Latest / WHAT I'VE LEARNT / What I've Learnt - Joanna Murray- Smith

Transcript

What I've Learnt - Joanna Murray- Smith · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd like to welcome the lovely Joanna Murray Smith to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Playwright, novelist, and screenwriter.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Her plays including Honor, Rapture, Bombshells, Nightfall, Redemption, Love Child, and Songs for Nobodies have been performed around the world in the US, the UK, Asia, on Broadway, the West End, and at the Royal National Theatre in London.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just for starters.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me, Joanna, your play Honor kick-started an extraordinary career as a world-renowned playwright and has been produced in three dozen countries.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: The first public reading was with Meryl Streep and Kyra Sedgwick.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's what I call starting at the top.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: According to the variety, you are the most, you are the foremost female Australian playwright, and you're the author of more than half the Australian plays produced overseas.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: What an extraordinary career you've had thus far.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So many awards and honors.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to know where to start.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Awarded a Commonwealth Medal for Services to Playwriting and recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the University of Melbourne Arts Faculty.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I could go on, but it's your words as a playwright that transfix and transform your audiences.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me why become a writer and when did you know?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody can answer the question, why become a writer?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, it's not a choice for most writers.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think they just know that they are.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I suspect that with most writers, it starts very early, as it did with me when I was probably about eight, eight or nine.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think I said to my mother uh that I knew I was going what I was going to be when I grew up, I was going to be an actress.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, no, you're not, you're going to be a writer.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that tells you everything you need to know about my mum, which I love, which I and I want to actually talk to you about your mum because really, you know, as you say, it's so beautiful that, you know, there are a lot of mothers that say, You're not going to be a writer, go and you know, do something else.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: But she's obviously you learnt a lot from your mum, so maybe talk to me a little bit about that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was a very interesting childhood, and in a way, I suppose it that my childhood goes some way towards the why, because it was a very literary um family uh and world, really, that I grew up in.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: All my parents' friends were uh visual artists or writers or journalists or publishers.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: My father was the literary editor of the um magazine Overland, the literary magazine Overland.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was he started it and ran it until his death.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh he was a writer himself.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And every night going to sleep, my father would read to me, you know, for many, many years.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And my mother was the most voracious reader and an incredible missionary for the arts in general.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: She was obsessed with opera, um, very knowledgeable about opera, classical music, um, visual arts uh and literature, perhaps most of all.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of, I think, that was really partly about her appetite coming from a non-English speaking background, arriving in Australia in 1939, just escaping the war from a little Jewish village in Poland, um, and being swept up by Australians, Melbourne, uh, to whom she was incredibly indebted for her whole life.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: She said Australians were remarkable to them when they arrived.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: They had she had apparently only wonderful experiences of neighbours teaching them English.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: She uh her she and her brother.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they were um 10 and eight.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she subsequently went to University High School in Parkville and then hopped across the road to the University of Melbourne, where she met my father, who had just come back from the war in New Guinea and was from a very Anglo, very waspy family.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my father was um completely saturated in literature even then.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he introduced her to a world of great writing, and she became as knowledgeable and as voracious uh and as much of a spruker for the arts as my father was in his lifetime, and she was an extraordinary teacher, and I still meet people now who say, Oh my god, your mother was the only teacher I could talk to, or she was the only one who believed in me, or she saw something that no one else did.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, she was a bit like that, my mum.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you think it's enculturation, or do you think there's an internal, there's a biology and a predisposition to being an artist, a creator?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the way you describe your upbringing, clearly it was it was ripe for you to grow and flourish.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Had you been in another environment, do you think it may have been a different story?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: How much do you you know think enculturation plays a part?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I think it it plays a big part, but then you look at every family.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have a brother and sister, neither of them are involved in creative pursuits.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're both very good at everything they do, but um but they're not creative, uh, at least professionally.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I look at my three children, all very different.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is sort of distinctly creative.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're all slightly creative in their own ways, but one of them is sort of far and away the one who is without any doubt going to make his life um as a as an artist.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think it's both.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's something that makes it much easier if you have that spark.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it makes it much easier if you're growing up in a world in which that that life of the imagination has value and currency.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's much harder for a kid who is inherently creative uh to grow up in a house without books, um, or to grow up with parents who say, well, sure, pursue your passion, but first of all, get a degree as uh, you know, be a lawyer or be a doctor or be a teacher.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: My parents never said that to me.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: When I said, Okay, I'm gonna be a writer, they said absolutely it was like, why would you be anything else?