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Literary Management - Interview with Sue Healy
59 Plays1 year ago
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On the eve of her recent book launch - The Literary Manager's Toolkit - Sue Healy details the world of literary management, her research on The Royal Court Theatre, and we discover a mutual admiration for the wordcraft wizardry of Martin McDonagh. You can find out more about Sue at www.suehealy.org
As always, ArtsPod is an @thelincolncompany production
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Transcript
Introduction to Persistence in Playwriting
00:00:00
Speaker
If you're sending out you know ten plays a year and have been doing so for 20 years and nobody's biting then maybe you should retrain as a plumber or something.
Dr. Sue Healy's Career Journey
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of ArtsPod hosted by The Link Company. My name is Danny. I am here with my guest, Dr. Sue Healy. Sue, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast this week. I'm excited to be here. Thank you, Danny.
00:01:02
Speaker
We are going to hear lots about Sue's career over the course of this interview and then want to get into some sort of process driven techniques and find out more about your practice. But let's start with an overview of your career. So you enter into the world of work or you enter into the world of academia from a young age and how do you end up to the point where you are now?
00:01:27
Speaker
I probably don't follow my path because it was very curvy and I certainly didn't enter academia at a young age. I took a lot of detours before I got to where I am. I initially went to art college. I studied fine art painting, which I think informs my work to this day.
00:01:51
Speaker
Then I slowly because at least I'm from Ireland and I went to art school in Limerick and they always had like a creative writing component and I started enjoying the writing more than the painting actually.
00:02:12
Speaker
But I, you know, I needed to get a job. I knew that I after college, I needed to get a job. So I was like, well, what what am I going to do that involves writing? So I became a journalist. That was my first job, my first profession. And I worked as a newspaper reporter in the provincial press, which meant that I was covering dogfights and whatnot. Or I spent time, you know, covering local court cases and interviewing
00:02:42
Speaker
counsellors and that sort of thing. I still say to my students today, you know, being a journalist is an absolutely wonderful starting point for a writer because it teaches you to meet deadlines, to edit, to be brief, to get to the heart of the story, you know, and a daily practice in writing. So I still with, you know, our first years particularly, I really, really encourage them to go off and write for their local newspapers on the side. It's a very good idea. So
00:03:12
Speaker
That's how I got into writing. In my 20s, I left Ireland and I moved to France. I was in France for a couple of years and I returned to Ireland, worked as a journalist again, then decided to go off to Hungary. I'm very old. It was the time when
00:03:37
Speaker
Central and Eastern Europe was quite the sexy place to go because you know the wall had just recently come down and all of that and I went off to Budapest in Hungary and I Really only intended to stay there for about six months but you know various things happens in terms of my life and I ended up being there for 12 years and
00:04:03
Speaker
So I worked in the English language press in Hungary and I edited Hungary AM. And while I was doing that, I started writing more creatively. I'd always wanted to write creatively, but, you know, I sort of got caught up with having to, you know, earn a living for myself, whatever. And I then decided that I would do
00:04:32
Speaker
an MA in creative writing. And, you know, asking around, I discovered that the best known MA in creative writing at that time, this is back in the noughties, was in the UK. And of course, I'd never lived in the UK before, but it was in Norwich, which I had to look up on a map. But at UVA. And so
00:05:02
Speaker
I applied and I was accepted. So I decided, okay, well, I'm going to move to the UK and I'll do this MA and then I'll come back to Hungary. But, you know, I never seem to follow up on that end of things. I think I had some sort of vague idea in my mind.
00:05:18
Speaker
I'd go off and do my MA and then I'd have a bestselling novel or whatever. And of course that doesn't happen that quickly at least. So I, you know, completed my MA in Norwich and I had student debt actually. And I realized that I would have a better chance of paying that back more quickly if I stayed in the UK for a few years rather than returning to Hungary.
00:05:45
Speaker
So I got a job teaching creative writing to inmates at HMP Norwich. So essentially I went to prison for four years. And during those four years, I wrote a number of plays. Actually, in total, I wrote like nine radio plays and had them broadcast on BBC on various other radio stations around.
00:06:13
Speaker
I also wrote a lot of short stories and I won a lot of short story awards. I wrote a number of stage plays. At least that's when I started writing stage plays and started getting them on at local theatres and that eventually on in London.
00:06:34
Speaker
And after some years of being in prison I decided that I needed to escape from prison because it was an interesting job but you know it can begin to weigh on your mind you know because you're dealing with a lot of
00:06:49
Speaker
people with very big problems and challenges and it's great when you make a difference but it can also be hard to cope with for a long period. So I started thinking that I wanted to move on and I just started thinking about doing a PhD and one day I saw an advertisement for a PhD on the Royal Court Theatre
00:07:17
Speaker
being offered by the University of Lincoln. So I applied and I was offered the place. So that resulted in two things. One, I began my connection with the University of Lincoln. And number two, I moved to London because the PhD was on the Royal Court Theatre.
00:07:43
Speaker
and so yeah I started getting to know the London theatre scene both in terms of my academic work but also as a playwright and I had three plays on in London while I was there and that did quite well and they were you know nationally reviewed and you know
00:08:07
Speaker
established me as a playwright, I suppose, in London. And I also started reading for the Finborough Theatre, which is London's leading little fringe theatre. And I was then asked to become the literary manager at the Finborough Theatre.
