Song for a Child

I originally wrote this for a child who was in hospital for an ear operation.  It was then set to music by my old friend Roderick Skeaping as part of a suite for a children's choir.  It had it's premier at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in London.

I forgot about it for some years but retrieved it for a poetry reading in Bournemouth this Spring.

There is no sound.

There is no sound

Like the vibration of the ether.

The piercing sound of crystal spheres

Is silence;

The farewell tears

Of stars that glitter:

Planets skitter

In their orbits like fireflies

At evening:

There is no sound

There is no sound

Like old fools praying:

"Remove our fears"

Is what they're saying.

No sound of prayers

Can reach the stars.

There is no stairs

For angels  passing

And the old men's eyes are filled with with tears:

“There is no sound!”

There is no sound;

But the still small voice,

Too small to still the fears of fools

But carried on the ether,

Reaches to the child who hears

The Sound.

There is the sound.

The Playwright's Craft - Character

Nobody should embark on the dangerous path of playwriting until they have spent at least six months drinking coffee in a busy cafe.  Preferably one you have to catch a bus to get to. 

I’m not being entirely whimsical.  The idea is that as a play wright, as any sort of writer, you should listen to people talking. As much and as often as possible.  You need to listen closely and at some length as you sip your americano.  You also need to get your notbook out and write down what they say and, most important, the way they say it.  Until you have spent hours and hours doing this and have acquired some understanding of the way people speak to each other; the speech patterns and rhythms, then you cannot begin to write plays.  Because the stuff of plays is made up of the interactions and interplays of characters.   If you can’t get that, then you can’t write a play.  Anybody can write a play that depends on situation or plot but to write a play that depends on character requires an understanding of how to build a character and how that character develops within and around a plot.  Indeed how the character and the plot are inextricably linked.  What happens in a play can only happen because of that character and that character drives what happens.

There are no rules about getting a character to speak.  Indeed, you will find out very quickly as you listen, that there are absolutely no rules to conversation at all.  Trying to record and reproduce is virtually impossible.  Conversational speech is broken, halting, discursive, unsettled.  Entirely without grammar or syntax as described in the conventional manuals.  Sentences have no verbs.  They do not link one to another.  They are made up partly of words, partly of sounds and partly of gestures.

What’s more, dialogues have very little logic.  It is quite possible for one person to espouse several quite contradictory ideas at one time.  Sometimes our interlocuters speak in other voices (the actual meaning of “irony” by the way).  Most of the time conversation does not follow the neat ordered pattern of question and response we would expect as writers.  Most of the time people will only talk about themselves.  Each question or statement being answered or interrupted by their own experience.

Yet, somehow in this mish mash of half formed sentences and ill formed ideas some sort of exchange takes place.  It may be indirect and convoluted but eventually some idea may be conveyed to the other party.

So what do we playwrights learn from this?  Firstly, that our characters need to be freed from the conventions of written speech.  This gives us the opportunities to learn about the reality of our characters.  Our character can grow with our discovery of their little tics and irregularities.  And I don’t mean that that gives us licence to write in some sort of ridiculous Dick Van Dyke cockney voice.  I mean that we can discover the outward signs of the inward workings of a character though their speech.  And as we write it we need to speak it out loud. We are trying to record a spoken interchange so it only exists in some bare notation as words on a page.

Secondly, we need to remember that most conversations are about anything but the subject in hand.  This is especially true about complex and deep subjects.  It takes quite a bit of beating about the bush before the real feelings of our character is flushed out.  This is what makes the process of play watching so enjoyable.  The audience are voyeurs trying to understand something from the snippets of half formed conversation they are allowed to overhear.  And, of course, our characters are often unreliable witnesses.  They lie, they prevaricate, they say the very opposite of what they really think and feel.  But as the watchers begin to know and understand they begin to get more and more drawn in and engaged.

Thirdly, we need to avoid the need for stage directions.  If you’ve got the voice right then there is no need to interject (humorously) or (bitterly) it must be there in the speech itslef.  If you find you have to resort to stage directions than you need to recast the speech. Similarly, as a director, I get annoyed by writers who write detailed character descriptions in the stage directions but do not carry them through into their actual speech and actions.  It is not good enough to describe a character as “Young dynamic and ambitious” You need to show that.  You need to show how that ambition is manifested or hidden.

Fourthly, plot needs to correlate with the characters you are drawing.  If you are beating your characters into a particular plot twist or situation then you have either got the plot wrong or the character or, most likely, both.  The actions that a character takes are the ones that define that character and are defined by that character.  If there is a surprising plot or character twist you need to ask yourself whether you have buried that possibility deep within the psyche of the character you are working with. You need to ask yourself “does it contradict anything that has already been laid down?”