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: My parents were the same, so I'm very, very on that same page.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was very fortunate too.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we are blessed because there's a lot of people that weren't allowed to flourish in that way.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that belief in you, I think, is so uh important when you're young.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, sometimes parents are understand that faith is what's important, and regardless of whether it's in their own particular world or not, will back their children and their instincts.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I think it helped that my parents were so um uh they held the world of writing and the professional ambition to be a writer as sort of where other parents might put neuroscience or you know.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which is lucky that your parents didn't put neuron, well certainly my parents didn't.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that we would have been great contributors.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want to read you something.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: You had this, I I love, first of all, I have read so much of what you've written and and your speeches, and you're just so eloquent and articulate.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to just read you something.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: You reflected the pain and pleasure of writing so beautifully when you said, and I quote, the final destination might change your life in money or fame.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: What if this play, the West End, with Daniel Craig, and it it ends up a huge success?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It might enter the lexicon.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: You imagine the headline, an instant classic.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what is certain is that it will cost you the time, the struggle, the pain, the doubt, and that's a great experience.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's the brutal criticism, the disappointment, the despair.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who doesn't feel it isn't an artist.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: As I often say, a successful writing life is ego and vulnerability in almost equal measure.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: The ego has to carry 51%.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this was such a beautiful little vignette because it's not an easy life and it's not an easy journey to be a writer.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: What's one of your most painful deliveries?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean one of your children.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's one of every play is almost every play is painful, uh, one way or another.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and there are different ways in which plays can be painful.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it can be the reception, of course, if you feel that a play has um kind of you know ticked your own boxes but not ticked the critics.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh, and there can be a great sense of injustice as well when a play does very well with audiences, but that is not reflected in the criticism.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's one set of pain, but there's also a lot of pain, I think, in the process of revealing yourself.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that form of revelation is very rarely conscious.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You usually don't know what you've revealed until it's too late.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, until you're sitting in the audience watching.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had that experience a couple of times when my play The Gift was on.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had a kind of mini breakdown really after I saw it for the first time in preview.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of I think I made an appearance at opening night and uh then sort of disappeared for a month as I just got over what that play said about me uh without me realizing.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because as the part of the training for being a writer is teaching yourself to have a kind of willful amnesia during the writing process, that this will ever be put before the public.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you were aware of that and thinking about that, you would never be as honest and as raw as you need to be to make the play feel emotionally authentic and raw and interesting and visceral.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you forget, you deliberately forget, um, and then you come back into ownership of those feelings when you're watching it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be tremendously painful.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the gift was really about the the twin tugs of motherhood and and creativity, and it it to it pushed that to a an almost surreal point where uh a mother uh well parents want to give up their child because they are more in love with their art than they are with their children.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the the feelings associated with writing were you know really difficult to manage.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, Berlin, which is the next play, which should have been on this year at the Melbourne, but is it apparently going on next year?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know if I believe it or not, um, at the MTC.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was painful in a different way because it was sort of the the first play that really engaged with Jewish themes.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, very powerful.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was very powerful.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like it's I I just can't wait to see it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Looks amazing.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that was, you know, um, in order for that play to feel uh authentic because it's set in Berlin.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I spent um a bit of time in Berlin and also used that opportunity to fly to Auschwitz, to Krakow and go to Auschwitz, which I sort of felt that the time was kind of right.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was on my own, I didn't really want to take my kids, um, and uh I could sort of digest it without having to be a mum at the same time.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was, of course, um life-changing um and and difficult in an entirely different way.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So every play is difficult one way or another.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there've been a couple of comedies that have been just sort of enchanting to rank, uh, but um, but otherwise there's pain throughout.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's also bravery.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you're reflecting, which I think is what what you're saying on many fronts, is you have to live bravely.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're prepared, you have to be prepared to risk it and to not be too self-conscious, to not be too cautious, you know.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You definitely have to put all your, you have well, first of all, all of your nerve endings have to be alight to life.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to be susceptible to everything, you have to feel it, you have to be sensitive, you have to be observant, um, and and you have to be prepared to be curious about everything, even curious about things that may be painful to know about or or to re-experience.