WRITING THROUGH OBJECTS
About two years ago I participated in a day-long workshop with Rene Baker at the Norwich Puppet Theatre. She is a leading puppeteer. Though a little dubious about puppets myself, I am obsessed with objects.
Over the last twelve years or so I must have bought thousands of objects from car boots in Norfolk to help create my theatrical boxes (boxes containing objects, art work and words, all in juxtaposition). Most were house clearance items. These came to me, often as a result of one of three causes - Death, Divorce or Debt – the 3 Ds as I call them. These objects, which usually have some age to them, tell of ordinary but very interesting lives.
How would the puppeteer, Rene Baker, add to my understanding of objects? They’re inanimate, lifeless, dead things from the past. However, she showed we participants that each object very nearly has a life of its own! That is, the puppeteer must not impose movement on the object – the resonance of the object has to interact with the puppeteer to give it articulation which is then impelling to the viewer.
Put this another way: you write a play with interacting characters. You may have the plot all worked out, but at some point, a playwright will feel that the characters are speaking for themselves and you’re just putting their words down on paper or screen. You are secondary to the characters, you are a go-between.
Of course, I have a lot of objects – boxes full of them in my studio and all along my window sills in my flat: a tiny rusted bell, a ceramic garlic cruet set, a small plastic jukebox which plays a Billie Holliday number and an old Spirit Soap bottle – for example. They have a history, I can see the people who bought them, their rooms, their lives.
Now, I’m not going to animate them in real time and space but I choose to write with them and through them.
Last week, at a zoom workshop – at the Playwrights’ Playground – we were asked to write through, with or inside objects we had to hand. A free writing exercise. I love doing this. Rather than closing down just on the specifics of an object (weight, size, age, etc.), there’s a kind of magic in the story the object tells me. I would like to share a couple of examples from the playground with you. They’re just exercise pieces which may grow into something else later…
HERE IS THE FIRST - INHERITANCE
It’s just a pencil sharpener. My old pencil sharpener, made of brass with a globe spinning on top of it, the Earth at 23 degrees out of whack. Was expensive, at the time. A gift when I started out. It still shaves pencils well. Makes the finest of points. So sharp, the point could bloody kill you.
I keep a few pencils back, for nostalgia – like the sharpener. Takes me back.
God, back in the old days, we had to understand all the trigonometry, geography and study all those who had gone before – map making. But map-making now, well, I can do it all on my laptop.
Solid this sharpener and the globe is made of tin. Don’t make them like this anymore. Last another generation. Still, the globe doesn’t look like this now: empires have crumbled, new boundaries have been drawn. It’s like that time the Berlin Wall came
down – 1989? I got rat-arsed! We just knew – there’s going to be more work for us – for the map makers! It was just beginning of real digital map making and I knew I had to stay ahead of the game.
Of course, there were map makers who didn’t make the cut. You’ve got to get up with the forefront of the technology in this game.
My daughter and her family, go on at me about Climate Change. Send me articles, all the links via social media, to the scientific evidence.
I say to them, what’s given you the good life, eh? This map maker. All the borders and boundaries changing – and tundra where forests used to be. If the land shrinks, so what? More work for us map makers! The more change, the more work, I say.
Climate Change? Bring it on! That’s what my son Richard says too – now he’s running our business.
I started out with a piece of paper and a sharp pencil and being smart, well, I can quite literally give this world to my boy now. Climate Change? Bring it on!
AND HERE’S THE SECOND – ALL IN THE NAME
A dinosaur, under the ground, feet sticking up out of the grass in the park.
Here is proof dinosaurs walked across Norwich, shaking the ground, over a million years ago.
Approximately eight inches long, dirty, warn, cold blooded plastic, with stained mouth, large teeth, covered in earth, forgotten or buried here - to be found?
A leg was protruding. No mistake. A leg to be pulled, in this park full of dinosaur hungry dogs. They’re yapping, some snarling.
CHILD: Oi! That’s my dinosaur!
MAN: It’s mine – I found it!
CHILD: No, it’s mine!
MAN: If it’s yours, what’s its name?
CHILD: Mabel.
MAN: Mabel? That’s no name for a dinosaur. This is Tirone.
CHILD: Tirone?
MAN: Tirone!
CHILD: That’s a boy’s name.
MAN: Exactly!
CHILD: It’s a girl.
MAN: A girl? How do you know it’s a girl?!
CHILD: Got orange markings.
MAN: You can’t tell from that!
CHILD: You can.
MAN: It’s Tirone – Tyrannosaurus Rex.
CHILD: You made that up.
MAN: It’s the truth.
CHILD: You know nothing. It’s a Dreadnoughtus
MAN: A dread--? You’re pulling my leg, boy! It’s mine.
CHILD: Please, it’s mine. It’s mine.
MAN: Now, no, please don’t cry. Here, you take it.
CHILD: Thank you.
MAN: Yeah, well, perhaps I’m getting too old to play with toys. Was going to clean it up, put it on my mantelpiece for when my granddaughter comes round. Give it to her. She ain’t got many toys.
CHILD: Mister, I buried some more over there…