The Calling Card Script

by Paul Ashton

  questions about what it is to be a writer and an author.

  ONE MAN AND EVERY MAN

  An author is a singular, distinct voice, with things to say and an identifiable

  way of saying things. Yet a dramatist must literally give voice to characters

  that are fictional personalities and creations to be played by actors. An ori -

  ginal dramatic writer must in every way express themselves through other

  ‘people’.

  A great dramatic writer is, I think, a combination of both these things

  – or somewhere between the two. They are a person with something unique

  and engag ing to say. They are also puppet-master who fabricates a dramatic

  reality. And the two are in friction, since writers must somehow fictionalise

  convincingly while retaining their own sense of voice and perspective.

  12 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  WHAT WRITERS DO

  Writers think about stories and writing all the time. They struggle to turn off.

  Writers write. They can’t not write. (Yes, that is indeed stating the obvious.

  But it’s amazing how many aspiring writers don’t actually write very much,

  very regularly.)

  Great dramatic writers write from the heart – but they remember that

  the audience is other people. Great writers write with a passion – stories

  keep them up at night, get under their skin. Great writers don’t write to be

  expedient, but because they have great stories that must be told, heard,

  seen. Great writers have an instinct to tell stories that can’t be taught,

  learned, begged, borrowed, bought, stolen or gleaned from a book like this.

  But they are also masters of craft in a process that never really ends, that

  they never wholly master, because for great writers there is always a new

  story, and every story means a new challenge. For great writers, it is an on-

  going occupation and vocation – a never ending climb up a steep mountain

  face towards a summit that is never quite reached.

  INSTINCT AND CRAFT

  If you don’t have the instinct, the passion, the urge, then I don’t think you

  can simply acquire it. You should never aspire to ‘be a writer’. You should

  want to write, again and again and again – and therefore by dint of your

  storytelling instinct you become a writer. People disagree about what, in

  practice, is an accurate ratio of talent to craft, or talent to effort, or talent

  to luck. But talent is always going to be a small percentage. You can’t be a

  great dramatist through talent alone.

  Craft can be honed. Skills and resources can be taught, learned and

  developed. A toolbox can be filled, and be endlessly useful. There are some

  things that can’t be acquired: the instinct and urge; the ability to ‘hear’

  char acter voices; the ability to have an inspirational idea; and that thing

  people call ‘a voice’. But the rest can be developed.

  IS THE WRITER A MEDIUM?

  Many will disagree with me, but I think the instincts and innate abilities des-

  cribed above are in some strange sense supernatural, beyond the ordinary –

  THE MEDIUM 13

  a kind of communion with a kind of spirit world. Indefinable. Unquanti -

  fiable. Immeasurable. Fallible too. And reliant on a faith in storytelling and

  a faith in yourself as a storyteller. But in being a medium of story and

  stories, only so much is supernatural. The rest is honing craft, sharpening

  technique, developing an understanding, practising and practising again,

  writing and rewriting again, becoming self-conscious and self-aware, then

  making that reflexivity second nature through application.

  Another way of phrasing it is: a great writer is a medium of story -

  telling magic who perfects their instinct through the practice of craft. As

  Marshall McLuhan’s infamous phrase goes, ‘the medium is the message’.

  Everything has form. Everything is mediated through form. There is no

  such thing as free-form drama.

  USING MEDIUM

  Writers who work across various forms and mediums can write for them in

  extremely different ways. They recognise that different mediums allow them

  to do different things in very different ways and utilise that difference to

  tell their stories. The best writers will also challenge and develop the

  medium because they have understood it and are mastering their craft to

  manipulate it. But to reinvent a medium or form you must first master its

  received conventions – and you should respect them, even if you don’t

  necessarily like, agree with or apply them.

  THE THEATRICAL SPACE

  WHAT IS THEATRE?

  The term ‘theatre’ derives from the ancient Greek word, Θέατρον, literally

  meaning a ‘place for viewing’. Which tells us everything – and nothing.

  I’m going to state the obvious – in a roundabout way. You pick up a

  theatre brochure, spot a show that looks interesting. You buy tickets, book

  a babysitter, eat out before the performance. At the theatre you buy a drink,

  read the programme, perhaps buy a copy of the script/text. You take your

  seat, turn your mobile phone off, get comfortable. You’re in a room full of

  people (who you most likely won’t know), all waiting. Lights fade to black.

  14 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  You look at the stage, expectant. The play starts. You see actors pretending

  to be people in places that are represented by scenery and props. There’s an

  interval, you get another drink, chat about what you’ve seen, nip to the loo,

  rush back to your seat, watch the second half. At the end, you (probably)

  join the audience in applauding the actors and performance. And (hope -

  fully) satisfied, you go home.