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have to be prepared to plumb your own history, uh, and that includes uh going back to times and experiences and emotions that are difficult.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sure that it's bravery, I think it's um just part of the equation of what it takes.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's more about ego than anything because it's ego that really keeps you going.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all, the question that every writer faces is uh, am I original?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, am I saying anything that anyone hasn't said before better?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is often no.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you keep writing anyway.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know that your best chance of writing well, I mean, it takes, I think, quite a lot of writing and quite a few years before you understand it, but you gradually learn that the gold in what you write, so when you're writing a first draft, the you go back through it and you find that perhaps a quarter of it is really good and you will retain to the second draft.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But that gold is about very raw and authentic feeling.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you begin to realize that that is the key to writing interestingly and to connecting with your audiences.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you shy away from that, your audience are not going to come along for the ride with you.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think on that note, there's another little quote here that I love that you you actually said, which is relevant to what you've just outlined.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: The map of our work doesn't exist.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't exist for novelists or playwrights or poets, or for composers, for painters, for choreographers.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't exist for the first play, or the second, or the third.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Each time we begin, we start in darkness from nothing.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: That tiny wick of an idea flickers into life, fills its sail of golden light, and bursts into flame.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: The light captivates us.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: We feel flourishes of story or character or image, but we don't know how to lay it down, what shape it should take, what we want from it, or what it means.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Something has been born that can't be unborn, but what?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Every time we must write our own map.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that reference that we must write our own map.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: What map was your most challenging and what was your most exciting?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And do you think it's organic and natural to write?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and how hard is it to find that seed to start?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: The seed is not hard to find.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, I should be madly tapping on wood as I say that.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I generally find that ideas will come to me as the last idea is put to bed.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so there've been very few gaps, um, at least until now.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the shape, the map of that idea and how it takes its form as it comes into some kind of public life is always complicated.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yes, it is to an extent organic.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I often write my way into an idea.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll I'll have an idea and I'll just start writing and see where the writing takes me because I now know that letting go of my sort of conscious control of the idea is more likely to reap results than clinging too tightly to a plan.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't plan my plays.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I write very kind of uh with a great freedom and a lack of consciousness to begin with, usually very fast.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I write that first draft very fast and and very freely.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then the you know, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth drafts are where you bring in the kind of cartographer.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you come in and you bring the conscious part of yourself to uh make the uh structure be the best revelation of information to the audience to tell the story well.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like telling a joke, you know, you know how to tell a joke, it involves a setup, it involves uh bringing your listener into a particular world, even if it's a 20-second world, and then it's about revealing a punchline at the right time.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a play is a very, very, very complicated version of that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And often you know what your theme is, you know what your characters are, you may know your story, but you may not know the most effective way of telling that story to draw an audience in, to make them think, to surprise them, um, and to lead them ultimately to where you want to go.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the business of structuring.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the part that people often struggle with, that writers often struggle with, because it's such a different set of skills than the part of you that is raw, emotional, good with language, um, and exploratory.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very logical and very uh conscious process.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you have these two processes, one very unconscious if you're lucky, and one very conscious if you're lucky.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the merging of those two things that allows you to write a successful play.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you write about flawed yet powerful women.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: You give them a voice to share and despair, cry or fly.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how hard is it to shape those characters?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I love the way that you're, I mean, it's so broad.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: The the characters that you reflect in all your plays, they're sort of, you know, it's the full gamut.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are they molded slowly or do they come as a vision intact?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um each is different.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think with the character, for instance, of Honor in the play Honor, I was really writing from the beginning about a type.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was writing about the woman who's left by her husband in middle age for a younger woman.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I began with a I began with a concept rather than a person.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote my way into that character, and she became, I suppose, you know, most effectively, I wanted her to have given something up for her husband, so that the impact of him leaving her is even sharper.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So hence she she was a very promising poet in her youth.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so gradually the sort of biographical um details accumulate around your character.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there are other factors as well.