00:08:27
Speaker
So yeah, and then I completed my PhD and I had done a little bit of adjunct teaching while I was studying, you know, writing up my PhD. So a position came up as a creative writing lecturer and I, you know, I had been teaching for many, many years, even when I was first living in Budapest, I was teaching English as a foreign language. So she was always sort of like,
00:08:55
Speaker
my second string, you know. And then I applied for this position as a lecturer in creative writing and I got it. So I have been working here full time at Lincoln for four years now, four years. So yeah, it's been quite a windy path.
00:09:20
Speaker
to get to where I am.
The Royal Court Theatre and Its Influence
00:09:21
Speaker
But it's been great fun and I've learned a lot of languages and had many experiences along the way. I wanted to jump in there and ask how your Hungarian is after 12 years of being in Hungary.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I can speak Hungarian. That's fantastic. Yeah, I had a Hungarian partner as well. So that helps. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So there's a couple of places in that chronology of your life that I'd love to jump into, but let's, let's go for the Royal Court. Let's go for your PhD study. So, um, before that time, I think that was around the, by the sounds of it, around the times you were beginning to identify as a playwright or someone who was interested in playwriting. Um, how did you.
00:10:02
Speaker
Did you have a relationship with the Royal Court before going into that period of intense study? Did you find it was more a discipline thing, more of the London theatre ecosystem thing? What was your core interest in starting that? What brought you to the table in wanting to engage in that level of study?
00:10:22
Speaker
OK. Well, yeah, it's interesting the Royal Court. I mean, you know, I'm not from this country. So when I was I've always been sort of involved in theatre, even when I was working as a journalist back in Ireland in the 90s, theatre was one of the things I covered. And I knew all the local actors and playwrights. And, you know, we were all kind of part of the same social scene and that. And
00:10:50
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I'm from a place called Waterford and at the time back in the 90s
00:10:55
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there was a very exciting theatre group there called Theatre Company called Red Kettle and I knew everybody, I remember Red Kettle being set up and the sort of key playwright there was Jim Nolan. And for us in Ireland back in the 1990s, we would not have been able to name a single British theatre except the Royal Court because the Royal Court at that point was putting on so much Irish work. It was really championing
00:11:24
Speaker
you know Irish playwrights um like uh Marina Carr for example Martin McDonough although from London new parents were Irish and he wrote about Ireland um kind of thing what's the name of the guy who wrote the weir um anyway it should be at the top of my mind I just can't think at the moment but anyway you know all of these like um really really
00:11:50
Speaker
key playwrights at the time were being championed by the Royal Court so it was really the only British theatre that I was aware of you know and even in my time in Norwich I wouldn't have known
00:12:06
Speaker
really any theatres outside of Norwich. I got to know the local Norwich scene while I was there but I didn't really know any outside except for the Royal Court and it was the only theatre that I had ever actually visited. But when I
00:12:23
Speaker
started writing my own work, I slowly, you know, people would put you in contact with other people and I met a few people who worked for the Royal Court. So I began to, I kind of got to know it socially before I got to know it professionally.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, so that was my first kind of acquaintance with the Royal Court. I also had read a little bit about the Royal Court, somebody who's now quite a good friend of mine, but at the time it was somebody I had just met through a friend called Harriet Devine, who's the daughter of George Devine, who was one of the founders of the Royal Court, and she'd written a book
00:13:07
Speaker
called Looking Back, which was a series of interviews with people looking back over the first 50 years of the Royal Court's genesis. So yeah, that was sort of my logic. And when that particular PhD was advertised by the University of Lincoln, it just seemed to fit what I was interested in really, really well. And I knew that I
00:13:33
Speaker
was acquainted with, you know, kind of key people who would feed my research really well. So yeah, that's what brought me into the kind of royal court world. And then when I began my PhD, again,
00:13:52
Speaker
through a mutual friend. I was introduced to a playwright called Donald Howarth who had, well he was a playwright but he also had been a director at the Royal Court and he
00:14:11
Speaker
was he was literary manager there from 1975 to 1976 and by the time I got to know Donald when he was in his 80s he was very much of like part of the whole the royal court tapestry part of the history of the royal court you know and somebody thought I should because Donald was one of these people he was a total hoarder and he in the 1970s he had bought the house in Hammersmith where
00:14:39
Speaker
The Royal Court was first set up as the English stage company, the company that went on to find lodgings, a place for their work down at
00:14:52
Speaker
Sloan Square, but it was actually set up in this house in Hammersmith that Donald bought in the 1970s and really hadn't changed anything. I mean, it was one of those houses where nothing was ever thrown out. So my friend Graham Wybrow, who had been literary manager at the Royal Courts, right the 90s, he said, you've got to come down and meet Donald. I think that, you know, he's what he has in his house will be really helpful to you.
00:15:19
Speaker
So I went down and met Donald and I just really clicked with him. I mean, this guy was like 40 years older than me, but he was, we kind of were on the same wavelength and I really liked him and we became very good friends, you know. And Donald let me have full access to his archive, which was so interesting, you know. He had postcards from Samuel Beckett, you know, posted to Donald in 1980 saying that he wanted to change.
