B-DAY THE SIXTH OF JUNE

No, that’s not a typo, because, whilst I know very well that the 6th of June is the anniversary of “D-Day”, the allied invasion of Normandy at the beginning of operations to reclaim Europe from the Nazis in 1944, that is not what I’m referring to this morning. Nor, by the way, is it an allusion to any French-style bathroom plumbing, in case you were wondering. No, for me, the sixth of June this year was ever so slightly significant because it was the closing date for entries in this year’s Bruntwood playwriting competition.

Woo (as I’m sure you’ll agree…) hoo.

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is run every couple of years in conjunction with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and is, as they will no doubt tell you themselves if you take a peek at their website, the biggest playwriting competition in the UK in which thousands of entries get read by a team of professionals and eventually get whittled down to three winners which are usually produced by the theatre. It has run since 2005 and, with no actual personal success at all (or indeed much prospect of it) I’ve thrown my hat into that particular arena three times now. Well, as they say, you’ve got to be in it to… anyway…

The other interesting thing about the Bruntwood competition is that you are supposed to enter under a pseudonym which is intended to level the playing field so that no-one knows who has written what and a talented amateur has just as much chance of success as any professional entries. Sometimes, however, just picking a suitable nom de plume can seem to be harder than writing the wretched play itself, but then I always have to pause when similar instances crop up when signing up for websites. Username…? Oh God… I now, I’ll try… That name is already taken etc., etc., ad nauseum. I forget most of them pretty quickly anyway (I never was any good at remembering names) which can get rather awkward on the old internet (and in social situations), but I think the first entry used the name of a detective I’d been toying with creating, and the second a rather pathetic palindrome.

The strange thing about writing a stage play, or rather, the strange thing about me writing a stage play, is sometimes the limits you set yourself when really, theatre’s only limits should be those of the mind. If your audience can’t be transported to other times and places because, instead of thinking about your words, they’re focussing on a dodgy looking set or a bad sound cue, or even a less than committed performance, then it’s probably your words and ideas that are at fault.

Writers, eh? Always over-estimating their own importance.

Mind you, somebody has to. Oh yes, those in the industry will always say that it all comes down to the writing, or that without a good script they are nothing, but there aren’t many pictures of writers (or for that matter nurses, or nuclear physicists…) on the covers of the celebrity chat magazines, are there…?

So, this year’s competition is the third that I’ve entered, although they’ve been around a bit longer than that, and I don’t really expect to do any better this time than I’ve ever done before. In fact this time around, my entry was approached in so half-hearted a manner that, not only does it not deserve to be recognised, but I had almost forgotten I’d entered it at all until I spotted that little circle in my diary which reminded me that I’d zapped off the email a few months ago. In previous years I’d had to print out two copies and post them, but now it’s all gone electronic and you just append an attachment, which is in many ways easier, and yet more troublesome too. The stuff I write isn’t really all that “competition friendly” either, being, I suppose, steeped in my own particular brand of dark whimsy. Winning entries, despite what people might say, do tend to, much like at the Oscars, fall into the same old categories of being “challenging”, “different” or “worthy”, none of which are things I could ever claim for my own sad, workaday efforts.

My first entry was written especially for the first time I entered and I got terribly involved and excited by it. It was set in a greenhouse on a particularly “difficult” day, and split into two acts that were called “before” and “after” and, at the time, I thought that it was the greatest thing I’d ever written ever, and poured an awful lot of energy, heart and soul into it. I do seem to fall into that category of hopeful stage writers who tend to write to one set, but in this case, my vision of a greenhouse in the middle of that big round auditorium is now one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time but probably… wasn’t. Anyway, the announcement day for winners came and went and it failed to excite anyone and was hastily consigned to the cardboard box of obscurity.

Eighteen months later, the next competition hove into view, and, once again, like an idiot, I got myself all worked up about it all over again. My second competition entry was something I had been thinking about writing anyway, but it got a certain amount of push from having to hit that deadline and I did indeed make the mistake of getting rather stupidly over-involved in the idea of actually winning something with words I had written. I didn’t, obviously, but there was a tiny, tiny thrill at the remote possibility that I just might for a little while, which got into my head and made me feel rather giddy for quite a disproportionate amount of time. The play itself was a little bit “darker” this time around, being all about the effects on a family of having a member of that family become a notorious figure of national hatred, and once again, the committee were unmoved by the ordinariness of my prose, or my radical idea of having all six characters be women.

So here we are again. Another couple of years of water have drifted under various bridges and still I have learned nothing. I still write about the same sort of people in the same sort of situations, which will naturally lead to the same sort of disappointments. Only last weekend, Sebastian Faulkes was talking about writing on “A View from the Boundary” at lunchtime during the test match. He had lots to say, not least about internet witterings sadly, but also ended up giving some good advice to both writers and to those who write: (i) Don’t follow the advice that says write what you know, write about what you don’t know, because it will stretch you more, (ii) never write to a target market and (iii) Keep at it.

Well, that’s me stuffed then…

This time around, I didn’t write anything specific for the competition, I just dusted off something I’d written a while ago and sent it off with no real thought and even less expectation, but I think that this is going to be the last time that I put myself through it. I don’t really think that I am a playwright. In fact I don’t really think that I’m a writer at all, I’m merely someone who just writes.

I imagine that modern theatre probably doesn’t want my pathetic observations anyway. These days, theatre seems to go out of its way to be “urban” or “edgy” and that’s just not the sort of thing that I write. I did once consider sending some stuff to some other theatres but (in my experience) much of the stuff that they seemed to perform seemed to be about drugs and council estates and is all written by people thirty years younger than me so I decided against the idea. It’s not that it’s not impressive, but just that it’s simply not me. Modern writers take my breath away with their audacity, bravery and joie de vivre, and I no longer feel worthy of even imagining myself as moving in those exalted circles.

So, once again, I decide to move on and try to put the disappointments behind me. I know that success will come to those who keep trying, but there must also come a point at which you accept that the dead horse that you’re flogging probably isn’t going to get up and walk again. Sometimes, you just have to accept that what you do will never be good enough, and learn to just walk away. I’m writing this to the half dozen of you reading it today not with any hope of my own success, but because, maybe, just maybe, one or two of you didn’t know about the Bruntwood competition and might want to take a crack at the next one, and to wish you all my good luck for it (if you think that’ll help...).