall not have them.”

WE ALL WORK FOR NOTHING, PETER.

“And we shall lack the questioning which nurtures and cherishes the very soul of our country. This is the function of art.”

QUESTIONING?

“A mature democracy should have the courage to pay its artists to criticise it.”

POLITICAL PURPOSE?

I’m not denying that art has that important function – but is it an ability rather than a function?

I’m sure a grassroots movement would rise up in support of such protest if we were in that kind of era, or we thought the freedom to criticise government through art might be being stifled. But that’s about freedom, not about art.

It feels wrong for the ‘now’. We don’t protest through artists now. We rise up and do it ourselves.

And we can all be artists these days. That’s the internet for you.

So I say that art and our connection to it has become more personal. We have the ability, and therefore feel we have the right, to more access.

We can take part.

We can make art.

So we look for – freedom.

Not guidance from artists criticizing government. Freedom to criticise government all by ourselves, using art or not, as we please.

Peter says:

“The market cannot take risks on innovative art. Yet art is not fulfilling its social function unless it is innovative.”

SO WHAT IS THE FUNCTION, PETER?

“Mozart and Van Gogh had limited success in their lifetime. If they had been subsidised, they would perhaps have lived longer, and left more art to guide us.”

TO GUIDE US
ART GUIDES US

(Must read more of The Uses of Enchantment)

Peter says:

“…bland art neither stimulates, nor entertains, nor does it help us understand how to live.”

HELP US UNDERSTAND HOW TO LIVE...

This leads on to the new post about Confession, Connection, Catharsis, which is a sort of conclusion, and a sort of answer to the search for a language to describe the social value of the arts.

There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:

- a section about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.

- a section about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.

- a section about freedom.

- a section that links into teaching the craft.

Peter Hall’s Diaries: teaching the craft

2009-02-10T21:19:00.002Z

This section links into teaching the craft.

We shouldn’t be teaching the craft. We should be learning it. Critical difference: the second one uses open space technology.

In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:

“All innovative work throughout theatre history has been done by companies. Companies mean cohesion, a shared style, developments that came from failures as well as from successes.”

This links into the talk we had at D&D4 about how to train an actor. Someone said that one of the great benefits of drama school is that you get that rare and wonderful opportunity to be part of an acting troupe within your year, and you stay with them throughout, which offers you unique opportunities for learning.

Should a musical theatre writing course be linked to a performance course? I tend to say no, because one needs experience in order to guide the other. Drama students are guided by the text of the established plays and musical they do. There are reasons why those works were successful, and they can learn from what’s on the page.

Likewise, writers learn from professional actors who have instincts that they may not be able to explain, but that’s why you have a director. Not to come between writer and actor, but to facilitate the process more objectively than either of those can.

Except I think in a company, everyone should be so familiar with what everyone else does that it all merges into one.

So a musical theatre writing course should have access to a company of actors. The same company. The same director? Maybe a small pool of directors, one who prefers trad book musicals, one who likes rock opera, one for comedy. I don’t know. Just three different ones, who can also work together to guide the whole group.

And designers. The same designers too.

And they should all be involved, from day one. A company, period. When you learn about AABA, you do it in the room with your actors, so everyone learns how it works, what it does, how it feels to perform, how it feels to write.

Peter Hall goes on to say:

“But here’s the paradox: in order to justify their resources, both the RSC and the National have had to grow too big. The organisations could only have the necessary facilities by being large – but they are now too large for an intimate theatre company to thrive in.”

This is the perfect argument for the course being at a university, which already has all those facilities at its disposal.

He goes on to say:

“The British support institutions, never individual artists. And institutions are judged on quantity, not quality.”

But in this way, a university could say, “And we’ve also got a musical theatre writing course to add to our list of cool course, and we’re the only people in Europe who have got that!”

It becomes judge-able in that quantity way.

But intimacy within the course itself, within the company, is very important for a shared sense of safety and therefore freedom.

Look, see, Peter says it himself:

“I had that same sense of freedom and support…”

I have a bazillion other thoughts about the teaching of the craft, some of which are in my latest confession, connection, catharsis post.

There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:

- a section about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.

- a section about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.

- a section about freedom.

- a section about the social value of the arts.

Peter Hall’s Diaries: freedom

2009-02-10T21:17:00.002Z

This section is about freedom.