00:15:49
Speaker
that bit in Godot about Pozzo because it just doesn't work. Brilliant, you know, because you could would be shocked for trying to change anything these days, but Beckett wanted to change it. And, you know, I've got photos of all these really interesting letters from Orson Welles, from, you know, George Devine, Tony Richardson, everyone, and just stacks and stacks, postcards, photos.
00:16:16
Speaker
documents. It was such a treasure trove. And through Donald, I also got to meet, you know, people like Anthony Page and Bill Gaskell. Yeah, sort of key people from the court days of the 1950s, 1960s, and even into the 1970s, like Hanif Qureshi and these sorts of people, David Gotthart. So that was a wonderful time. And I was very lucky
00:16:44
Speaker
to have been kind of embraced by the heart of the Royal Court family, if you will. Very sadly, we lost Donald. It was the last day before lockdown in 2020.
00:17:02
Speaker
Donald had lung cancer and lost him. But, you know, through Donald and through Graham and, you know, others around the court, I, you know, these are my contacts in London. So I've been very much socially involved with the court as well as studying it. I suppose
00:17:28
Speaker
to the people listening to the podcasts that aren't theatre students, they don't necessarily know the significance of the Royal Court Theatre. I'm not wishing you to have to reel off pages and pages of your research, but could you explain to our students and our listeners in other disciplines about the Royal Court Theatre and the impact it's had on sort of moving the needle in
00:17:55
Speaker
in one way, you know, British theatre, but in other ways in European theatre by extension. Yeah, it's hugely important. I think I would have to preface it, any explanation by saying there is a received narrative and then there is also another story which is a little bit different. But really what, how most people within the received narrative, how most people kind of perceive the Royal Court is
00:18:24
Speaker
that it was put very, very simply, and there are lots of exceptions to this, but for a while in mainland Europe, you had people like Brecht and Ireland gave us Beckett and Beckett was living in Paris. You had even in America, there was very exciting theater going on with Tennessee Williams, et cetera. Britain seemed to be just producing lots of
00:18:54
Speaker
kind of null, coward, what they call, you know, French window type plays where the curtain went back and you saw the chisel on and you knew that, you know, the kind of play you were getting. It seemed to be very middlebrow, very middle class and not very interesting. And a lot of the intellectuals in Britain
00:19:15
Speaker
For example, like Tony Richardson and George Devine were tearing their hair out and saying, look, you know, just across the channel, you've got Brecht and Beckett and all this really interesting, progressive stuff going on in theatre. And we're putting, you know, these tennis people on our stages, you know. And this is the country that gave the world Shakespeare. Come on, we can do better than that.
00:19:42
Speaker
And it was in 1956 when the English stage company had been established and set up house down at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloan Square that they put on their first season. And the third play they put on was by a young playwright who was living on a houseboat just down from George Devine's house, which became Donald Howard's house.
00:20:12
Speaker
that play was called Look Back in Anger and you know there's a lot of kind of legends about you know what happened on the first night that you know the curtain went up and there was this sort of working class living room and an angry young man on a chair ranting at the audience and
00:20:33
Speaker
all the critics got up and left and all of this sort of stuff. It's not quite true, but it does give sort of the idea that this was unlike, it wasn't what audiences were used to, were expecting or even really wanted, you know, at least not
00:20:53
Speaker
many of them that were quite shocked by this. And it all sort of happened in 1956, which was, you know, when rock and roll arrived. And there just seemed to be a lot of new, slightly scary for many people, trends arriving in Britain. And of course, the young people loved it. It was like rock and roll. It was this theater movement and theater that came to
00:21:20
Speaker
be called, you know, Kitchen Sink Theatre, Theatre of the Angry Young Man. And it was a type of theatre that was angry and put, you know, working class figures up on stage and started looking at the kind of grimy side of
00:21:38
Speaker
of Britain and that. And it was, yeah, most people use these kind of explosive metaphors from talking about 1956, but it did in many ways blow open the doors of British theatre. And the Royal Court was obviously the home of that. Now, having said that, I always feel that not enough credit is given to
00:22:05
Speaker
Joan Littlewood down in Theatre Royal Stratford East, which was doing very, very impressive work and actually had put on Beckett and Brecht before that, you know, but in the received narrative, it's all the Royal Court. And that's really when the Royal Court put it on, that's when
00:22:24
Speaker
the chattering classes and the middle classes, you know, sat up and took notice. So it's kind of seem, you know, May the 8th, 1956 is the day that British theater changed forever. And the Royal court, you know, went on to champion many movements, you know, alternative theater after kitchen sink and, you know, very important playwrights like Arnold Wesker, for example, David Story, they also championed
00:22:54
Speaker
albeit slightly reluctantly, Alternative Theatre, and it was in the Royal Court that The Rocky Horror Show was put on for the first time. Oddly, the Royal Court don't ever seem to really make a big deal about that, but it is probably the best known production they ever premiered. Then you had like in the 1980s, the works of Carl Churchill, and Max Stafford-Clark was the artistic director. He
00:23:23
Speaker
has sort of fallen out of favor because of like me, two reasons. But in the 1980s, what he was doing was, you know, bringing the female voice to the Royal Court stage, which changed things. And then, of course, in the 1990s, it was the arrival of In Your Face Theatre and Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, you know,
00:23:51
Speaker
that sexy new crew that again marched in and shook everything up. So the Royal Court is seen as, oh, Conor McPherson, I've just remembered that, sorry. But the Royal Court, he was a 1990s person, so it was obviously in that part of my brain. Yeah, the Royal Court is still seen as very much the progressive
00:24:17
Speaker
theatre. And as to whether it truly deserves that, you know, there's a lot of talk about it, but it's certainly been out there at the Vanguard. And it's certainly doing its part to champion New Voices too. It has its wider programmes for young voice development, emerging artists development and stuff.
