The Why, The How and The What by TYA USA

The Why, the How and the What Closing night keynote for the 2013 One Theatre World Conference Finegan Kruckemeyer Initial thanks were given to Kim Peter for the lovely intro, TYA USA and particularly David Kilpatrick for extending the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be here, and a pleasure also to unite under the aspirational banner offered by OTW: We strive to Create, we strive to Connect, and we strive to Collaborate. The Creating we do irrespective. We are artists and this manifesting of ideas is our joy. But then we Connect, and in my mind this connection is just as important as its precursor – we celebrate the friendship with a colleague just as we would celebrate a choice stroke of inspiration. Each is important in itself, and also because of what it leads to: The Collaboration – whereby we fashion an artistic product which is borne from shared visions creatively, and shared respect socially, and we make something great as a result. If done well, the Collaborative product is more than any individual spark could have ever been, because it’s the result of innumerable sparks, a Roman Candle of different artists’ ideas. And it wields its own personality, because it is the child of many persons. The story has come from one, the visual world from another, the score from a third, the characters from a fourth, the directorial heartbeat has been provided by a fifth. The artwork then owes allegiance to several minds, and so to none, and can be celebrated as a thing in its own right. This is the theatre I love to see, and aspire to make. *** It feels particularly lovely and fitting to be saying this here, in the country I’ve come to affectionately know as The Land of Pen-friends. And I don’t know about any of you but I hadn’t actually had a pen-friend since I was about eleven. At that stage, it should be noted, it was a forced thing – every kid in my class was paired with a kid in a sister school, in an Australian country town called Waikerie, and we wrote these very simplistic letters back and forth: about favourite colours, and foods, and poems (My suggestion – I was already quite a pretentious child. I even wrote some to her in poetry and… she stuck to prose, which I respect). Eventually the whole thing culminated in us taking a bus out to Waikerie, where we met the friend, toured a juice factory, ate vanilla slices, and spent the rest of the day doing bombs in the local pool. So basically, a fully rounded experience for my child self, with all the food groups of friendship, sugary treats and water-based hi jinks.

The Why, the How and the What

After that I put the notion of pen-friending to bed, as one does, until 18 years later my work started coming to the States, and I with it, clinging excitedly to its coattails. And I seemed to suddenly amass all these lovely friends with whom words are now traded. I’m not sure quite how it happened, but it’s a very nice and surprising thing. So when feeling contemplative, most people keep a diary… I write to an American. I talk about new imaginings with Jonathan Shmidt, relive conference adventures past with Roxanne Shroder-Arce, skype the class of Abra Chusid, talk about living on island states of larger nations with Eric in Hawaii, and above all else talk about TYA – with Carrie and Mary from the New Victory, with Jim from Long Island, Steve from La Jolla, Jay from LA, David from OTW, Linda from Seattle, Linda from right here in PlayhouseSquare. I also do still discuss poetry, but this time it’s with Kim Peter Kovac – and in this case he reciprocates, which is lovely. I know this has gone far beyond name-dropping and is more of a name blitz, but my point is that these conversations act as the convivial backbone that’s crucial to any future working one of us might propose. And in my mind the simple reason for this (and it’s one that sounds naff in its simplicity I know) is that it’s nicer to work with nice people. *** But the task itself, is not a simple one – and I believe this is because of a conundrum that sits at the centre of our collective practice within the TYA community. It is one of the most important things I always try to remember, and it is this: That pretty much every one of us creatives, and producers, and funders, and decision-makers in TYA, is not the target audience of the industry we work in. We are an industry which deals in hypotheticals and maybe’s and hope so’s. We are wellintentioned, yes, but we are coming from a place of remove. As a result, there has to be acknowledged an uncertainty in what it is we do, or say we do. Maybe some of our works will resonate for children more than others, maybe we will watch a curtain fall on one particular show and think: ‘that was received just as I would have wished’. But ultimately it is supposition, and rear-projection, and a peppering of child consultancy. And to this last point, one might suggest that it is a child’s input into an evolving TYA work which is the most crucial, but then that is also untrue – because just as the vast majority of professional artists are not children, the vast majority of children are not professional artists: To truly train at one’s craft takes a number of years. To truly be a child, takes an absence of them.