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: In that play, for instance, I knew so many women that were my parents' friends who were left by their husbands, and their husbands were in the public eye, and they had more or less the the women were equally, if not more intelligent than their husbands, but ended up at 60 with nothing because their husbands had gone off with younger women, and they had forfeited all their own aspirations and ambitions for for kind of bringing up the kids and um supporting the husband.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, you in a way, I suppose honour was modeled on the women I knew.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Who were very dignified, very intelligent, uh, very wise, and were very willing mothers and wives.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't resent that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't kind of hardcore feminists, but they became more feminists as they got older and as they went through that experience of being left when they started to analyze exactly how much they had been complicit in their own invisibility.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh and so you know that character began that way.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Bombshells was an expiration of six different women.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted all of those women to be have great kind of comic zest, but also be completely different from one another.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know, with Berlin, my my beautiful um Charlotte, it's a two-hander Berlin, so there's only one um male role and one female role.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: She was um, you know, uh my very sort of um, I guess I had an overwhelming desire to write a young woman again, um, that I'd written middle-aged.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I saw I noticed that, yeah.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because you do tend to write in your own reflection, and uh, and I wanted to go back to the feelings of crazy infatuation of youth and and being young and being kind of high on life and up for anything, and um and kind of bright and engaged with the world and fiery.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to sort of set that young woman now rather when I was her age.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so she she was born as something else.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So each is very distinct.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And also what you've what you've highlighted is you have this capacity for great empathy and bordering on symbiosis with your character.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can actually, it feels like you're actually inside them, the way that you describe it.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that is in itself a unique skill.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that you think you've mastered over time, or do you think coming back to that, is that just an intuitive essence that you have?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's intuitive for all writers who are successful at writing.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that um, you know, going back to that idea of plumbing your own experience and your own emotions, every character is you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how, it doesn't matter what gender they are, it doesn't matter what class they are, it doesn't matter what story they're in.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um they are made from you.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's your experience of the world, your observations, your feelings, your sensibility, your preoccupations that are influencing you when you are turning them into three dimensions.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think in that way you are every character and you you have to be every character.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not, if you're not inside the character in that way, if you're standing outside the character, observing them rather than inside them looking out, then you're not really writing drama.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're writing, you know, uh, you're writing uh kind of observation.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's an observation, then, yes, I understand exactly.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm interested too, you know, you have this extraordinary strength about you, but also this fragility, which I think allows you to really imbue your characters, but also to make the audience feel like you're alongside with them.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a sort of a, you know, it's like you're a friend as the playwright.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like, oh, we're going on this journey with Joanna.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's your greatest fear?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: What what is your when you when a play comes out, or even just generally, what is something that really frightens you about the way something might be received or that's really interesting.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that I pretend my biggest fear is that the reviews will be bad.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because no matter how hard I try, I can't um really make myself immune to them.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm better than I used to be.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And also reviewing is different to how it used to be.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, once upon a time it there was a particular review that that would influence the audiences, and that's not the case anymore.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So reviewing itself has sort of become a diluted force.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, everyone has an opinion, everyone's got a blog, um, and so generally what you write will get mixed results because of the sort of democracy of um sharing information that the internet has brought.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think probably the biggest fear is that I will be disappointed in it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you don't always know straight away because your defense mechanisms are sort of great at the time of the production, largely because you you at the time of production you desperately want to believe that it's good because you feel so much responsibility to the actors primarily, um, and to the audience and to the theatre company.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm just so terrified that I will have let those three parties down, um, that audiences will be bored or unmoved or unaffected or feel as if it wasn't worth the money, that the actors will find it a trial to go out there having had their faith um kind of put to the test with bad reactions, um, and that the theatre company will think, well, we should have seen that this wasn't worth backing.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's my nightmare scenario.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and then ultimately, as time goes on, it's a feeling of um, did I do right by my own standards?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um usually the answer is no.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's usually uh traumatic.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a very it's a big burden to carry, but it's one that seems to be paying off beautifully for you because you're so respected and you have brought so much joy to so many people, and surely that should be a pretty important um uh value that that really, in a way, all of those other elements, while of course they're a value, um the joy you've brought is just extraordinary.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you've also educated as well as entertained, and I think that's also why a lot of your plays resonate.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, right now, obviously, we're all in this hiatus with the arts and theatre and cinema, and really, I suppose we're all pretty anxious to see what the next steps are.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have faith that the arts can recover and that people will go back to the theater in the same way?