Role of a Literary Manager
00:24:35
Speaker
So I think what you've given there is a really beautiful overview of that impact of, like you say, of the recognised narrative at least.
00:24:41
Speaker
It is. It's a bit simplistic, but I'd be here for three days. Maybe further episodes of this we can delve into. So I want to just zoom out of Sloan Square a little bit, and I want to move to literary management, I think I want to say there.
00:25:02
Speaker
So again, that role might be new to some listeners, managing literacy of a theatre, managing the words that come into a space in hopes that someone might say, yes, let's show those words to our public. What's involved in that process? How do you go about understanding what's appropriate, what's not right, what's ready, what's not ready? Tell me about that role.
00:25:27
Speaker
Okay, well, luckily enough, Danny, I've just written a book about on this topic. This is the segue I was going to get into. So we'll, yeah, you take it from here. Yeah, I have just written this book for Routledge on the
00:25:44
Speaker
the nuts and bolts of literary management. And it's very much, it's not what I would call an academic book. It's more a how to a guidebook and it's written for, you know, the lay person and not written for the academic. It happened like this. It was, it was a lockdown baby. So somebody contacted me in early lockdown and said that they were
00:26:10
Speaker
They were looking for a book on literary management and couldn't find one, that there was loads of publications out there on dramaturgy, but none on literary management. And so he just contacted me and said, look, I think you'd be the person to write it. And normally I would have said, are you mad? I have so many other things to do. But it was locked down, you know, so the timing was right. I contacted Radcliffe and they said,
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, we'd love that. It would fit into our toolkits line. So yeah, great, go for it. So I wrote it. So yeah, the thing is when you're a literary manager, most people have no clue what that means, you know. And another thing is it actually means different things in different places and even in different theatres, it means different things, which I'm very clear about in the book. So if I can
00:27:03
Speaker
Again, give you an overview. The term, like a theatre literary manager, again, that is very much a British term, and actually even the job doesn't exist in that way anywhere else. Now, in Germany and later then in France and in Italy, you had dramaturgs for, you know, a couple of hundred years who worked like in-house critics. They would
00:27:33
Speaker
you know, sit in on rehearsals, read the script, give the writer feedback and, you know, kind of point out the weak points, suggest areas of research, et cetera. But that role didn't really exist in Britain. And when Olivia set up the, or was artistic director down at the newly opened National Theatre in the 60s, he decided to employ the well-known critic
00:28:02
Speaker
Kenneth Tynan as the dramaturg for the National Theatre. But because this wasn't too long after the Second World War, the term dramaturg didn't sit very well. They didn't like German words at the
00:28:18
Speaker
At that point, it was too recent, you know, the war, the memory, whatever. So he suggested literary manager rather than that German word. But the reason why we still use the term is that he then developed it into something else. He moved it slightly away from dramaturgy. It still involves dramaturgy.
00:28:45
Speaker
Um, but it now in Britain and in Ireland and in one or two other countries who are kind of adopting the model, it has become dramaturg plus. And it's the plus that my book is about, you know, because I'm, I have a chapter on, on dramaturgy, but it's really just kind of explaining what it is and saying, if you really want to know more about this, go and read these books. I, I investigate.
00:29:14
Speaker
what is the rest? So the rest is running a literary department, nurturing and fostering playwrights who are in your care in a way, seeking new work, assessing new work, finding readers, running that team of readers, giving feedback to writers,
00:29:44
Speaker
treating writers well and ethically and with respect and helping them understand what they can get from a partnership with you but also and very importantly what you cannot give them. That's very important and that's where a lot of relationships between writers and theaters perish because that wasn't made clear from the beginning.
00:30:10
Speaker
So yeah, I went off and I interviewed quite a few other literary managers for my book and also other playwrights because it's interesting to, you know, get their take. And thankfully one or two of them were very candid and actually had some very critical points to make about how they had been treated.
00:30:35
Speaker
by theaters, which I think as literary managers, we have a lot to learn from. It's never done deliberately. It's not a witting dismissal or bad or shoddy treatment of writer. But sometimes I think we don't realize how important it is to get back to writers, et cetera. So these kind of things were investigated in my book. I look at the issue of pay.