The Why, the How and the What

There is therefore a divide, and I believe it to be a liberating one. Because what it does is force us to concede that every opinion held by every adult worker in this field is only ever theoretical. It may be weighted by experience, yes. It may be spoken by someone with letters beside their name, or awards beside their bookshelf – but these are only adult gifts bestowed upon adult peers. As rational beings, we can all mould our own arguments and beliefs into any shape we wish, just as I am seeking to do now – and so no argument about this subject matter is ever wholly right. And that’s great. Because what it means is that there must then be another benchmark by which we judge ourselves when striving to do what we do. And that benchmark, I believe, is: The Quality of the Art. This might seem like a redundant statement in its simplicity, but it is one which I’m compelled to say because of a common, and often subconscious, problem – that all too often in our industry: We can spend so much time considering Who it is that sits in the audience, that we can forget to consider What it is that sits on the stage. Of course every artist and organisation will focus on this also, but when the first point of entry into a process is one of demographics, is a pedagogic notion of who a child is, or what they can handle, then something potentially amazing can be missed. The Making of Great Art can be missed. The issue for me, at its most simplistic, and the issue I’ll speak about tonight, is one of: The Why, the How and the What. This trinity of theatrical considerations and my concern that in recent times, the perceived importance of the first two (Why our play is presented, and How our play is presented) has often come to trump the all-important third (What we are actually presenting). We see it all the time – in our funding bodies’ evaluations and requests (yes but why, and how), and in the attitudes we then take on as funded artists (this is why, this is how). We see it in the increased focus on the presentation of a new work: the digital trickery, the novel way an audience can view the play, the social issues referenced for best results, the surprising space to serve as location. This is how this show is interesting. We see it in the qualification of a new work: the play’s intent, the catharsis it might offer, the capabilities of a child, the lack of capabilities of a child, the ground that will be broken, the imprint that will remain. This is why this show is interesting. And both are worthy, when married well with strong content. But I fear that all too often that content, the foundation of a project, can be forgotten: This is what this show is. So here begins a journey through Why’s and How’s, on the way to their substantive sibling, the What. The Why, the How and the What

The Why. I’ll begin with the Why. The Why for me is too closely associated with a sense of duty. And in my mind, duty is not a key determiner in the making of art. Yes, there is duty in elements of it: a duty to meet deadlines and satisfy producers – but that is the business of art. A duty to make work that aspires to one day be as good as our heroes’ – but that is the homage in art, the duty of aspiration. And then the one discussed always in the context of children’s theatre – the duty to an audience, to protect them, to inspire them, to expand their world, to translate their world in an emotionally liberating fashion. This latter wish is a key factor in my own art-making for children, and yet it is also redundant – because it lies in the realm of duty. In truth, the core to a piece of art, and the artist’s relationship to their piece of art, has to be undutiful, has to answer to nobody and nothing save the contents of the story itself. The making of art must be governed by the idea, and as artists we must run as fast as we can to keep up with that idea. We must view the idea as it forms before us with the most open eyes, the most open mind. We cannot dictate what the idea must be in that most magical point of making, when all is unknown and dangerous and exciting. And just as with the How, I absolutely acknowledge that the Why can be important, when united powerfully with the What. Edinburgh’s Puppet State Theatre Company probably demonstrated this for me most beautifully with their work The Man Who Planted Trees. A magical theatre adaptation of the original story by Jean Giono, he wrote it originally for a newspaper series which asked various celebrities to write about their heroes – Giono’s was this man, a quiet and self-contained shepherd who planted trees and over the course of a life, grew a forest. It is a beautiful tale and one that touched many people, but at a point in his life, Giono was questioned and admitted that the hero of his tale, was a work of fiction. ‘Sorry to disappoint you’, he said, ‘but Elzeard Bouffier is a fictional person. The goal was to make trees likeable, or more specifically, make planting trees likeable’. This beautiful teller of tales had chosen a fallacy with which to frame his intent. But what is crucial is that the resulting work (and the subsequent play) is about a man and his labours and a war, and a world growing up around him. It is not a lecture or a thematic dictum – it is a What: a story, about a thing, happening to a person. And it’s for us to deduce what this might mean. I thought about the Why also when in the lead-up to One Theatre World, I was asked this question: ‘What advice would you give a graduating student seeking to enter this field?’ And, having thought about it for a bit, for the length of time it takes to brew a pot of tea, to water a garden, I came up with the response that: If you find yourself making allowances for a child audience, then you have to acknowledge that these allowances represent The Why, the How and the What