Sir Reginald Meets a Match

Silver daisies and gold buttercups prink the greensward of the West Cliff Gardens.  Dew drops glisten brightly in the early morning dawn light.  A robin carols merrily from a gorse bush.  “Where is that damn Council Man?  Why isn’t he out here with that machine thing of his? Stupid layabout wastrel and nincompoop.”  Sir Reginald likes his greensward cropped and razored within an inch of its life.  He does not want prinking of any sort let alone by items as uncontrolled as daisies and buttercups. These are there solely to mock him and everything he stands for. “There must be some damn chemical concoction they could spray on.” He fumes. “Damn communists at the Council. What do they do with all the money I pay them?  Tea and biscuits.  That’s all they do all day.  Tea and biscuits when they should be out here with barrels of chemicals getting this place in order.” 

Sir Reginald is out early this May morning.  He likes the West Cliff to himself.  By rights it should be his and his alone.  He has the only one who really deserves it after a lifetime of toil in the service of the King and Empire.  But later in the day it will be filled with all manner of layabouts and wastrels who should have better things to do than to lounge about gazing at the distant horizon. Phillips, Sir Reginald’s one legged man servant, stumps along behind pushing Sir Reginald in his bath chair at a suitably leisurely pace. “Faster.” Yells Sir Reginald at intervals “Get a move on. I shan’t be home in time for breakfast.” Followed almost immediately by “Careful you dolt.  You’re shaking me to bits.  We’re not on the Good Ship Nancy now, you know.”  This is a reference to Phillips’ wooden leg and heavily tattooed arms that Sir Reginald somehow attributes to a previous life as a pirate.  Not that he has ever actually enquired as to the truth of that assertion.  And Phillips has never said.

The bath chair suddenly shudders to a halt.  It is nose to nose with another bath chair.  The path is narrow at this point and there is no place to pass.  “Out of my way, you idiot.” Rages Sir Reginald.  The occupant of the second bath chair pulls back a tartan rug.  It is a woman. “Where are your manners, Sirrah?” She says crisply.

“Get out of my way, you idiot. Madam.” He fulminates with heavy irony.

“I shall not.”

“What!  What!! What did you say?”

“I said: I shall not get out of your way.”

“I was here first.”

“No you weren’t.  If anything I was.  See, I am much further along this section of path than you are.  It is your place to back up.”

“Back up!  Back up?  My place?  Who do you think you are talking to?”

I am talking to a very rude old man in a bath chair.  Now back up.”

“I shall do no such thing.  Carry on Phillips.”

Phillips is troubled by this but his master is insistent.

“I said carry on.  Get on with man. You’re not intimidated by a mere woman are you?”

At that moment the occupant of the second bath chair commands her pusher.

“Carry On Miss Pymm.  Let us not be put aside by these... these Men.”

Miss Pymm is a tall angular female of indeterminate years.  She is surprisingly athletic beneath her shapeless grey smock.  The two bath chairs clash and rear up like ancient dinosaur in some primordial swamp.  They retire.  They clash again. Wheels screech and clash. The bath chairs come to rest alongside each other.

“Madam, you are a complete nincompoop.  Now see what you have done.”

“And you Sir” says our lady “You are an arse.”

Sir Reginald’s eyes bulge and the veins stand out on his brow.  “Have you the slightest idea whom you are addressing?”

“No idea.” She says. “And I couldn’t care less.  All I know is that you are an arse.  And a very rude, egotistical one at that.”

At this point Sir Reginald loses all control.  He raises his stick carved with a serpent with its tail in its mouth and begins to belabour the opposing bath chair.  “I am Sir Reginald... Oww.” But the rest of it is lost as the woman in the bath chair begins belabouring his head and neck with her walking cane.  A rather intriguing object.  Malacca with an ornate silver handle.

“Madam.  Ow.  Desist.  Ow.”

Phillips the one legged manservant with tattooed arms and Miss Pymm the angular lady’s companion smile weakly at each other with raised eyebrows.  As the two protagonists in their charge begin to weaken they both about turn and return the way they came.

It is a rather subdued Sir Reginald whose bath chair snakes back towards Grand Marine Court. “Who was that damn woman?”  He hisses to Phillips.  “Who was she and what was she doing on the West Cliff?”

“I believe that was Dame Amelia Vole a leading member of the Women’s  International Socialist and Suffrage movement. I believe she owns an apartment in Tollard Court.”

“Damn communistic Female. Well she better not make another appearance whilst I’m out for my constitutional.  It’s a good job you made a tactical withdrawal when you did.  I might have beaten the dried up old biddy to a pulp.”

“Yes, Sir Reginald.” Says Phillips the one-legged manservant and they return to their abode ready for breakfast.  But for once Sir Reginald is surprisingly silent over the kedgeree.

Sir Reginald Delivers a Philippic

 

Sir Reginald despises politicians.  All politicians.  He finds Conservatives dangerously left wing and the rest of them are cloaked in some sort of red miasma of an unimaginable socialistic nightmare.  Sir Reginald’s politics are simple: Put all effort into maintaining the Empire.  Have no truck with foreigners.  Flog most of the lower orders regularly and increase pensions for people in his position.  And outlaw the practice of buying rounds in the club. And ban whistling.  And punish anyone or anything else that comes within his notice.  Ideally, he should be running the country himself except that he has no time for such quotidien activities.  All politicians who do not match up with these policies are nincompoops and namby pamby time wasters and should be flogged soundly themselves.