00:31:04
Speaker
especially in Fringe Theatre, you know, a lot of readers don't get paid. And whilst that is certainly ethically very questionable, it is a fact that if most Fringe Theatres did pay their volunteers, they wouldn't last a week. And then, you know, there wouldn't be as many Fringe Theatres, if any.
00:31:28
Speaker
I mean, I'm talking about places that have no other funding whatsoever. But to add credit to what you're saying, I was on the literary team for Theatre 503 as a reader. And yeah, it would all be voluntary based, two scripts a week, we'd have to turn around. And the sheer volume of scripts that would be coming in to London theatres, especially, just the traffic of texts to get through.
00:31:56
Speaker
when whatever does get produced is produced on such small mass anyway that you can barely pay your visible creatives, let alone the other people in that chain. Just to add weight to your point there. No, that's so true. It's always very difficult, if not even possible, to justify asking people to work for free.
00:32:21
Speaker
they are aware of this, this contract that they enter. And people who work, for example, at the Finborough for a few years generally go on to other paid work in theaters with national portfolio theaters, or maybe become writers or work in telly and that. So it's a bit like doing an internship, you know,
00:32:50
Speaker
I think, I mean, one of the misconceptions is that, oh, well, you know, all those guys can afford to do it because they've all got rich mummies and daddies and they don't need to earn money. That certainly wasn't, you know, true in my case. I've been self-supporting since I was 16, you know. And when I was a reader at the Finborough, I was doing a PhD, so I had no income. I was actually
00:33:16
Speaker
in a scheme where I was living as a sort of a carer for a 90 year old man in order so I'd have accommodation, you know, and I was teaching a little bit of English on the side. So I was just about surviving. But I recognize what being a reader at the Finborough could do for me, for my writing for, you know, because I do not come from a money background, I didn't go to school with, you know, people who are running the National Theatre, whatever. I knew nobody.
00:33:45
Speaker
So it was a way for me to actually network and make contacts in London, which worked. And yeah, so that's the best way I can justify it. But it is one that gets asked of us. But you don't pay your readers or your literary manager, whatever. And this is true.
00:34:12
Speaker
But there are other benefits. And I think, I think if the FINBRA ever did have the money to pay us, it would, but it would also change the FINBRA. And I certainly because I, I just started reading for the FINBRA and I was, you know, I always gave good, solid feedback on time. And I got on well with the artistic director Neil McPherson. So when the
00:34:38
Speaker
The position of literary manager came up. He asked me to do it and I was very happy to do it. But if that had been a paid position, there's no way I would have got it. I didn't have any of the, I had practical experience, but I didn't have a degree in dramaturgy or whatever. So I wouldn't have ever got the position. So it was sort of a way for me, it was a backdoor into theater that I needed because I didn't have any other way in.
00:35:07
Speaker
And producing this toolkit, the book that launched, I want to say last week or really recently, when was your launch? March 13th, actually a month ago. Sorry. No, no, no problem. It was in nine lower miles. So George Devine slash Donald Howard's house. Yeah.
00:35:29
Speaker
How was that experience for you? So I want to ask you shortly and in the sort of disciplines in which you have engaged in writing, but obviously writing, not for nonfiction. Walking away from that project, what was your feeling? How did you feel producing that toolkit?
00:35:55
Speaker
Actually, it was really satisfying because I felt that I was really drawing on my own experience and my know-how and that I was sharing knowledge that was really useful. This is a book that is not only, I mean, how many literary managers are out there?
00:36:14
Speaker
maybe 20, the length and breadth of the country. So it wasn't going to fly off the shelves, you know, just for, yeah, maybe the students studying, you know, theatre studies and wanting to know how a theatre actually works in terms of the inner dynamics of the whole set up. But I also realised that me as a writer,
00:36:38
Speaker
could contribute hugely to this because a key responsibility for the literary manager is to look after and guide and give direction to young playwrights in their care. And having, you know, been along that road and actually having had to find out on my own how I could get money, how I could go on a residency,
00:37:02
Speaker
how to get my plays in front of people, what to do and what not to do, how to write a funding application, where to send the funding application, how to network, et cetera, et cetera, that I could put all of this knowledge and it's really valuable knowledge into the book as well. And in this way, pass it on indirectly to writers via the literary managers or writers just could pick it up
00:37:31
Speaker
themselves and just
Handling Rejection in Writing
00:37:32
Speaker
read. My book is actually equally valuable to painters, to dancers, to anybody working in the arts, because I really go, I give lists, I give websites, template letters, you know, how to get funding, where to go on an artist residency worldwide, you know, lists and lists of them that are open
00:37:57
Speaker
to people at various different stages of their career. What to do when you're on a residency? Because a lot of people feel like that. They go to a residency and like, now what? Oh, my God, I've got a blank. So, you know, helpful steps in that way. So, yeah, my knowledge as a writer hugely informed that as well. And my knowledge of teaching, because as I said, I've been teaching for 20, 30 years, a long time. So I know how to
00:38:26
Speaker
plan a lesson, you know, I know all about, you know, classroom dynamics and warm ups and giving feedback and, you know, even simple things like classroom management and eliciting information from the students giving feedback. And I have like half of the book is devoted to these workshops and explaining to literary managers, this is how you can give a workshop to a group of young writers who haven't written before.