not only what they can handle, but rather what you yourself can handle telling them. The task then is to diligently work to explore where that fear in you comes from, and where you might be braver. Because I believe too close a scrutiny of Why, to be a form of pre-emptive defence. We ask too often why a child audience may or may not like a work, why this play is the one that must be written now, and we are in effect slowing ourselves down from our ultimate quest – that of making the thing. In short, we are focussing on context before content. And I know that many dramaturges I work with covet the Why – it’s the centrepiece in their arsenal, and they hold to the fact that if an artist can’t answer this one thing, then there is a redundancy in the work. But I would posit that: Maybe it is not for the artist to give the Why. Maybe their job is something else, their product is something more complex, and the Why is actually something possessed by the audience – it is as individual to each of them as their fingerprints, and this is okay. Give them a What that is dense, that is rich in allegory and may be seen as many things, to many people, and an audience will do their own deconstruction of Why this show was worthy. It is worthy because it’s worthy to them. Or it is not because it’s not. And I believe a singular writer or composer or director can’t name the intentionality for every single person sitting there. I believe it is doubly dangerous to do this for a child audience, which we are not, particularly when it is borne from the connotation that a child will not be mature enough to find it themselves. They are worthy enough to. Instead, give them the maze, give them a starting point in that maze – and then let them find their own way through.

The Why, the How and the What

The How. And then there is the How. The How is, I believe, driven largely by the current Zeitgeist of digital and technological innovation, and the subsequent notion held by many adults that a child today is a child defined by their relationship with technology (as though there ever existed a singular prism through which any of us might see the world). I’ll begin by saying that, just as with the Why, I acknowledge that, when truly innovative, the How can be a masterstroke. I saw it best in a Windmill/Border Project co-production produced by my fellow keynote Rosemary Myers. I wrote the play, but wholly acknowledge the words were secondary to the concept – which was that of a chooseyour-own-adventure story, a stage version of those childhood flipbooks where at each chapter’s end, choices are given and skipped to. This concept was already good enough to get people excited, but what The Border Project did next that was really wonderful, was employ a father and son team of technical wizards (as a complete Luddite I do literally suspect them to be real wizards) to invent handheld controllers which were used to steer the show. Hold them one way and they glowed red, another way blue, and a third green. At each scene’s end, the actors would offer colour-coded choices (should the hero smash through the window, or follow the vampire through the trapdoor?), the audience would then each tilt their own bit of handheld democracy, a computer would correlate, and the resulting scene would be announced, much to the cheers of the victors and boos of the rest (just as in a real democracy). The brain-melting reality of this really cool idea, however, was that I had to essentially write nine different plays (a large contractual oversight on my part), the actors had to learn nine different plays, and the poor director, designer and composers had to realise a multiplicitous world in which any sudden scene might fit. The play was called Escape From Peligro Island, and it was during this season that I witnessed one of my favourite moments in a TYA show – not onstage, but off. The play follows Callaway Brown, a socially inept child whose divorced parents live in Australia and America, and so every month he must fly back and forth – as such he has no time to make proper friends and is an outcast. At the show’s beginning he’s sat at the departure lounge, in his usual glum state, when a gentleman accidentally mixes up tickets, and suddenly Callaway finds himself with a seat in first class instead of coach. So the first choose-you-own-adventure question then posed to the audience is: do you be honest and tell the man about the mix-up, or do you keep the cool luxury seat? And the cheekiness on my part lies in the fact that… I never even wrote the ‘give the ticket back’ scene. I was so sure of my audience’s naughtiness (and so sure of my own naughtiness in being so sure) that I literally didn’t think it would ever be selected – and I am naughtily happy to report that, after many seasons, I’m still not proven wrong