In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:

“Entertainment should aspire as well as amuse. Art should provoke as well as celebrate, disturb as well as reassure. If it is original, it is likely at first sight to be elitist. Popular art can be vigorous art, and original, but it is less likely to be so if its popularity is contrived by marketing budgets and hype.”

This links into the idea that freedom of choice and freedom of expression are not freedom at all.

Art should allow you to be free to emote. Otherwise it doesn’t satisfy that genuine need in you. But we probably don’t realise this, because we’re so used to the idea that marketing = freedom.

There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:

- a section about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.

- a section about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.

- a section that links into teaching the craft.

- a section about the social value of the arts.

Peter Hall’s Diaries: the appeal of the 'old' arts

2009-02-10T21:15:00.002Z

This section is about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.

In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:

“New Labour clearly also hates the old performing arts – theatre classical music, dance. Well, perhaps ‘hate’ is too strong a word: they are frightened of them – which is worse.

“I suppose they would say that they have no ready appeal to the young (wrong) and that they therefore merit little political attention (wrong again). Certainly, they are under-nourished and under-encouraged, when they could be the cornerstone of an educational renaissance.”

And…

“All television stations are now, as they constantly state, rules by the ratings.”

But that’s change, Peter! That’s the new grassroots future. So what do we do to get the grassroots wanting theatre? Wanting classical plays?

Everyone still wants stories.

(Maybe they just don’t realise that?)

There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:

- a section about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.

- a section about freedom.

- a section that links into teaching the craft.

- a section about the social value of the arts.

Peter Hall’s Diaries: high-brow and low-brow

2009-02-10T21:04:00.004Z

This sort of leads on from everything, but links with life no longer being linear and also with my search for a language to describe the social value of the arts.

This section is about ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.

In a foreword that was added to his published diaries in 1999, Sir Peter Hall says:

“If I had continued to keep the diaries during the eighties and nineties, the scene would have become darker and darker, as I recorded missed opportunities, philistinism endorsed, or politicians uninterested in the arts because they can see no votes in them. Stupidity has now become confused with egalitarianism, and elitism with proper standards.

“Governments now dare not support the arts for fear of appearing high-brow. England is still the only European country where ‘intellectual’ is a term of abuse.”

This high-brow thing: there is a way to appreciate art without accessing it emotionally. (And it’s called Being British.)

We see low-brow as good because it’s real. But panto is low-brow, and it’s seen as good, and it is real: real storytelling. Proper old fairy tales, good vs evil and all that. I mean, for fuck’s sake, isn’t that what Shakespeare was doing? Adapting old tales for a new audience who wanted to boo the villain and cheer the hero?

This low-brow thing can just mean accessible, but accessible doesn’t get funded.

We must start teaching craft. To make work accessible. But this would happen in a theatre company without the need to fund teaching.

What if we had a company of actors, the same ones, and the same small group of directors, and we chose some writers to write ten minute pieces, and we made that be a company for a season?

Peter: “And the concern [about the arts] seems always to be popularity – not creativity.”

But if you teach craft, creativity becomes accessible, which makes it popular.

There are other sections prompted by the intro to Peter Hall's Diaries:

- a section about the appeal of the ‘old’ arts to the young.

- a section about freedom.

- a section that links into teaching the craft.

- a section about the social value of the arts.

Not a Conclusion

2009-02-10T21:01:00.002Z

This follows on from.… everything, and is also a beginning.

Here’s why I’m blogging this, even though I don’t think I’ve exactly found a language with which to illustrate the social value of theatre. (Because frankly, I don’t really want the responsibility of that.)

But I noticed some stuff. Look! And I’m going to blog it randomly, I think, in sections, because it’s a bumblebee of things I’ve noticed, all jumbled together and making some sort of picture… but I suspect, I hope, that the picture will be different for everyone.

So use the Law of Two Feet and hop around the various bits. If any of it mirrors something for you, that’s brilliant! Please take it away and use it! Make it bigger, make it better, make it turn into something else, grow it.

Because if my only skill is to give freedom to others, then I have done a great thing in life.

After this post, I started reading Peter Hall's Diaries, which prompted more thinking.

Stage Directions

2009-02-10T20:59:00.003Z

This follows on from being unlimited.

Lee Simpson and I had a conversation about stage directions. I fucking love that I can have a conversation with someone about stage directions. Hells, I’ve blogged about stage directions.

We agreed that as writers putting down an initial draft, we have stage directions. We just have them, because they just exist. They are inherent to the action we’re transcribing, and we need them as the threads that hold it all together.

