matthewturner.info

Many thanks to Steve Harper at Theatre 503 for setting up our recent reading of my new play, Closed, last month.

I had a fascinating day working with director Bobby Brook and our very generous group of actors. As well as breathing life into the characters, we managed to test out the dynamics of the whole play and see how well it would engage the audience.

I’ve certainly learnt a lot from the experience, which I’m now trying to put into practice with a new draft of the play. My main finding was that, as the play puts itself across as a political thriller, I really need to make it thrill from the first scene and involve the audience in the goals and drives of the main characters.

I’d previously worried that the plot might be too complex, or too firmly rooted in government legislation, but now I see that the plot’s fine. What I really need to do is to make the audience care. If you can do that the plot can be as complex as you like.

The reading has also tempted me to bring a major character onstage who was previously only seen in the shadows. Quite a radical change to the play but one I really want to try out.

Meanwhile check out the Songs area of the website as I’ve been adding a few new recordings there recently.

Towards the end of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (Royal Court/Haggerston, running till 3 August), the drama teacher/life coach Marty asks the four members of her class to write a secret they have never told anyone on a slip of paper. She’ll do the same. They will each then take a random slip from the pile and read it to the group.

It’s a wonderfully economic example of the need to situate drama in the live moment onstage, rather than simply in the stories of the various characters. From the moment the task is set the atmosphere crackles with a sense of possibility, for the characters and the audience alike.

The task draws the audience into the situation. We might ask ourselves: how would I respond? What would my special secret be? Would I dare to write something meaningful or would I play it safe, coming up with some tame, socially acceptable secret?

Engaged in this game the paper slips themselves become objects charged with meaning, charged with the power to transform the lives onstage. They are no longer just scraps of paper torn from a random sheet. They matter to us now.

And then as the secrets are revealed in turn we learn the limits of anonymity in a group this size. We feel we can trace each secret to its owner with patient deduction. Surely that’s a male secret, that’s a female one? If that’s Theresa’s secret then it can’t be Lauren’s, and so on.

As the group read the secrets aloud we read their faces for clues. We see them reacting and dissembling, trying to work it all out for themselves as the possibilities unfold. We are all engaged in the same action, audience and characters combined in the dramatic moment.

It’s a remarkable scene from a delicately powerful play, with generous performances and the best use of a site-specific location I’ve seen. Catch it if you can by Saturday.