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, I do have faith um that that will happen, but um I have no faith about when.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh I think you know, part of the fascinating experience of 2020 is that uh the kind of um educated uh middle class who which is generally speaking so used to being able to control circumstances.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you don't like a job, change jobs, you know.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you're you don't like your kids' school, you change your kids' school and so on, that we're we're kind of constantly making choices about what to do and and where to go and how we want to shape our life.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly we were thrown into complete chaos and lack of control over our circumstances, and I think that's been a sort of extraordinarily useful and humbling thing, actually.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the hot this whole year has had uh has been clearly incredibly hard for people, um, but it's also I think had a lot of silver linings that we're yet to sort of fully discover.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that process of not knowing is something that we have to get used to, and I think that generally speaking, you want if you make that transition to accepting the fact that you don't know what the future brings, you spend more um time experiencing the present.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you put more focus on the present.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's been good for me.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what next year will bring.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna make sure that every minute I have with my kids at this time, hard as it is at times, I'm going to um lash.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh and and I I I think that's the case with theatre.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the I've stopped the shear writing drama.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been writing only for screen, and uh that's that would never have been my choice.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've been forced into that to sort of put food on the table.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but lots of great things have come out of it.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, lots of new thinking, lots of new reading, not lots of new exploring different paths of my writing.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I am a bit more relaxed than I was, I think, at the beginning of COVID when we realized that the world was changing and we didn't know how.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now a little bit more tolerant of the fact that we don't know quite what the future brings.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um, you know, I hope we'll all be back in the theatre, but a lot of small theatres are going to really struggle with social distancing.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, theatre is primarily um patronized by older people, and uh older people are the ones who are most vulnerable and um probably the most uh cautious about being that's a good point.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, in in light of that, you mentioned you're writing for screen.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: What's next for you?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: What's your next uh have you got, you know, uh are you working on a film or a working on lots of different screen projects?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh some of them are kind of ideas that came to me, um, were brought to me, and and I was asked if I would take them on.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they're probably the less interesting ones, um although even then I've learnt a lot uh by doing them, and then there are the ones which were sort of generated by my own idea.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a TV series in the UK um and uh a TV series developed here um and uh a feature film.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so they're all kind of exciting, and then um, yeah, a kind of wonderful biopic that I've been writing, which I wasn't at all sure about taking on, but sort of took on because you know, I thought the subject was interesting.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't say who it is, but it's uh from the from the world of the visual arts.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then the more I started to read about this subject, the more fascinating and fabulous it became.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm after writing a very long treatment for it, um, I'm now in the first draft of it and just sort of adoring living in the world of this character.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so well, it sounds like you're definitely opening up other doors, which is great.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that you know, for you to have a presence in the television and screen world is really a blessing for all of us because I think you've got a lot to say.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: And don't say that yet.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: We'll touch wood.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but no, I have I have ultimate faith that you will deliver something quite extraordinary.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we need the artists to be present on those screens.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm just watching the A Suitable Boy, which is Vikram's um Vikram says it's just been adapted.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I just you know, whether you love or hate adaptations, there's something wonderful about making sure our artists are present, you know, on our Netflixes, on our uh on our S-Fods, on our so that we get a broader insight and it's not just controlled by a very uh few, you know.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the adaptations have been absolutely brilliant.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the Patrick Melrose novels uh uh were as brilliant on screen as they were in prose.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my brilliant friend, the elephant for that was fabulous.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: I watched that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: I loved that.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Normal people, a brilliant adaptation.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant, and it gives new audiences.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got 20-year-olds watching that normal who would not maybe have read the book, you know.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they now go to the book, exactly.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's there's a wonderful opportunity here, which it sounds like you're grabbing um every moment of.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to thank you so much for coming on and chatting to us on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Great pleasure, Debbie.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I always love talking to you.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we and also um I'm in such good company, all those beautiful women you've spoken to.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm thrilled, Deb.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for inviting me.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Absolute pleasure.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you've learned as much as I have.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: The show will be coming to you free every month, and a subscription is the best way to ensure you get each episode downloaded straight into your pocket.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: For more stories or for an opportunity to tell your own, head to my website, mindful and publishing.com.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, stay curious, kind, and connected.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: With love again.