At a later date, we then have to be part of the group that studiously ignores the stage directions, because that’s right. Because that’s the process: it’s our job to put them in and then our job to ignore them. Both.

That’s what collaboration is: the cutting of the threads. It’s freedom.

This isn’t just a way of doing theatre. It’s what theatre is. It just is, inherently. It can’t help itself. Like the guidelines of Open Space Technology, which are just what happens.

And that’s why he had to give it away. All Harrison Owen did was realise what it is, and point to it. He didn’t really discover it so much as notice it and point it out to other people. I mean, you do, don’t you? You notice something, you point it out.

(So look, look! Look at those people on the tube with the headphones on! They’re not going to Bethnal Green, or to Chancery Lane. They’re going to freedom for a while. How cool is that?)

This leads onto something that isn’t a conclusion.

Unlimited

2009-02-10T20:56:00.002Z

This follows on from the mirror thing; the fact that you must have need of a mirror in order to choose to look into it.

So back to finding a language with which to express the social value of the arts: it should be collective, this language. Like storytelling, it should be collective, but in a way that serves everyone, anyone. The pop music way, the Barack Obama way, the open space way.

A way to say that ‘freedom of expression’ isn’t what it seems to be: there is responsibility there too. As we talked about at another D&D4 session, on putting some of the spirit of the 60s back into theatre: you can’t be an anarchist unless you’re prepared to accept the consequences of your anarchy and take on responsibility for your actions.

‘Freedom of choice’ isn’t what it seems, either. It comes with marketing attacks on our time and space, and manipulation…

Manipulated emotions

… where all we really want to be

… is free to feel.

This is what hit Phelim in the heart when I asked him what he gets out of organising D&D. It reminds him, he said, of who he is. Of what he does, and why.

By doing Devoted & Disgruntled, he gets to give people freedom, which unlimits them.

By working with writers and actors, I get to give people freedom, which unlimits them.

By being a storyteller, I get to give people freedom, which unlimits them.

We do this because we have, at some point and in some way, wanted freedom and felt limited. Even felt unentitled to it, like we didn’t have the right.

Me, I mean. I felt – I feel, sometimes, often, like I don’t have the right to be unlimited.

This leads onto stage directions.

Having the Need

2009-02-10T20:52:00.003Z

This is more on the subject of freedom, and follows on from thoughts of sharing…

When I was figuring out how to enable actors to work with new material, how to give them the freedom, trying to understand their process, and vice versa, figuring out how to give writers the freedom, help actors understand their process, I knew that I was the person in the room who had to be responsible for creating the open space, because I was responsible for initially bringing the material to the space.

I knew that I had to maintain some responsibility, because the actors were going to offer me freedom of choice if I gave them freedom of expression. And ‘responsibility’ is a really good way to look at it, because I need to step back from my work and invite other people into it if I want to be able to respond to it. Response-able.

The audience must be response-able.

Freedom.

But the freedom to make an emotional connection can only be applied – or used – when there is a need for an emotional connection.

When an emotion in me sees its mirror image in a story, I engage with that story because it can serve a cathartic need in me. That’s why everyone in the audience watching the same show will connect to it in a slightly different way, and that’s why not everyone is drawn to every story.

That’s also why the same pop song should, if successful, work at a birth, wedding or funeral. (This, from Steven Sater at an MMD seminar, who was told it by someone in the pop industry.) That’s the thing about pop songs: the music must mirror the sine wave that emotion travels, and the lyric must leave enough open space that it can mirror any emotion following that path.

And that’s the thing about traditional musical theatre lyrics: the lyrics illustrate a specific point on the sine wave, in detail more specific than in pop. And folk songs tell a whole story…

We all differ, but our aim is the same: to be a mirror. And the mirror can only do its thing if someone has a need to look in it.

So the language I’m looking for, to illustrate the social value of the arts, must articulate the potential value of a mirror. It must be clear that even if you’ve managed perfectly well so far without it, if you looked in it, you might gain something.

This leads into the notion of being unlimited.

Confession, Connection, Catharsis

2009-02-10T20:01:00.005Z

This follows on from the tube, which was more stuff about freedom.

There’s another interesting thing that clicked in my head because of the Open Space Technology at D&D4.

The four guidelines are effectively stating what will happen anyway. All they do is take away any fear or guilt about the natural progression of things, but that is perhaps the most important thing to do.