00:38:55
Speaker
or very experienced writers who are keen to develop different aspects and it's mixed bunch, et cetera. So I look at all of that. I think an area where I, rather shamefully, I think it was a bit of a blind spot for me. When I was writing away, I was thinking about all my experiences and what I needed to know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:39:22
Speaker
but I don't have a disability. So I didn't think of that. And I had been thinking a little bit about diversity in terms of different races and that represented on a theater stage, but I hadn't been thinking really of people with different levels of ability. And then I interviewed Nikki Miles
00:39:52
Speaker
I think there's a Nikki Wilde Wilson, I'm not quite sure her name, but wheelchair user who's a dramaturg and it was really, really interesting. And it really gave me pause for thought about how important it is to include people who aren't able-bodied and how we can often,
00:40:19
Speaker
not in that position ourselves we can often overlook that and it becomes a blind spot so yeah that was that was a lesson that I learned when writing it and very recently like a couple of days ago I had lunch with Matthew Morrison who's
00:40:40
Speaker
an academic with the University of Westminster and he's just taken over the Soho Poly and is giving it another lease of life with funding and the first thing he did was get, it's in a basement, so he's got wheelchair access which
00:40:57
Speaker
It's a tiny space, you know, that's going to take up a significant portion of the theatre's, you know, space, inner space. But he said, you know, it's incredibly important because Fringe Theatre is cut off from so many wheelchair users because it tends to be, you know, in difficult to reach spaces. Dauphinber is no exception there. So, yeah, that was a really interesting part. And I learned from it, which is always a good thing.
00:41:23
Speaker
And it sounds like the book was written from a position of care as well, thinking about, like you say, producing all these free lists, but to signpost people to opportunities. And I guess that must come from, or in part from.
00:41:38
Speaker
Reporting back on those scripts that you must have encountered working as part of a literary team where you have to let down people gently or try and communicate effectively that something is just not quite right. Which in itself is a skill set, right? Being able to find what would land
Upcoming Projects and Advice for Writers
00:41:57
Speaker
as constructive criticism, what is just a complete lost cause. How do you sort of navigate that
00:42:05
Speaker
uh, emotional territory that perhaps comes with some of the submissions that you must see. Yeah. Um, well, yeah, that it very much is, I mentioned my friend Donald earlier who had been literary manager at the Royal court and he always, he won't, I know he wouldn't have minded me saying this that, um, he always says it was the worst year of his life because he spent the year saying no. And he, you know, he was a kind of a people pleaser.
00:42:32
Speaker
Generally, he liked he was a gentleman in many ways, and he didn't like letting people down. And it is true that you do spend 90% of, you know, your correspondence is letting people down sending them an email, you know, was gonna ruin their day. That's not nice. It isn't. And you need if you're going to be a literary manager, you need to be prepared to take that and take that on the chin, and know that
00:43:02
Speaker
you know, some people are going to make voodoo dolls in you, whatever, even as nice as you can be, you know, people don't, they've put, I understand it entirely, you know, I'm a writer, I've had so much rejection in my life, I could write another book about that, you know. So I do, I totally understand it. And I understand how some writers
00:43:26
Speaker
just refuse to believe that you do not see how great their work is. So it is really hard. But I also give template letters, you know, that I find work best, always give a reason if you can, and suggest perhaps other venues where they may be more successful. I also make it very clear, you know, what the chances are. I mean, if you
00:43:56
Speaker
If a theatre gets back to you and says something along the lines of, well, we're not going to do anything with this particular play that you've sent in, but we were impressed by your work and we'd be very pleased to read other samples of your work. Absolutely grab that with both hands. Believe me, a theatre will not say that unless they genuinely think you have some talent because
00:44:22
Speaker
We got enough bad plays that we wouldn't go seeking if we didn't think you had something, you know. So where you get like encouragement like that, don't think we're just being sweet to you, you know, that that's not the case. We genuinely do think that there is talent there, but it can be for, you know, saying no is often
00:44:47
Speaker
because we've got already 10 plays investigating this particular topic and we've committed to developing two and we can't develop a third. It's not necessarily a reflection of the writing, but we usually suggest, why don't you send it down to the royal court? Why don't you send it up to the bush? The thing is, though, if I think all writers just need to grow
00:45:16
Speaker
Um, a thick skin, you know, and getting rejected is just part of it, you know, and if you cannot handle rejection, then you probably shouldn't be a writer, you know, it's, it's like wanting to be a boxer, but refusing to let anyone punch you. It's totally part of the whole deal, you know, and, um,
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, you have to just see if you if does it need revision? Are they giving you feedback? Are they willing to give you feedback if they are again, it's genuine generally because they think there's something in the play that can be improved. If they're not giving you feedback, they probably don't like it that much. It doesn't mean it's a bad play. It just means that theater doesn't like it that much. If you're sending out, you know, 10 plays a year,
00:46:11
Speaker
and have been doing so for 20 years and nobody's biting them, maybe you should retrain as a plumber or something. But if you keep on keeping on and keep on improving and keep on going to theatre and keep on reading plays, you will eventually get something on somewhere and you will get better and you will become a good writer.
