Thorne Jack Thorne Plays: Two

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78850-653-3
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 424 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Collected Works

After the breakout success of his early work for stage and screen, Jack Thorne turned for inspiration to his own family for a series of plays about hope, idealism and domestic politics. The work in this collection - five full-length plays and two shorts - showcases his extraordinary ability to combine electrifying dialogue with heartfelt warmth, candour and humour. Hope(Royal Court Theatre, 2014) is a funny and scathing fable about the leaders of a local council faced with savage funding cuts. 'A surprisingly entertaining state-of-the-nation drama' The Stage The Solid Life of Sugar Water (Graeae/Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2015) is an intimate, tender play about loss, hurt and rediscovery. 'Startlingly good... an adult play in the very best sense' The Times Junkyard(Headlong, 2017) is a joyful celebration of imaginative play, a musical drama about a group of young people tasked with building a playground out of junk. 'Genuinely funny and poignant' WhatsOnStage the end of history... (Royal Court, 2019) is a moving and sophisticated portrait of the impact of political idealism on a family. 'Clever and highly intriguing' Independent Also included are Burying Your Brother in the Pavement, written for the National Theatre Connections Festival in 2008, which tackles complex themes of grief, violence and sexuality with fierce compassion and wild imagination; and two short plays: Whiff Whaff and Boo. 'I think these plays are about love, about heroes, about trying to understand how to be heroic, about trying to understand how to lead a good life' Jack Thorne, from his Introduction 'Jack Thorne is Britain's hottest playwright and screenwriter'The Times 'Jack Thorne never ceases to stimulate and entertain'Evening Standard 'Thorne is a writer of immense emotional intelligence and his dialogue regularly devastates'The Stage

Jack Thorne is a playwright and BAFTA-winning screenwriter. His plays for the stage include: When Winston Went to War with the Wireless (Donmar Warehouse, 2023); The Motive and the Cue (National Theatre and West End, 2023; Evening Standard Award for Best Play; Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play); After Life, an adaptation of a film by  Hirokazu Kore-eda  (National Theatre, 2021); the end of history... (Royal Court, London, 2019); an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (Old Vic, London, 2017); an adaptation of Büchner's Woyzeck (Old Vic, London, 2017); Junkyard ( Headlong, Bristol Old Vic, Rose Theatre Kingston & Theatr Clwyd, 2017 ); Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Palace Theatre, London, 2016); The Solid Life of Sugar Water (Graeae and Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2015); Hope (Royal Court, London, 2015); adaptations of Let the Right One In (National Theatre of Scotland at Dundee Rep, the Royal Court and the Apollo Theatre, London, 2013/14) and Stuart: A Life Backwards (Underbelly, Edinburgh and tour, 2013); Mydidae (Soho, 2012; Trafalgar Studios, 2013); an adaptation of Friedrich Du?rrenmatt's The Physicists (Donmar Warehouse, 2012); Bunny (Underbelly, Edinburgh, 2010; Soho, 2011); 2nd May 1997 (Bush, 2009); When You Cure Me (Bush, 2005; Radio 3's Drama on Three, 2006); Fanny and Faggot (Pleasance, Edinburgh, 2004 and 2007; Finborough, 2007; English Theatre of Bruges, 2007; Trafalgar Studios, 2007); and Stacy (Tron, 2006; Arcola, 2007; Trafalgar Studios, 2007). His television work includes His Dark Materials, Then Barbara Met Alan (with Genevieve Barr), The Eddy, Help, The Accident, Kiri, National Treasure and This is England '86/'88/'90. His films include The Swimmers (with Sally El Hosaini), Enola Holmes, Radioactive, The Aeronauts and Wonder. He was the recipient of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Contribution to Writing in 2022. Author photo by Antonio Olmos

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thorne, Jack

Leseproben

Introduction

I am trying to work out whether this is a standard progression for a writer, it might well be, but it’ll take some sort of clever academic to do a clever study in order to confirm it: Stage One – look inward, write plays about your worries about yourself, do this through the entirety of your twenties. Stage Two – look outward, comb through the nits of your family for stories, expose them and chuck them toward the theatre. Stage Three – having used up everything you might possibly say about yourself and your family, sit exhausted and ashamed and then look toward history for answers.

I think I’m probably in Stage Three now. These plays represent Stage Two.

For better or worse.

There are two things perhaps worth saying about this:

Firstly, when I was writing Stage One I was mostly living on my own in Luton. I had very little life other than some TV meetings (), some TV friends (thank you ), and the Labour Party (I was secretary of the Round Green Luton Labour Party). I was very insular. I was very self-involved. In fact, the introduction of my was sort of a celebration of how self-involved I was, though was written from the false perspective of how much I was beyond being self-involved.

When I was thirty-two and writing Stage Two, my life changed utterly. I met my wife Rachel; she was the first girlfriend my mum ever met (go me), and I asked her to marry me pretty quickly and she asked me to leave Luton even quicker. I had a relatively successful career in TV, and was starting to feel more confident in myself (from arguably quite a low base), and I was happy for the first time in my life, mostly because of Rachel. Suddenly I could look up, suddenly I could see. Or, perhaps, suddenly writing about myself seemed repulsive. I’m not sure. One or the other.

The second thing worth saying is that I’m writing this introduction from the perspective of an autism diagnosis I received three months ago and still don’t really understand, though I’m trying to. Ever since the diagnosis I have both slept better (I wear a thing that tracks my sleep because I’m an obsessive), and have found both talking and writing about myself very difficult (my e-mails have become extremely short). I don’t know why that is relevant, but it feels relevant, so I’m writing it here.