When someone connects with a story, in whatever art form, they open themselves up to it: we walk into the theatre, sit down in front of the TV, open the book, listen to the story and allow ourselves to look inside.

… inside the story, and inside ourselves, because a story with which we make an emotional connection acts like a mirror. It creates a safe space within which to see emotions. It’s like having company for your emotions. As I blogged a while back:

For the audience, good writing is all about three things: confession, connection, catharsis.

I wrote a post on this today, for the forum of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU. I'll cross-post it here because I explained it much better in that post than I did in this one.

Basically it goes like this: emotions are 'confessed' into the space by the characters. If they recognise that 'confession', the audience connects with that emotion. By joining the character's journey through that emotion, the audience finds some catharsis for that emotion within themselves.

I think that the “what happened next?” device inside us kicks the door open so we can let the emotions out. However it works, that’s what it does: it shows us a mirror image of us. They say that misery loves company, but so does love, so does anger, so does joy. That’s why it’s better to see something thrilling with someone else. To share a loving moment. To shout at someone who shouts back!

Here's more on Connection, Confession and Catharsis, and it leads into what I think art is, which is what I've been trying to discover all along.

Also, this thing about sharing leads onto having the need for freedom.

Tube to Bethnal Green

2009-02-10T19:58:00.002Z

This follows on from the idea that what makes a grassroots movement form itself together is story.

At D&D4, I said that I would go away and think about a language with which to express the social value of the arts, and story is the key, I think. Which is lucky, really, because that’s what the arts does best: tells stories.

And not just bits of the arts, either. Everything from theatre to TV and film, literature, painting, sculpture, dance, poetry; traditional art forms and new art forms, ‘high-brow art’ and ‘low-brow’ art; accessible and obscure, historical and contemporary, political and pornographic.

We all tell stories, or conjure up stories in the imaginations of our audiences. We all make an emotional connection with the audience member.

Our skill, our great and universal gift, is to give the audience freedom: the freedom to join in, the freedom to feel, to have catharsis, to experience.

That is the social value of the arts, and the social cost of cutting funding for the arts is that we’d be taking away the escape pod.

On my way to Bethnal Green to attend D&D, I wondered at the reason why so many people were heading out that way. Were they all going to D&D? Surely not.

(Then they all got off at Chancery Lane and I thought, shit, right, everything in life is not about where I’m going. And also, the City exists between the West End and the theatre event I was attending, but clearly isn’t important enough to exist for me as a possible final destination. Lee Simpson laughed with me about this, and it was nice to have company when laughing at myself.)

Anyway, while I was on the tube, I was watching people – who were going to work in the City on finance and stuff like that – listening to music. Tons of them, headphones on, lost in music.

Their own choice of music, yes. They did have to go through the process of choosing, but the work of artists was giving them the open space, the freedom to make an emotional connection. Right there in front of me, on the tube!

I’d never seen it that way before, even though I see someone wearing headphones all the time. It reminded me of a moment I had once in Waterloo station, where I just stopped walking and looked at all the people walking past me, people on their way to something, doing something, and for a few seconds I saw them as people feeling something. Not people with purpose or motion in a train station, but people with feelings, living.

This leads onto my initial post about confession, connection and catharsis, with is about sharing, and also about freedom.

Grassroots

2009-02-10T19:51:00.002Z

This follows on from my standing up and being counted when I voted for Obama, and is also connected to the notion that society may not need a figurehead these days.

Although when I stood up and was counted as part of a grassroots movement for Obama, I was standing up for a figurehead. But that’s not so complex, really. I wasn’t actually voting for Obama. I was voting for a message.

There’s a social value right here, in Grassroots City. Any collective – a group, an organisation, a crowd, an audience – has that kind of grassroots power because they go through a grassroots experience together.

And a grassroots experience is anything that gives people a shared story. That’s what brings a collective identity into being:

a story

The story of what it means to Be An American or Change America. Or, in the corporate world, the story of what it means to Work For Starbucks: as a ‘colleague’ not an employee; you get a different character name, and it turns you into someone else.

It’s all about how you self-identify, and that was once about how other people identified you, but now it’s about the potential other people see in you, which gives you the freedom to be those things if you so choose.

Obama found the language of potential and he used it to describe politics (which is the thing we were voting for) but most critically, he used it to describe me (or rather, the person I could be, depending on how I voted).

Back to finding a language to illustrate the social value of the arts.