00:46:35
Speaker
completely believe that anybody can become a playwright. It just takes time and effort, the same way that learning a guitar, you know, takes time and effort.
00:46:45
Speaker
You might not necessarily become Eric Clapton or whatever, but you can become a really good guitarist if you put 10 people in the box. A passable Jimi Hendrix. Or whatever. No, I think that's a fantastic analogy about the box here. I might use that for other fields of trying to manage rejection in an arts-based career as well.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, but I also give tips like don't send out a rejection on a Friday evening or before Christmas. That's considerate. Yeah, have some thought. Yeah. But, you know, we often get writers and most most writers go, okay, thank you or whatever. But some will say, you know, I can't believe that you've just done that. Have you any idea how long it took me to write this? And, you know, can we not just meet and, you know, we get
00:47:39
Speaker
over a thousand scripts a year and we have to reject about 900 of them like this. So no, I don't have time to meet every playwright, but you can't just say that. So it's hard. I think I find that you get that kind of attitude on both ends of the ages, if you will.
00:48:02
Speaker
It's, you get it from younger, more immature writers who basically, you know, have never been told no. They haven't been to enough sort of job interviews or whatever. They don't understand rejection. Like, that doesn't happen to me. What are you doing? And then you get it at the other end, you know, older people who are in their, you know, autumn years and they possibly wanted
00:48:27
Speaker
be a writer all their lives and they've kind of they're now retired and they sat down and they spent some months writing this play and they've sent it in and now this new chapter in their life is about to begin and you stamp on that dream and they get very upset you know so yeah it's it's not you are in a position of power you're a gatekeeper when you're a literary manager and
00:48:50
Speaker
It's difficult, but you cannot say yes to work that's not going to work. You know, they think the rejection is bad now. Can you imagine if your play is that bad and the critics come to see it and it's splashed all over the front pages? You're at, well, it wouldn't be front pages, but, you know, how could the Finborough put on this ridiculous play by this immature writer who has no idea what they're doing? That would be much harder than the rejection letter from me.
00:49:17
Speaker
Totally. And you have a duty of care to that venue. I completely sympathize with the reverse traffic that must come after sending out the sorry, it's not quite what we're looking for timely email. Most people take it and actually respond and say, well, thank you very much for
00:49:41
Speaker
looking at my work. I hope I can approach you in the future, which is what you should write back. That's it. Actually, lots of people don't write back at all, fair enough. But every six months or so, you get an angry response. And I don't know who they think this helps. It really does not help you or your case. But there you go. There you go. I've got a couple of quick fire questions that we've had in from students. So this will probably be the hardest one I ask you.
00:50:11
Speaker
Do you have a favourite play or favourite playwright? Yeah, I mean it is a hard question to ask because you know I can answer it today and it'll be somebody else. Of course. Tomorrow. I think I'm
00:50:27
Speaker
always been fond of Martin McDonough, because that was sort of really my big introduction to theater was in the mid 90s. And that's when Martin was kind of at his height. He'd had his play on at the Royal Court. And a friend of mine, a fellow Waterfordian, played Mag Folen and she won a Tony for it. Wow. Yeah. So Anna Manahan, who's also now dead,
00:50:55
Speaker
And so it was a play that was very much kind of part of my part of my life at that time. And I remember, you know, when Anna went to New York and the broadcast coming in, you know, and Beauty Queen swept the boards with it. And it was just it was such it was like it did for Irish playwriting, which Shane McGowan did for Irish music.
00:51:18
Speaker
You know, he pumped it up. He took traditional story themes and tropes and really made it edgy and sexy and rough. And, you know, it was wonderful. So I think I'll always have a soft spot for McDonough. I totally agree. The first time I read The Pillow Man, it blew my mind. And then to see the Banshees of Inner Sharon.
00:51:42
Speaker
the masterpiece that it is on our screens last year was fantastic. I know I was just sitting in the cinema taking a god I hate you Martin. It's so brilliant isn't it? It's so it's so oh yeah perfectly well written and the
00:51:57
Speaker
the setting, the idea of this just place that's untouched by the wider context of what's happening. Yeah, they're just paying no attention to the school. That's it. These are the problems that the people face is that someone doesn't like you anymore. Yeah, fantastic. Great choice. Absolutely great choice. What about any upcoming projects? So you've just put this, the literary manager's toolkit to print. It is there. It is now in the public domain.
00:52:26
Speaker
After you've had a decent rest, what's the next thing on your horizon? Or does it not even exist yet? Maybe I should just say that in October, I'm having a Lincoln launch. We're taking the summer off, but myself and my colleague, Sarah Stovall, are having a joint book launch. Mine is for the literary manager's book.
00:52:47
Speaker
And Sarah's is for a novel that she has coming out of paperback. So we're going to kind of launch the next academic year and that lack, not the LPAC anymore. I think LAC is the preferred approach. Oh, is it LAC? Black is like late. But anyway, so we will be doing that in October, dates to be confirmed and all of that. So the lead on from that. But as to projects,
00:53:16
Speaker
current. So for the past two years I've been writing for Telly and I wrote my own TV series which has been optioned by an Irish and American joint company.