The Why, the How and the What

(although admittedly these have only been Australian children and so those descended from convicts, but still I have faith in the theory). But what was brilliant was that when the question was posed, I happened to notice one neat and tidy girl and her neat and tidy mother, each enjoying their day out at the theatre. The girl, without a moment’s pause, turned the controller to red (keep the ticket). The mother turned hers to blue (be honest and return it). This was fine and just as a democracy should be… until the mother, never diverting her gaze from the stage or dropping her smile, reached over and… turned her daughter’s controller to blue (return the ticket). Her daughter, same smile affixed and eyes ahead, fought against the grip to bring it back to red (keep the ticket). Back and forth it went for 20 seconds (red, blue, red, blue) until the computer called yet another red victory and the immoral majority cheered. The joy for me within this struggle was one of whether the powers of fact or fiction would prevail. The child saw the situation to be a fictitious exercise and so, with no danger of real-world repercussions, went red. The mother saw it as a representative moral quandary and, thinking of real-world outcomes, went blue. In that familial tug-of-war, I saw the theatrical artifice being tested for strength and – via this ingenious device – watched it spill over into the real world. And with no disrespect to the creative ensemble, that power struggle between that mother, and that daughter, was for me, a far more entertaining show, than the show. So my issue as it stands is not with the joy of a How well realised. A beautiful mode of delivery can be jaw-dropping, just as a gesture from Pina Bausch, or the unfolding set of Paul O’Mahony in The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly can attest. It is rather with the current preoccupation with How – and the bombardment of attention so often given to the presentation that, in doing so, we brush off the significance of the product, the What. Because at our fingertips right now are screens and lights and illusions, which may take one’s breath away. And once our fingertips have dulled to the feel of those illusions, once our breath has returned, then the next version will present itself – and seemingly ever onwards. The possibilities are endless, we are told. But the wonder for an audience, I believe, can end. Once we’ve committed to a celebration of the means of delivery, rather than the product delivered, then we start investing in a different way. This is contentious a comment I know, but my supposition is that: When we watch a complex magic show, we look for the wires, the proof of its falsehood. But when we watch a simple story told, then we look for the allegory, the proof of its truth. One form invites us to be sceptics, and then tries to prove us wrong. The other encourages us to be believers, and then tries to prove us right.

The Why, the How and the What

When a theatre piece, or a moment in time, or a person in life, assures us it will be great, then we become cynical – we look for the humanity, the flaw. But when a theatre piece, or a moment in time, or a person in life, comes to us with hands empty, with palms raised, and says: ‘I have only a story to share with you’, then we will wish for more. If we get too caught up in showing an audience spectacle, we will make spectators of them. We want them to not only sit back and wait for the trickery to be employed – we want them to meet us emotionally halfway. Because whenever I think back on a moment of art that’s been truly epiphanous, that has warmed my cheeks and drawn me slowly out of my own head before finally lowering me back into it, an hour disappeared and me standing on my feet, not knowing how I got there – that piece of art has taken me on a journey. It has been earned. It’s begun in the same way – because every show does, whatever its form: it begins with me, the audience, settling back into my seat and thinking ‘I’m ready to see what’s offered’. And then from that point of polite, but noncommittal, viewership, it’s drawn me in. And thinking back on those works most evocative for me: On the choreography of Jiri Kylian, or stagecraft of Theater Artemis, the music of Arvo Pärt, the painting of Andrew Wyeth, the words of Suzanne Lebeau… It hasn’t started with much at all. Some people standing on a stage and staring out, the tapping of a piano key, the sight of a woman sat awkwardly in a field, some words on a page. Nothing much, but willing me to know more. And the willingness is mine, the audience’s. But the More (the product I am engulfed in) that is the artist’s. That is the What.

