The Trouble with Guessing at a Recipe
…and other lessons from the Tarragon Playwrights' Unit.
Last week I shared a story that began in 2006, all about assuming another artist thought I was a hack.
Today I’m diving into the vaults again to share another paradigm-shifting experience.
In 2011, ten years ago, I was invited to be part of the Tarragon Theatre’s playwrights’ unit – a yearlong programme run by Toronto’s “playwright’s theatre”. Many of my favourite Canadian playwrights had been part of the unit and everyone knew it was where the theatre looked for shows and talent to foster and present.
2011 was a huge year in my professional life. I was 25 and living in Toronto.
In January I opened my first solo show, OH MY IRMA, at Theatre Passe Muraille, then I took off to Europe for the first time on my own – just for fun, and had my mind blown by the live-art scene in London and just about every facet of Berlin.
That April, I was in a show at Buddies in Bad Times with Gavin Crawford and Gil Garrett. I spent the summer in Blyth and the autumn in Peterborough acting in plays I performed OH MY IRMA at world’s largest solo show festival in NYC, winning “best production”. And I starred in an outdoor winter theatre show, playing the Virgin Mary.
Alongside all that acting and darting around, I was also part of this prestigious playwrights’ unit, trying to write an ensemble show about a psychotherapy commune in the 1970s.
I had written a 9-character play in theatre school, which overwhelmed me so much that I decided to make a solo show after that.
I’d relied wholly on instinct to create OH MY IRMA, which in some ways is easier for a solo show because you’re only managing one storyline, and I could use on my actor skills to convey things that weren’t in the text itself.
But an ensemble show – I had no clue. I had no idea how to write a play.
I knew how to do research and how use it to explore characters and write dialogue and scenes that were interesting and funny. But I was totally out of my depth when it came to structuring a story. I was a trained actor. I had no formal training as a writer.
And while the AD and dramaturge of the theatre asked questions like, “What’s your inciting incident?” and “Where’s the crisis point?” I wrote the questions down without knowing what they meant. And when they made suggestions about how I could improve the script, I dutifully implemented them, hungry for their approval.
I didn’t understand at the time, that if I learned a bit more about story structure then I’d be in a much better position to create the show I wanted to … and a show they might have been interested in developing further.
Instead, I spent a year “guessing at a recipe”, trying to take their notes on board and letting the show I wanted to make become something I didn’t like and the theatre didn’t like either.
When I started writing this blog. I thought there was ONE lesson that I’d taken from that experience, but in fact there are THREE.
The first is: Don’t Guess at a Recipe – Create work to serve your own tastes and the right partners will find you!
Secondly, my biggest regret as a writer is not learning about story structure earlier. I thought it would dampen my creativity, but the foundation and framework are simply a set of tools and skills that has allowed me to strengthen my work.
And finally, I was too busy – too stretched – and I didn’t give myself enough time to work on the script over the course of the year. I did panic writes in the week leading up to a deadline.
I didn’t know much about my process then, but now I know that my writing takes time – and it takes a consistent daily routine – chipping away for a couple hours every day over longer periods of time, rather than trying for a last-minute miracle.
If you too have blamed yourself for guessing at a recipe, or not knowing how to organise your time better, or regretted learning about story structure for example, as my Dad says, “Be kind to yourself about the things you didn’t know”. And if you haven’t, please learn from my mistakes:
Don’t guess at a recipe
Educate yourself on the nuts and bolts of a form
Take your time – work slow and steady (not sloppy and fast)
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