Anyway, my family, Stage Two. My family. Or particularly my dad, it seems, who features a lot. He features in – he was a town planner for most of his life and I grew up talking about local authorities a lot. Ostensibly the play is about Luton, but he’s in there a lot. He’s in there in , which is about his time before he was a town planner, when he was a playleader who built a playground. He was called Mick at the time (he’s Mike now) and was from Walthamstow, and is explicitly in that play. And he’s in , which is about my entire family really, but particularly my parents.

This feels quite a normal thing – again I’m guessing without the academia to back it up – to become obsessed with your parents when you reach an age when you have some understanding of them. I think so anyway. I could be wrong. It could be another symptom of my madness.

Why do I think they’re worth reading about? Why do I think these plays are worth performing? I don’t know. Reading back your old stuff you get reminded of the whiff of ambition you felt writing them. You always think – this is the one – this is the one that will answer that nagging feeling of inadequacy inside me, this is the one that will finally express how I feel about the world, will let people in. An older writer told me, when I was in my twenties and desperate for reassurance, that you never get rid of insecurity as a writer, you never feel you belong. I struggle less in meetings than I used to, but actually I’m much more afraid of audiences. I sort of assumed they were there when I was a kid, because I think I went to everything and bizarrely didn’t really think that much about other people’s work. Now I’m much more critical, and as a result fear others’ critical eye.

Writing is an arrogance, that is beyond doubt. I think I’ve written about this before, but how can it not be? Sit in the dark for two hours and listen to me express myself. Actors are always cast as the egotists (and some of them do have remarkable egos, though many do not); directors as the monsters who want to control everything (and again, there’s some truth and some not so truth); but writers are truly the shadows who loom largest – listen to me, listen to me, listen to me… be quiet, stop rustling, listen to my ciphers express my worldview.

As a twenty-something, that arrogance bizarrely came easy, not in the rest of my life but on the page. These difficult second albums are a result of that arrogance being replaced with fear of the audience. But the love of writing – and the love of who I’m writing about and the problems I’m trying to express – I hope that shines through. The love, I suppose, of my family and all that they’ve shown me. All the tools they’ve given me to understand the world.

They say the reason why a lot of women don’t get diagnosed as autistic is because they are very good at what’s called masking. Watching the world and trying to get a sense of how to behave in it, and using that sense to normalise their neurodiversity. I think I was pretty good at masking, at performing for other kids, and performing for my family. I hid my difference and because I was relatively clever, I became very good at hiding it. Some kids sniffed it out, I’m sure of that, and a lot of my unhappiness is because of those kids. But mostly I was invisible, and I was watching.

And the people I watched most were my family. And the person in my family I watched most was my dad. Perhaps as an act of hero worship, certainly as an act of wanting him to like and be proud of me, a pride that wasn’t always obvious. We felt pressure, all of us kids, to be significant and to shine out in whatever we did, and if we didn’t, we were expected to try harder next time.

So I think these plays are plays about love, about heroes, about trying to understand how to be heroic, about trying to understand how to lead a good life. Because when I was a child I was surrounded by people, my parents surrounded themselves with people, trying to lead a good life. I hope the plays are critical, I hope they see the flaws in what that does, and in the people that produces (who aren’t always good), and I hope the questions within them – about how to be good – are complicated and nuanced. I still haven’t worked out how to be good, so I can’t imagine the plays have.

I write from the future, I write from Stage Three, where I’m writing bigger plays about other people. I think I’m still grappling with the questions I asked in and particularly these questions in , but perhaps from a less indulgent worldview. I’ve become more confident about structure, about inner play dynamics, I’ve become more confident about filling big theatres – shows like , and have ensured that. But perhaps I’m also, at the same time, less confident about those sort of knotty self-examination plays. My characters now have a history to them that I cannot alter, and a viewpoint I can tinker with but not change without doing damage. I hope I find myself within them, because why else write and why else watch what I write, but it’s different. I am not trying to write my people any more, or perhaps I’m not capable of it. Maybe I will be again, maybe I won’t, maybe Stage Four is a new examination again as I head toward decrepitude. Until then, these plays – these plays in this volume – are my last stamp, at least for now. I hope you find something in them worth reading about.

There are lots of people who were part of making this work. This introduction seems to present them as a solo effort. Of course they’re not. Authorship is shared. John Tiffany, twice the poor fool (four times including and ) – one day I’m going to be able to write something which expresses all he means to me, I dedicate the collection to him because I don’t have these words yet. The ace Jeremy Herrin, the very brilliant Amit Sharma and the many directors of NT Connections led and shaped and reshaped and retold and made better all of these plays. Then there are the brave artistic directors who’ve put these plays on and given notes to unlock them: Vicky Featherstone, Jenny Sealey, Ben Power, Tamara Harvey, Tom Morris, and many more. Designers, lighting designers, sound designers, musicians (Stephen Warbeck!), and stage management have always given so much. And then, of course, there are the many, many incredible companies of amazing actors who contributed a huge amount. I can’t tell you, because I don’t remember, how many of these lines were suggestions in a rehearsal room from the modest voice of a brilliant actor, but I can tell you there were plenty. Rachel Taylor, my long-suffering agent and very good friend, read and gave brilliant notes on all of this work; Helena Clark, her associate, supported her in doing this. Finally, the beautiful Matt...