  Everything about this experience is a self-conscious artifice. It is clear

  that a fiction is being engineered and experienced by all involved. That

  fiction and artifice is immediate, right in front of your eyes. This is what

  theatre is.

  All fiction is artifice, but none so much, so immediately, so self-

  consciously so as theatre. As a writer, you shouldn’t be afraid of this – you

  can embrace it and use it. It’s your job (and that of the whole company) to

  inspire the willing suspension of disbelief in your audience, even though

  everything around them screams ‘pretence’.

  MAGIC, RITUAL AND SPECTACLE

  Theatre is the oldest, most venerable dramatic medium. Looking at our

  current picture of West End smashes / flops, national theatres, new writing

  theatres, regional reps, fringe pub theatres, public subsidies and com

  -

  mercial operations, it’s easy to forget what theatre was before it became an

  ‘industry’.

  Theatre derived and developed out of the need of societies and com -

  munities to hold a mirror up to their experience, to commune with a higher

  sense of being and spirituality, to create magic and delight, to participate

  in a ritualised event in which the audience – and their society/ community

  – would undergo some form of catharsis, of purging and purific

  ation –

  where an audience could laugh, cry, gasp, cower and sing together.

  Modern theatre has developed on a long way from this. But the best

  writers will understand
that there is something magical, spectacular and

  ritualistic about the bringing together of an audience to see a play. Not all

  great plays will necessarily express or explore this dynamic in a conscious

  way. However, as a writer, never forget the power of magic, ritual and

  spectacle.

  THE MEDIUM 15

  SPECTATOR AND AUDIENCE

  Spectacle is about what can be seen. The audience is the spectator. Though

  perhaps a better term than ‘spectacle’ is ‘experience’ (theatre is no less of a

  spectacle to the blind or partially sighted). Theatre means creating a ‘show’

  – an event. Spectating means experiencing a show in the here-and-now –

  live – with a specific group of other people, never to be replicated, never to

  be exactly the same again. Theatre is not a static medium. It is fluid, plas -

  tic. The show you see will be unlike every other, even if in only one small

  detail. The ‘mood’ in the room can change the experience.

  It is crucial for the writer to remember what being an audience in

  theatre means: real, present, uncontrollable but malleable, willing to be

  transported but hard to please. The audience can change a performance. The

  success of the play is reliant on the audience’s engagement and compli ance;

  their collusion is a kind of contract you enter into at every performance. At

  its best the atmosphere in the auditorium can crackle with excitement and

  anticipation; at its worst, it is utterly deadening. The writer can’t control it.

  But in your play, you can engage with it – and you can manipulate it.

  Complicity is crucial, because it takes us back to the early religious,

  spiritual, ritual significance of theatre. For the collective catharsis in the ritual

  to occur, the audience must give themselves up to the experience. Without

  this, it is just people watching performers pretending to be other people.

  AUDITORIA

  The relationship between audience and performance very much depends on

  the kind, size and layout of the theatrical space. You can find extreme

  intimacy in a small studio, spectacular grandeur in a Greek amphitheatre,

  and everything else in every other space in between – encapsulation in-the-

  round, the framed picture of a proscenium arch, the alternative relation -

  ship in a site-specific show, even the feel of being within the action of a

  promenade piece. Think about what your story is, what its physical and

  emotional scale is, and where it would best connect with an audience. I’ve

  seen a monologue that worked beautifully in a studio turn to dust on a big

  stage – equally, a big show strangled to death when squeezed into a small

  playing space.

  16 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  THE COMPLEXITY OF SPACE

  Space isn’t just about the physical relationship between character and

  character, character and set, play and audience – it is also about the emo -

  tional and imaginative experience of the audience. In theatre, you are given

  a space in which to conjure up an experience that moves, inspires and

  challenges the spectators. You’re not simply blocking out movement and

  action – this is what a mediocre director will do. Rather, you are creating a

  world. It’s easy to be constricted by physical space and logistics – but when

  your emotional and imaginative boldness is constricted, you stop being a

  writer and you become a stage manager of words. Be a writer. Be bold.

  THE COMPLEXITY OF FORM

  This is the tension, perhaps contradiction, at the heart of theatre. Theatre

  can be the most physically delineated, confined and restricted of story

  -

  telling arenas, yet it can also be the most free, fluid and mutable of forms,

  offering the most imaginative and emotional potential available to a writer.

  If you can embrace the contradiction and keep writing, then you can become

  a true dramatist for the stage.