Could corporate language be used to illustrate the social value of the arts? It already is. Andy Burnham himself did it in a speech that appeared to be very supportive of the arts, but there was no transparency to it. If you look at it in detail, it shows little other than corporate spin. It certainly didn’t make me feel – emotionally feel – that he is my creative leader.

Not in the way that I feel Barack Obama is someone I would follow.

(Transparency? What is that? Isn’t it just another word for freedom? Obama posts all his official proclamations and executive orders on the White House website so The People – that’s me – can read it and have the potential to take action. Have the potential. That’s just freedom.)

This leads onto the tube to Bethnal Green.

Freedom, Choice and Responsibility

2009-02-10T19:48:00.003Z

This follows on from my wish to give freedom to others.

Audience too. That’s the crucial point. I want my work to be accessible enough, to have enough space in it to allow someone else the freedom to collaborate with it emotionally.

Freedom. I think this is the beginning of finding my language to express the social value of the arts.

Freedom is a funny old thing. When corporations started offering people choice, using choice as a marketing tool (“Have whatever colour phone you want!”) it felt like freedom.

Freedom of Expression

… which resulted in lots of companies having to go that way and offer choice, and then lots of people were trying to sell you the idea of ‘freedom of expression’, and with that healthy market competition came

Freedom of Choice

Always with the word ‘freedom’ attached to it, because it sounds so positive. So much like a human right.

But freedom of choice brings with something with it:

Responsibility

Choice is overwhelming because choice makes you choose, and choosing takes effort. You have to take responsibility for the process of choosing, and then for the choice you finally make.

This is, after all, the era of lawsuits, of disclaimers, of putting the responsibility on the customer because we put the choice into the hands of the customer. They wanted it! They asked for it!

Barack Obama put a spin on it. It’s your own personal responsibility, he said, to make your country great again. You can make that change happen. You have you the choice to have the power.

But our power now lies within us as a grassroots movement, because the whole having-the-choice turned us into a collective: the thing that the biggest group of individuals wants is what will be provided, so we all gotta stand up and ask for it.

(… democratic socialism? Social democracy? Soc-racy? Socrates? Not being political. Just playing with words. I don’t really do political.)

But standing up and asking for it gives us a sense of social identity. Doesn’t it? I mean, it makes financial and political sense, but I’m one of the people who voted for Obama (being American by birth) and I feel socially connected with the US for having played my part.

For having mattered.

I stood up and was counted.

This leads onto grassroots.

In the Shower

2009-02-10T19:45:00.003Z

This follows on from how worthless I’ve been feeling as an artist lately, in not having much commercial success, and not feeling valued by British Theatre in general, and how worthy and not alone D&D4 made me feel, and how determined I am to find a language to describe the social value of theatre.

It also follows on from how the experience of theatre gives us the freedom to emotionally engage.

I had a revelation in the shower which can be summarised thus:

If my only skill is to give freedom to others, then I have done a great thing in life.

Here’s where it came from:

Through Mercury Musical Developments, I’ve had some amazing opportunities to work with some brilliant actors: a lot of drama students, and a lot of professionals. We’re either in my kitchen reading an early draft, or we’re in a drama school rehearsal room workshopping some specific moment from a new show.

In the last gods-know how many years, I’ve done a lot of that without having a director present, but having worked with directors, I always had some awareness of what they bring to the process and therefore what the process would be lacking by not having one there.

Although I can’t say I’ve found a way to make up for my lack of director – nor would I want to – I did have to find ways to stop being so possessive of my work that I couldn’t give the process room to breathe.

So I developed some techniques for letting go of my own work that were metaphoric in nature – as are most things I learn for myself, since I feel the need to be able to prove to other people that I do know what I’m talking about. Which is mostly about needing to prove to myself that I do know what I’m talking about.

Being metaphoric in nature, I’m able to share them, and I’ve been extremely lucky to have been allowed to do so with writers and actors, for which I am eternally grateful because it has helped me continue to develop my own craft and discover more about my own process.

(And honestly, it’s just lovely to be able to give something away. It makes me feel like I have some worth.)

Discovering the act of letting go has been, I think, the single most valuable writing tool I’ve ever encountered, although it’s an odd tool because its tangibility lies in the fact that it allows others in, which also allows me in.

It is an open space. A freedom.

It’s the freedom from control-freakery, but oddly, it allows me to have much greater confidence in my own creative existence within the work than I ever feel when I am control-freakishly clutching at the script.