The Why, the How and the What

The What. The What is tangible. It is the Thing that would occur, the Story that would be depicted, the World an audience would sit in, the Music which would sit on an audience, the Hero who would face insurmountable odds, the Victory that would eventually be theirs, the Task they would have to undertake to earn it. I’ll add that this isn’t just a writer praising classical narratives. Because the What is a great equivocator. It can span forms, and have many words or none of them, or songs or silences. It can contain a cast of thousands, or the presence of one alone. The What can be dance, it can be the composer whose work holds your collar and pulls you out of your chair, or the designer that reassures you this world is safe and settles you back into it. It can be created with all the money in the world, or with only the smallest amount (though of course we’d never tell a funding body that). There is an elemental substance to works which resonate with us in just the right manner, which makes them transcend cultures and years: Windmill Theatre saw the classic tale of Pinocchio brought to life now, full of menace and colour and song, just as Teatro Sea's Viva Pinocho! did here, the same tale as seen through a Mexican prism – in each the context may have been stylistically or culturally reinterpreted, but the root story held its own, the foundation upon which all else might be built, even 130 years after the fact. Last year at the Kennedy Center, I watched a reading of James and The Giant Peach by iTheatrics, and was struck by the subversion of a New York company refashioning the tale for its own citizens – for the original English audience reading Roald Dahl’s book in 1961, the hero James was their English countryman, and when he and his insect companions headed towards the Big Apple in their big peach it was a distant, wondrous other, a place of faraway mythology. With this new version however, the story’s destination was actually the audience’s point of origin, so that a New York child viewed the same tale through a mirror – the hero flees from an unfamiliar land to a known one. And despite this switch of location and connotation, it’s the story which is the anchor: the What of the tale takes this drastic perspective shift, and permits you to care regardless. The fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen have been brought to life time and again, in productions big and small. In The Little Match Girl, Denmark's Gruppe 38 has placed the storyteller at the fore, a narrator standing front and centre, staring into each of our eyes as images conjured nigh on two centuries ago are shared again, visually or by word alone. And then the same company has produced Hans Christian, You Must Be An Angel, and shifted the focus from the people, and offered us instead the mechanics of each tale and their clues, the blanks expertly left for us to fill in. And we can – because the seeds of these stories are so fertile, and allow so much to grow within our own minds. For me, it is this era of tale, of Andersen and Brothers Grimm, which acts as my stylistic touchstone and aspiration. The Why, the How and the What

In a time when such emphasis is being placed on constantly finding the new, I find myself humbled over and over by the wisdom and allegory of the old. And I love the fact that the worlds depicted in these stories are from a time removed (a time that indeed never truly existed), and the universality that stems from this. As the world of a fictional play is inherently made-up, the common denominator is that it’s foreign to all of us when we come in and sit down, no matter where we’re from – we meet that place and its characters together, so our actual location, our view on a thing, our time, our race, our gender, our Zeitgeist, is far less important. Instead we play a game of make believe together. And therefore the commodity that is being shared, is empathy – the ability to feel for a foreigner, in a foreign land, as you would for yourself, to see a version of your tragedies and joys in them, and so will them to succeed as you would an externalised version of you. Without a specific location at play’s beginning, we are all Hansel and Gretel, cast adrift in a forested wilderness searching for clues. What we can find, we hang tight to. Once we’ve found a few, we work to piece them together. A story is built, both in front of us, and inside of us. These tropes and symbols are the figurative breadcrumbs that would guide us back, following a path into those childhood narratives we’ve always held dear. They are with us through the years, and it takes little to make children of us all again. And for the children themselves (because I suppose it's a little bit about them as well), the strength of the allegory endures over generations. The proof of the What is, I believe, in its persistence, in its opposing nature to any kind of Zeitgeist. Time does not dull its edges. A good story will stay a good story for as long as it is shared. And those good stories are being born right now as well. When Suzanne Lebeau writes of child soldiers in The Sound of Cracking Bones, or of ogres in The Ogreling, or of a home that might be any home in A Moon Between Two Houses, we can invest equivalently in each – maybe we are not afraid of the dark, or not a monster in a room with a wolf, or not a girl on the run from a horror unparalleled, but still we care for each, our empathy called upon and received. It’s not difficult, because the story has brought us there. And if we did not realise it happening at the time, then all the better. So too with The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik, with Theater Artemis’ Prime and Het Filiaal’s Miss Ophelia, with NIE’s Berlin, 1961, Compagnia Rodisio’s Story of a Family, and Trusty Sidekick’s Shadow Play. So too with writers like Argentina’s Maria Inez Falconi, Australia’s Angela Betzien, the UK’s Andy Manley and this nation’s own Roxanne Shroder-Arce, Ernie Nolan, Suzan Zeder, Gabriel Jason Dean and Eric Schmiedl. Each of their Whats possesses its own 21st century version of a Once Upon a Time and yet, when crafted well enough, each may be of any time as well.