  THE EMPTY SPACE

  In modern Western theatre there are two views at seemingly opposing ends

  of the spectrum of what theatre can and should be. One of them, the ‘empty

  space’, finds its chief advocate in director Peter Brook, and asserts that the

  power in theatre comes not from a space filled with noisy, bright, busy

  spectacle but from one which may be filled simply by the presence of actor,

  moment, emotion and a minimum of physical props; where a chair can be

  made to represent anything the director, company and audience wishes it

  to represent; where technology can be a seductive smokescreen that masks

  the inefficacy of idea, story, character, relationship, drama and theatrical

  experience.

  It is a powerful thesis in that it perhaps purports the ultimate willing

  suspension of disbelief. I have seen brilliant theatre that has kept to a

  beautiful minimalism and purity of space. And not just small-scale work for

  a small cast – a fantastic production of King Lear by Kit and Kaboodle

  THE MEDIUM 17

  Theatre Company squeezed into the tiny Unity Theatre in Liverpool with

  few props and a powerful ensemble performance. Because of the nature of

  the playing space, many productions in the RSC’s Swan Theatre tend to go

  light on design, props and technology. Shakespeare’s Globe, in its replic -

  ation of the Elizabethan playhouse experience, makes a virtue of eschewing

  complexity of design. These are not quite what Brook means by the empty

  space, though, because he is also concerned with the kind of story and play,

  the kind of theatrical and emotional experience, and not simply a clearing

  out of design, set, technology and elaborate props.

  THE TECHNOLOGICAL SPACE

  At the opposite end of the spectrum is theatre that takes spectacle and

  theatricality to a new, other level. Canadian director Robert Lepage is

  perhaps the most obvious advocate and his too can be a powerful thesis.

  The epic Seven Streams of the River Ota wove an intricate tapestry through

  glimpses into an array of lives somehow connected by the River Ota as a

  symbol of fertility. It was a stupendously imaginative show, from its Noh

  Theatre shadow puppetry, to the backstage chaos of a French farce being

  played before a Japanese audience, to a literal cross section of a New York

  apartment building, to a heartbreakingly simple scene of euthanasia played

  out behind glass screens through which the audience could barely hear the

  dialogue.

  When the curtain call came at the end, I was amazed that the cast and

  crew was so small for a show that was so big; I simply didn’t believe it could

  be possible. Lepage also performed a one-man version of Hamlet that

  mostly took place inside a revolving cubic structure; it was a brilliantly

  strange and original experience (though the opening perform ance, the first

  event of that year’s Edinburgh International Festival, was a celebrated

  disaster when the cube failed to revolve).

  Lepage will use technology and design that he feels can bring either a

  fresh insight to old material or a fresh take on theatre itself. And he’s not

  alone. In a technologically advanced world, it somehow seems a little per -

  verse to wilfully ignore what technology can bring to story.

  18
THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  THE CLARITY OF SPACE

  They are not really utterly opposed camps. Rather, they are just extreme

  modes of practice, two choices about what will work, what will engage an

  audience, what will affect an audience. The point for the writer is that while

  you may aspire to create theatrical magic, complexity and wonder, your

  script should aspire to set forth clarity and perhaps simplicity, not obfus -

  cation and complication.

  My own play Cued Up played to a teenage audience (the hardest kind,

  believe me – though also the best). When it was commissioned and devel -

  oped, the producer/director asked me to be bold with space. I was given one

  major restriction – ideally there were to be no more than three actors. And

  also the restriction of an easily installable set which could be taken on tour.

  The play I wrote moved swiftly between locations that included the Notting

  Hill Carnival, a dilapidated East End house, a residential hostel, a stolen

  car and a deserted beach. The designer achieved this metaphorically with

  a simple, non-realistic structure that represented these settings. And so

  rather than being stuck in one realistically dressed room / set, the audience

  was taken on a physical, even slightly filmic journey with the characters.

  When I asked the director how specific I should be when describing

  the setting and action, he said keep it simple – he usually ditches all the

  stage directions anyway when he gets into the rehearsal room with the

  actors. He did rightly promise, however, not to change any dialogue without

  my express permission. As a writer, this was all both scary and liberating.

  Scary in that I couldn’t hide behind lots of words and dramaturgical detail;

  liberating in that I could write what I wanted within a few defined limits

  and we would then work out how to make it happen.

  MONEY, MONSTERISM AND MINIATURISM

  In your calling card script there is no budget and no brief, no restrictions

  on cast size, set, or technological requirements. However, if you really want

  this to get made and are even willing to try to mount a production on a

  small scale yourself, then realities, restraints, practicalities and logistics