It is nine o’clock in the morning and Sir Reginald has been glancing at that Socialist Rag - The Daily Telegraph and reading of the government’s plans to provide welfare for orphans and widows.  And so when Phillips stumps into the breakfast room bearing the salver with the post, Sir Reginald is already incandescent with rage.  He snatches up the envelope and tears it open to find it is an announcement from the local council informing him of the forthcoming elections to that august body.  Sir Reginald’s demeanour becomes even more animated than it was before.  “Elections... bunch of utter incompetents and nincompoops.  And they want my approval.” He splutters.  “This country... going to hell in a handcart.  Magna Carta.  That’s where it all started going wrong.  Dangerous subversives.”  He is now coughing and choking so much that Phillips stumps a little closer ready to deliver CPR if required.  “How dare they... It is an outrage.”  He is now more or less incoherent and pauses to gasp for air.

In that split second of silence Phillips leans forward. “May I suggest, Sir Reginald, that if there is no one else suitably qualified to run for office that you do so yourself.”

“What!  What!! What!!!”  Sir Reginald suddenly finds his voice again and roars out “What!!!  Me join that rabble of self-serving ninnies and varlets?  That covey of slinking partridges.  That swill can of offal.  That... that... that...”  Sir Reginald suddenly seems short of suitable invective and splutters to a halt.

“I merely, wondered, Sir Reginald what  a man of your integrity and directness could achieve in the way of setting things to rights when there are only... rather lesser beings to oppose.  A seat on the local council might lead on to a seat in government of the country as a whole.  Of the Empire itself.”

“I’ve had enough of putting myself out for the good of the Empire. Years of service to King and the Empire. What did that ever achieve?”

Might I observe, Sir, that was merely as a ... how should it be put?.. as a servant of Empire.  A fine, dedicated, selfless, tireless, upright head of department, I may add. A great leader of men to be sure but always at the behest of other lesser mortals.  How much more fitting that you should be the master and they the servants...”

Sir Reginald has absolutely no doubts of his qualities as a leader of men so he curtly dismisses Phillips to bring him the required documents.

A week later sees Sir Reginald at the hustings.  Sir Reginald has bullied the wasters at the Club to sponsor him and put up the deposit and he is now ready for his maiden speech.  Phillips has ensured the stage is set with a table with a pile of cyclostyled leaflets and there are ribbons and streamers of such a dark blue as to be almost black.  Sir Reginald has quibbled about the necessity of such expense but Phillips has assured him that such favours are entirely necessary.  There is even a small bowl of very hard brittle toffee for the babies that are sure to be brought to him for some sort of laying on of hands.

Sir Reginald is helped from the bath chair onto the stage and begins to speak.  “This country is going to the dogs.”  He begins baldly with no preamble.  “It is being run by spineless nincompoops and ninnies. I intend to change all that. I intend to bring back the birch and... and...” He stumbles to a halt.  “Give the politicians what’s been coming for a long, long time...” For the first time he surveys the hall.  His audience consists of an elderly man in a stained cardigan.  An elderly woman with an ear trumpet and a middle aged ragamuffin in overalls.  A small girl with pigtails sits in the back row swinging her legs and sucking a lollipop in an extremely annoying manner. “You.” The child looks up. “Yes you.”  He booms.  “Stand up when I speak to you.  You have no right to be here.”

“Yes she does” says the workman with the overalls.

“What!  What!!”  An apoplectic pallor begins to well up in Sir Reginald’s cheeks.

“She’s my daughter.  She’s waiting for me.”  The man slouches back on his chair.

“Well you’ve no right to be here.  You, you... dunderhead you.  This meeting isn’t for the like of you.  We don’t need you.”

“Oh? Who is it for then? I thought this was an election meeting.”

“You dare to question me?  You dare to interrogate your betters?  You... you... Socialist.”

“All right.  I’m not good enough for you, so who is good enough?”

“Well, well...”  Sir Reginald swings his glare round the hall. “Them.  I mean those old people.  They must have enough sense to vote for me.”

“Them?” says the workman in a surly manner.”That is my Mum and Dad.  We’re all just waiting for you to finish so that I can lock up and we can all go out and get some supper.”

“Why you...  You nincompoops.”  And Sir Reginald falls off the edge of the stage into the arms of Phillips who places him gently into the bath chair.

“Give me those leaflets.”  Phillips dutifully fetches the small pile from the table on the stage.  Sir Reginald begins to tear them.  But the pile of sheets will not tear. Growing wilder and wilder Sir Reginald gnaws at them with his teeth.  Leaflet confetti surrounds him as Phillips the one legged manservant wheels him home to supper.