The Why, the How and the What

So the joy for me lies in taking a shape and a narrative world that is recognisable, and then subverting it, making a What that is something new. I attempt to do this with a play called This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing, which begins thusly: *** ‘Once upon a time, a girl was born. And twice upon a time, a girl was born. And thrice upon a time, a girl was born. Until there existed three girls who were sisters, who were triplets. Albienne was the oldest. And Beatrix was the next. And Carmen was youngest. And they looked identical, in the same way that when visiting a block of flats, a person may say: ‘those flats are identical’. And of course they are right, but of course they are not. Because in one window the curtain is patterned. And in one more the curtain is blue. And in a third there is no curtain at all. So all these identical flats end up looking different, because different people live in them. Just as those three identical bodies ended up looking different, because different people lived in them as well. Albienne for instance, enjoyed cake very much and by age nine, her body had become that of a true cake appreciator, round like a gateau and warm like a brioche. Beatrix in the middle enjoyed the expelling of energy and the world within which to do it, and would run around outside from sun up to sundown. And so she was a child of the sun through and through, with blonde hair and brown skin and freckles on her nose. Carmen found the world to be a heavy thing, and carried it upon her shoulders. It was like a school backpack that you know holds important contents, but that you sometimes wish you could just leave on the bus and never have to pick up again. The world she carried made her shoulders small and her eyes dark, though her heart was as large as her sisters – it was just a little smothered by world-carrying, that was all. The three sisters lived in a forest and had as their parents a woman, who shall be the mother, and a man, who shall be the father. The mother sewed up clothes for the people in a village nearby, and the father chopped down trees deep in the woods. But this is only one thing they did, the work thing they did. They also helped to build castles from old boxes, lined up dominoes and knocked them down. Showed the girls how people drink tea in China and dance in Peru, cooked them dinners. Had quiet chats in other rooms sometimes, walked alone sometimes, sat at the kitchen table and played cards sometimes, ran, swam and built good fires when the Winter came. All this, and all fit into the first ten years of Albienne, Beatrix and Carmen’s life. And the girls knew in their hearts that this happiness they felt, living in that forest with that man and that woman, it would never end. …Until one day it ended.

The Why, the How and the What

That day, Albienne was sitting beside the river, which was full of currents, and eating a cake, which was full of currants as well. That day Beatrix was balancing at the top of the tallest tree she’d ever climbed, and trying to reach a bird’s nest that needed investigating. That day Carmen was writing at her desk about dragons and thinking about how even things that don’t exist can become extinct, just by people talking about them less. When from the river, Albienne saw the policeman riding fast to their house. When from the tree, Beatrix saw the policeman run to their front door. When from her room, Carmen heard boots running in, and the putting down of a cup of tea, and then slow muffled talking… And then silence, and finally a long sigh from Papa, the longest sound they had ever heard. And after letting out every ounce of air in his lungs, the father breathed in again… and he pulled every daughter that he possessed to him, from out of the trees and off the riverbanks and through the doors of neighbouring rooms. Until there they stood, held in his arms, softly being told that… Their Mama… Who they so loved… Was dead’. *** From here, familiar fairytale tropes emerge, in a knowing tipping of the hat to classic structures – an evil stepmother is introduced and the triplet sisters abandoned in a forest. But instead of a unified struggle thereafter, as we might recognise from tales told before, now the three separate. One resolves to walk one way around the earth, the second the other, and the third to stay where she is. Over 20 years, they traverse seas, battle armies, and topple lighthouses, before the two journeying sisters find they’ve circumnavigated the globe and returned to the same forest, where their third sister waits, all now women. So the story is still an homage to those stories I have loved before, but it is not the story I have loved before – it is a new one. A new What. And so if not in the literature that has come before (because of course even that before had a before) – where does the What come from? And the origin of a story may be many things – in The Girl Who Forgot To Sing Badly, for instance, my provocation was a thoroughly stupid task I set myself, which involved first writing the narrator’s list of things that would be seen (a dress, a goat, a sinking ship, a new type of cake that the Germans would like, etc)… and then being forced to construct a narrative which managed to actually contain all of these. This proved to be a very fun and backward way of working… and is also something I’ll absolutely never do again. But in my mind, the true source of inspiration for new ideas, for new Whats that might one day grow into plays, comes from: That Which Is Most Interesting.