00:53:36
Speaker
Um, Dave now found a director. These things, apparently they take ages and I don't have the patience for that. Okay. Okay. Just come back to me when it's done, you know, they've sort of gone off to sort all of that out and, um, you know, paid me for it. I mean, I think that's people go, Oh God, no, I'd never leave theater. Cause it's so wonderful. And that Missy, yeah, you would if it's nice to be paid for writing in every writer that, you know,
00:54:05
Speaker
is talented and good, gets a gig on telly and takes it, you know, doesn't mean they'll never return to theatre, but it's, you know, it's nice to be paid and, you know, look after the mortgage. So and it's, it's different as well. And you learn from it too. So that was a TV series that's currently called Trafatten. It could change.
00:54:25
Speaker
I was then last year hired by another American production company to co-write a TV series, a young adult TV series set in a boarding school in, what's the name of the place, Hampshire. So yeah, that's written and it's with the producer now. So again,
00:54:49
Speaker
that's doing its thing. It's kind of out of my mind for the moment. And I've now written a third TV series, and this one is about Art Forgery. And it's set in Hammersmith in London. So that's kind of doing the round. So I'm waiting to see if
00:55:08
Speaker
that gets a taker. Hopefully it will. I think it's incredibly good. And if it does, it'll be more revisions and honing that. So that's kind of the current project. That's the one that's on my mind. And that's kind of marrying together my love of fine art as well. As I said, I originally went to art college and I still paint.
00:55:28
Speaker
And I did actually know somebody who was an art thief back in Hungary. Lived experience, getting to write lived experience. Yeah. And he actually didn't know. I sort of stumbled across his story by accident while I was in Hungary. And he didn't know that I knew. And I was just kind of fascinated by the whole thing. Amazing. OK, so maybe we can check in again in October around the time the book launch and see if any of these three projects in the pipeline have another development.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I've also got two stage plays out with a theatre company in London at the moment. So I'm waiting for a yay or nay on that. See, I still get rejected. It goes to show you that, you know, no matter where you are, no matter how fabulous your portfolio is, you're still, you're still, you're still at risk of being rejected. Even now, I imagine Mark McDonough is getting the occasional rejection.
00:56:24
Speaker
Yeah, I turned down one of his plays. That's not true. Nice. Okay. Final one for me. And we sort of like to finish on a question like this. But if you're in a room full of emerging writers of any discipline that you are connected to, what is the single most important piece of advice that you would share with them for writing in 2023? Well,
00:56:53
Speaker
I think it would depend on, you know, what they were looking to write in. I mean, if they wanted to write for screen and say, OK, well, you know, go to see movies, watch telly, et cetera, you know, so I think it's important to immerse yourself in that particular form, you know, in every way, read it, watch it, you know, talk to people who are doing it.
00:57:18
Speaker
Do it, you know, it's a bit of a tried answer to pull out all the time, you know, write every day or whatever. I don't write every day, I don't have time, but I certainly write as often as I can.
00:57:30
Speaker
and read. I think read is hugely important. Keep on going. As I said, I cannot emphasize this enough. You will absolutely get rejected. That is the only thing I can completely guarantee you. You will get rejected. But you need to learn to cope with that rejection and just
00:57:50
Speaker
Find coping mechanisms within yourself. Send out stuff as often as you can. Revise it. Don't keep sending it. If something is being rejected by everybody all the time, there's probably a problem with it. But don't give up if just one person or one theater or one publishing house rejects it. Actually, I just had very good news earlier. One of my closest friends, her debut novel,
00:58:20
Speaker
It's called Black Butterflies, and her name is Priscilla Morris. She's just been shortlisted for, this all came in in the past, like 24 hours, the Women's Fiction Prize, the Authors Club Prize. Amazing, amazing. On that year, it looks like a Dutch name prize, but anyway, it's a big one. Amazing. Yeah, so those three. But the thing is that, you know, I, she's an old friend, we did our MA together. I mean, I know,
00:58:47
Speaker
how many times that, you know, Priscilla had to send that out. We writers, we always kind of have to pick each other up off the floor, you know, every time we get a big rejection. So I know what she went through to get it out there, get it to the right agent and eventually, you know, get it published and then
00:59:08
Speaker
Um, you know, it was launched, but we didn't know what was happening next. And now look at her, you know, she's on that short list. So it's just wonderful. It does happen, but you have to keep on keeping on and, um, taking, taking the punches as they come in.
00:59:23
Speaker
I'm not giving up. Hold your nerve. Like a boxer. It's the same advice you give someone who's training to take on Anthony Joshua right now. That's fantastic. I think a handful there are really important skills to employ early in a writing career by the sounds of it.
00:59:41
Speaker
So I want to thank you so much for your time. It's been amazing chatting to you today. And I really actually want to check in with you in about six months time when we get to that launch of your second launch of the toolkit and find out more about these other projects that are in the pipeline to see what's happening. Yeah, I hope I have news for you. Might not, but we'll see.
00:59:59
Speaker
If not, it'll be a very short episode, I'm sure. But thank you so much for joining me today. This is Danny signing off. You've been listening to ArtsPod presented by The Lincoln Company. Thank you to my guest, Dr. Sue Healy, and I'll see you next time.