12 March
First day of rehearsals. Really happy to be back at the Royal Court, where I’ve had productions under each of the last four regimes. Despite the Court’s standing, it’s still small enough that you interact with all the departments on a daily basis. It is the theatre whose mission statement most resembles my own, and one of the few that will let me work the way I prefer. For good or ill, without the Court I wouldn’t exist as the artist I am.
As usual, I begin work with no written material, just a basic idea: to use the story of a couple’s attempts to resurrect their sex life as an analogy for the recent, seismic events in sexual politics. My idea is that The Prudes will be half-gig, half-play. The scenes will be counterpointed by songs, written and performed by the brilliant actor and musician Amanda Wilkin, with actors Jonjo O’Neill and Sophie Russell playing the couple.
13 March
The first few days are spent talking about the issues I plan to explore. Everyone in the room contributes: actors, the design team, stage management – anyone who’s around. Even a seemingly irrelevant comment can lead to a great idea.
14 March
I’ve started writing, only a few pages for now. I have the actors read it cold so they are my first audience and I am theirs. In this way, the notion of audience is kept constantly alive in the room, and I get to “feel out” the show according to what I’d want to see.
Some material works, but some of it is glaringly awful when spoken. I don’t seem to write less shit than I did when I started, 30 years ago: I’m just better at spotting it and knowing how to fix it.
16 March
Today is my birthday. Just saying.
19 March
Something of a blow: the show Amanda is appearing in has been extended and she won’t be able to perform in ours. She’s a unique talent, so I’ve decided not to replace her but to pivot the idea to a two-hander between Jonjo and Sophie. The ability to be flexible in this way is an advantage of my process. The downside is that the actors will have to learn a lot more dialogue. Gulp.
27 March
We debate the merits of using the song Bump n’ Grind. Some argue it will be distasteful, given the allegations against R Kelly; but this is exactly why we should use it.
Fly Davis, our set designer, shows me some of her ideas. We settle immediately on a kind of tented structure, which reminds me of the way children make tents out of their quilts. It’s often effective to include design elements that trigger childhood memories, as it puts the audience subconsciously into a more imaginative space. Fly thinks everything should be pink. She assures me it won’t seem as if we’re inside a giant vagina.
5 April
The greatest danger in writing as you go is what I call the “conceptual flaw”. Scenes and dialogue can be fixed right up until opening night, but if there’s a basic, conceptual flaw in your idea, you’re very soon stuck with it. From then on, it’s just damage limitation.
I don’t usually engage overtly with political issues, but I am fascinated by, and invested in, the #MeToo movement and the issues surrounding it. Clearly, however, one could argue that the last thing needed right now is a middle-aged man sticking his oar in.
In an attempt to insulate myself from that, I was determined The Prudes should be scrupulously balanced between the male and female viewpoints. But I have suddenly realised this is vanity on my part: I can’t leech off the insights of women and pass them off as my own. That would be using the play to self-aggrandise, rather than present the possibly unpalatable truth of my own limitations. I’ve railed against this kind of egotism in other writers and it would be hypocritical of me to start doing it.
I realise now that what I’m writing – what I’m best positioned to write – is a (fairly vicious) satire about the Liberal Male response to these events, rather than the events themselves. The Prudes can only be a sidebar to a much larger volume of work that is hopefully being written by women as we speak. This small epiphany relaxes me no end.
10 April
I am sleeping only once every two days on average. I attend rehearsals and direct the actors in what little material I can be sure will stay in the play and then go home to write. Sometimes, I will cancel rehearsals at short notice, if I’m writing good material and want to keep at it. Only industrial quantities of caffeine and cigarettes are keeping me upright. There is something fascinating about the effect of sleep-deprivation: the ebbs and flows of alertness are unpredictable and give rise to as many great ideas as poor ones. I am living in a different reality from everyone around me, a kind of living ghost. It is awful, but I think I am happy in some way.
14 April
Approaching the previews and everybody hates me. This always happens around this time in the process. It’s all free and fun to begin with, but then the reality dawns that an audience is actually coming to see this in a few days and there’s still no ending to the play. To make matters worse, my latest attempt at the play is unusable garbage. Instructive, as terrible writing often is; but the actors must now spend their penultimate day of rehearsal without me, while assistant director Nimmo Ismail bears the brunt of their understandable panic. Thankfully, she’s formidable as hell.
Until I’ve finished writing, the director part of me takes a back seat. This makes the actors feel insecure, but they know more than they think they do. Much of direction is about helping the actors find the characters; but because the actors have seen a lot of extra material we’ve cut – and because I’ve pretty much tailored the script to them – they have taken on a lot of that information by osmosis.
17 April
Technical rehearsals, when we set the sound and lighting cues. In many ways, this is the most creative time, when we have lots of our best ideas. I like to feel the show out instinctively, in the space. It seems almost like conducting music.
18 April
First preview and we do have a play, albeit full of shonky writing. As no mortal could have memorised the entire text in this time, the actors must perform the last 15 minutes “script in hand”, words that strike terror into any performer, but a process I’ve found audiences to be touchingly tolerant of. There’s a certain live energy to an unpolished first performance that you never quite capture again.
Because the actors are still partly on script, I stand up and introduce the show, which I don’t like to do. This is where my one year of drama school training pays off.
19 April
Second preview and the audience is not quite as forgiving, which is very useful. Predictably, a heat wave has descended, and the Upstairs theatre at the Royal Court feels like an airport in Dubai.
22 April
The actors are off book and, minor tweaking aside, we’re ready to be judged. Because my process is fast and reactive it occurs to me that The Prudes will be one of the first plays to address the current sexual climate head on, but I hope it will take its place in context with other plays on the subject. This is a time when we need to hear from female playwrights, first and foremost, and it’s beyond heartening that, at long last, we’ve got such an abundance of clever, funny and various voices out there. Their plays will no doubt address the meat of the issue, so to speak, but come and see mine if you fancy a slightly edgy laugh at the fumbling idiocy of liberal males like me.
Coda: 24 April
Press night. Forty-four days on and a fully written and rehearsed show, running 75 minutes, now exists. As I set out for my last proper day on The Prudes, I am not thinking of any major changes. But something is troubling me about the last 15 minutes of the show. Sitting on the number 453 bus, the solution suddenly strikes me. Strangely, a lot of ideas come to me on the bus.
I break the news to the actors that I want to rework a whole section and introduce a much more visceral, physical set piece. They comply with a strange mix of enthusiasm and hostility. I feel like a wildly irresponsible parent with two children that, whilst still bonded to me, are no longer sure I have their safety in mind.
They execute the changes near-perfectly and the whole show finally pulls together as it should. Everyone feels good again. It belongs to the actors now. Time for me to let go.
• The Prudes is at the Royal Court, London, until 2 June.