The Why, the How and the What

Some motifs and moments and images and ideas innately grab our attention, whether we’ve experienced them literally or not. It is not autobiography that acts as our in-road, but rather the sense of permission to believe that the world is magical, that emotions are transferable, that that which is amazing to me will be amazing to you also. And the palpable joy of theatre is that it will sit us side-by-side for the experience. And then at times we might gasp together, and at times we might curl into our chairs alone, and our memories alone, and at times we might feel nothing at all in the moment and then catch ourselves – one night later as we lie in bed – and fathom it: that image, filtered through our subconscious, answerable to nobody else, understandable in our bones alone. And as writers, we are often asked if we fear we might run out of ideas. But I believe this to be impossible, at least until I run out of wonder, run out of being amazed by the world around me and its quirks and its brilliances and its tragedies and its victories. So long as these are provided, I will feed off them. I will feed them into the What. Here as example, then, is a short list of those things I have read about, or heard, or seen, which fill me with that sense of wonder. They are Whats in the Waiting. They are fodder for thoughts I have not yet realised, seeds for fictional forests to be planted by imaginary farmers, written about by French authors – allegories for the hopes of all. And so, a list of truisms: *** There is a sailor who put a note in a bottle and threw it in the sea. And when he reached a port years later, in a faraway part of the world, it was him who found that bottle. This is not a lie. There is an insect that looks exactly like a stick, another that looks like a leaf. There is a human, that looks exactly like a gene wishes it to – the gene engineers the species as a vessel for its transportation, so it will travel, so it will live on. This species is you. It is me. This gene, is just a gene. There is a man who can learn to speak a language in a week. There is a woman who retains prime numbers like a game. The type of mind they possess to perform these tasks, is called disabled. That’s absurd. There is a record player that’s no more than a tiny wind-up car with a speaker on the roof. You just lay your favourite vinyl on the ground and place the car upon it, a stylus between its wheels sitting in the groove. And the car will drive around and around, playing your song for you. There is a man who once played chess against a giant computer. Who won? It doesn’t matter – it was a man playing chess against a giant computer. There is an ecosystem perfectly formed to hold us. This is chance. The Why, the How and the What

There was a woman who refused to move from her seat on a bus. There was a couple that lay in bed for a while. There was a man who sat cross-legged on the ground and waited patiently. They were all just being still. But it was called a movement. But nobody moved. That’s ironic. There is a photo series in a magazine, which is a man chronicling his son. On the day his son was born, the photographer bought a pair of adult jeans and took the boy home, and took a photo, of an infant lying in a man’s pair of trousers. And every year on the boy’s birthday, he would lie him in the same pair of jeans and take the same photo, so that over the years – with the photos laid out next to each other – you saw him grow into the jeans. Until eventually, at about 20, there was a photo of a topless, hairy, smiling man in a pair of jeans his dad had bought for him, many years before. And a few months after that photo, the son was in an accident and died. And the last shot in the series, is of an empty pair of jeans. …There is a fish, that needs to lay its eggs on land. It knows, in its being, precisely the night of the highest spring tide, precisely the wave – and on that one wave, a million of its kin will fly from the water and lay their spawn. The spawn, too, will know the time of the sea, and of the moon, and will be ready in exactly two weeks, when that same long wave returns. And as one, they will be born, and catch it, and swim into the sea – as one, they will swim into life. That is a perfect magic. *** And that is also the What – fragments of a world, metaphors for our lives, touchstones for our emotions. This list is the smallest drop in an endless sea. It is not art in its natural environment, because it’s just a thing existing, a thing occurring. But the moment it is interpreted, the moment it’s taken in as observation, and released out, as a story shared, a dance choreographed, a song penned, a mood evoked, then it is Art. Then it is a What. And maybe some jaw-dropping How will be employed to share the idea. Maybe some heart-stopping Why will be coined to substantiate the idea. But ultimately what will win us over, is the idea – is the ritual of the man who plants trees, the quest of the underwater explorer, the orbit of the wind-up car playing our song, the growing nose of the lying boy, the red apple, the trail of breadcrumbs, the empty jeans, the redemptive fish… Is the challenge, the struggle and the triumph of the heroine… Is the considered heart, the simple What, that (if stripped of all its finery) would still appear resplendent.

The Why, the How and the What