As I said after D&D4: in this space, I feel that I matter. I no longer feel that I have to wave my arms and shout in order to be noticed, at which point everyone turns and stares at me so I am crippled with insecurity. I just feel that I am a part of the process, and as such, I matter.

It’s very important to me to give other writers that sense of freedom and that joy of quiet self-confidence that they matter. Writers, and actors. And directors. Designers. Everyone.

Audience too.

This leads onto society as audience and the notions of freedom, choice and responsibility.

The Rule of Three

2009-02-10T19:40:00.001Z

Here’s an interesting aside that came from talk of Reality TV where songs are repeated more than three times…

When I was writing out Hatch to put on my website, I was basically cutting up one linear story into lots of short stories that can either stand alone or function to create a whole story when taken together.

The key is that they can be read in any order, so you might get the metaphorical storytelling device of seeing the murder and then finding out whodunit, or you might get the device of knowing whodunit and then spending the rest of the story finding out why.

As I was going through, I instinctively went to make sure that I’d done the rule of three for a few important plots points, until it occurred to me that you cannot have a rule of three when you have no idea which stories will be read in which order.

There’s no way to guarantee that the audience member will see it once, see it twice so the repetition makes them remember, and then see it a third time so you can mess with their expectations, or deliver a punchline.

They might just get the punchline. They might just get one, and then the punchline. So I had to put the relevant action into as many of the short stories as I could, in the hope that it would hit the audience at least one time more than the punchline, in whatever order.

Life isn’t linear. Storytelling is changing.

The Experience of Theatre is Changing

2009-02-10T19:33:00.006Z

This comes from life being less than linear, and from trying to find a language to express the social value of the arts.

I think the experience of theatre is changing. (And so it should.)

At its most basic level, theatre is a collaboration between the audience and the stage. Traditionally, when you choose to sit and watch a piece of theatre, you open yourself up to a space in which you can be emotionally vulnerable. Albeit in a controlled manner, you allow yourself some emotional catharsis by connecting with the characters and their emotional journeys.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber has brilliantly captured the audience appeal of reality TV, which now draws audiences in their thousands to see shows like Oliver. During the casting process, audiences connect with the actor in the same way that they traditionally connect with the character. The actor has become the character, and the TV casting process has become the story.

So when they book to go and see the show, they’re going to see the character they connected with, which is the actor… who will play a character they will probably also connect with, but not in the same way they used to because now they cannot separate actor and character.

The excitement is to see (young winning actor) do a live performance. It’s much more like the appeal of a rock gig.

And the experience of being in the audience of a rock gig is a very different one to the experience of being in a theatre auditorium. We make our audiences sit down in rows. We distance them, from each other and from the stage. The mythical fourth wall is a very real thing, and it acts in the same way that a cinema screen does.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Such a separation can help the individual audience member open up emotionally. As I wrote about the audience in Space:

- They each have their own little space in the big space.

- Do they share their little space?

- They try not to.

- Why not?

- Each little space is too little.

- But that’s a big space.

- They share the big space by dividing it into little spaces. See?

At a rock gig, we share one big space. One open space. We are more a Crowd, an audience as one single identity, one animal. The fact that people are around us, moving, singing, yelling, crying, empowers us to join with them.

And we are brought together by the edginess, the risk inherent in watching a live performance where something could go wrong at any moment. The visceral aspect of hearing someone perform live a song that you’ve heard on a recording hundreds of times. Every time they move away from the recorded version, even a tiny bit, you know. It’s stimulating. It’s puts new breath into the song.

And seeing someone on stage, singing a song in a show live, a song that you saw them sing every week on that TV show, that’s stimulating. Not only that, but you’ll get to the song the contestants sang when one of them got booted out. And this time the winner is singing it, and they’re not going to leave at all! This time, the song has the opposite meaning: that they have stayed, they’ve won!

That is classic music theatre storytelling: the use of a song to indicate sorrow, repeating it in the rule of three (or more, on TV) to give the audience an emotional association with the song, and then the twist at the end of the story in which the song is associated with joy. A neat resolution. Classic storytelling.

So in reality TV show castings, we think we’re collaborating with the process, but we’re not. We’re being told a story, and you can’t un-hear a story. Especially if you took part in the telling of it. Which means our live theatre experience is different. Multi-layered. We see more than one story, and we combine all of that, and our own part in the storytelling, into our own unique story.

That is the genius of it: we are free. It gives us the freedom to engage.

This leads onto the shower.

It also made me think more about the Rule Of Three.