Addendum

Question: Is the initial producer part of the creation or the reaction?

I said 'Creation', but I want to be clear because I feel like a lot of people misunderstand this in our world. From the point of view of a show, a new musical, the actual show itself, the writer creates and everything that comes after that is a reaction to that creation.

But if a new show is lucky enough to start its life with a production already written into its future, then everyone on that production is... I guess co-creating is a good way to put it.

The whole team is creating this specific production, each person playing their individual role. But the show itself, the actual storytelling part: that was created by the writer/s, and everything else is interpretation of that initial creation.

Complex, isn't it?

The Producer and The Writer

My lovely friend and fellow writer Paul Alexander Boyd asked some questions that I’ve only just had time to respond to. So here are my answers, Paul – I’ve chopped your questions into segments.


Question: What is the writer's responsibility to the commissioning producer?

First and foremost, to do what they’re commissioned to do, which is write a show on an agreed subject, according to various agreed specifications that probably include the size and style of the intended final production.

This usually involves providing a series of completed drafts of script and score by certain dates that have been previously agreed by the producer and writer based upon the producer’s reasonable window of opportunity and the writer’s reasonable writing-time requirement, which drafts are then developed in previously agreed ways until the intended final stage is reached, whatever that may be.

And that’s it.


Question: How does the producer's expectation hamper the writer's freedom to tell a story using the writer's own sources, experiences, and encounters?

It doesn’t.

Presumably, a producer has hired a writer whose work they admire, to write about a subject they both like. Thereafter, if the producer has any expectations other than the fact that this good writer will tell this good story in a good way, then the producer needs to hire another writer or get this one to tell another story. Or the writer needs to tell the producer that they can’t find their way into the story after all, and all parties should amicably part ways.

More than that, it’s actually impossible for one person’s expectations to hamper another person’s freedom to tell a story in their own voice. I mean, short of dictating the actual dialogue to a writer, no matter how oppressively you try to influence their writing, what comes out of their pen will always be in their voice. It may be in their voice-which-is-reacting-to-oppression, but it’s still their voice because they never stop being a person.

That’s the glorious thing about being a writer. This thing we call ‘voice’ enables the process of research, because the writer will always make their own personal selection from those libraries full of books, those endless websites, those rooms full of improvising actors. No-one else will ever make the same exact selections because everyone’s life experiences are different, and that’s where our ‘voice’ comes from.

The ‘voice’ enables collaboration, because every writer has a unique contribution to make to the work, and no two collaborations are ever the same, either between collaborators, or between the team and the specific project. Or even the same project, years later.

The ‘voice’ enables critique, because the writer is able to choose what feedback to use, and what to disregard.

This thing called ‘voice’ is what makes us who we are as artists. People can try to influence it, yes, but only if we let that influence in. Hamper? No. Not without holding a gun to your head and telling you to take dictation.

But if you’d asked me whether a producer’s expectations can affect a writer’s storytelling freedom… yes, and that can be a great thing.

My producer for Mort expects that I will write him a show that caters for 35 – 40 young people, which can be produced on a minimal budget with very little set, and allows for student musicians to play in the band. All of these things affect my storytelling freedom. Why, this very evening I had to forget about the idea of beheading a General onstage and then giving his headless ghost a small song. (I have, however, kept in the scene that takes place on the flying horse.)

If a producer wants to be involved in the actual process of writing, then they want to be a writer/producer, and that is a different collaborative relationship. One to which I would not agree, since it’s my personal desire to work with producers who can view the show with the objective distance and producer’s-eye experience that I find almost impossible to have while I’m subjectively focused on writing something.


Question: Does a commissioning producer have any more influence because they are involved from the outset of a piece than the dramaturgs or directors who may come on board later in the process?

More influence, in what sense? The longer someone works on a project, the more influence they have on it, by simple deed of there being time to do more. So yes, if a producer is involved from the outset, it is possible for them to have more influence if that particular collaborative relationship works in that way.

The producer for Legacy was involved from the very start, and had very little involvement in the writing process. YMT also has very little involvement, and I very much appreciate that kind of trust.

On the other hand, I know that YMT will come along to interim readings we do with friends, and are interested in what’s going on. I also very much appreciate that kind of support.

Dramaturgs, and directors-who-are-doing-dramaturgy, can be involved right from the start too, as with Clive Paget on Mort, and with David Gilmore on Legacy, and also with all of my kids’ shows. Dramaturgy is an invaluable resource for a writer, but again, it’s a resource from which the writer can choose which advice to consider, and which to disregard.

It is rumoured that Mr Mackintosh likes to get his hands a bit dirty in the writing room. I’m quite sure I’d be intimidated into taking on board some of his suggestions – and possibly all of them, whether I agreed with them or not – but if I did, that would still be my choice. I’d be an idiot to have made changes I didn’t agree with, but it would have been my choice. I could have said no, at which point he would probably break the contract and tell me to fuck off, but it would still have been my choice. I’m the writer, and Mr M is a resource of options for me, like any other.

It’s a really important thing for writers to know: the writer chooses what goes into a piece, and what stays out. Those choices are made by who we are as people – this writer’s ‘voice’ is nothing more ethereal or mystical than just who we are as individual people.

For example:

I wrote a song for Death today. At the top of act two, he’s sitting in a bar getting drunk – well, trying out the experience of technically drinking alcohol and slurring your words. He sings a barbershop blues (with a few wizards who really are drunk).

Obviously, there’s comedy in that scenario, and it’s a light-hearted lyric about being sad because he has no friends, and no woman, and no skin. But it is based on truth, and somewhere beneath that light-hearted song lies my terrific fear of dying, the fact that I’m a control freak who doesn’t drink because it means being out of control, and my desperate loneliness as a writer who must take sole responsibility for every word she places in the mouth of a character.

I told my composer this the other day, when we were talking about what the song should be about. I don’t often talk him that far into my process, but this time I was feeling sorry for myself so I did. He went very quiet for a while, then said, “I thought this was going to be a comedy song?”

It’s in the novel that Death gets drunk in this bar. There’s even a reference to the blues. Many other writers doing a musical adaptation of this novel would probably choose to have Death sing the blues at this point in the show. But they wouldn’t write the exact lyric I have written based on those things I now wish I hadn’t written about here, and am studiously trying to not to go back and delete.

You know, I think actors are the most amazing people. I mean, they’re incredibly brave to play out in public the dark and awful secrets that I can barely write in my blog without twitching; the things I always slide in under my writing for them to use as subtext. Actors will stand up in front of me with material that is absolutely unknown to them, and bare their souls over and over again as I say, “Try it another way? Another?” without so much as a “Why didn’t you like the first one I did?” I love actors. I love them. Love, admire, and love.

But at the end of the day, even with a room full of Judi Denches and Laurence Oliviers, I still make my choices based on what I think is right, not on what they think is right, because the work is still mine until it finishes development. Once it’s in print, then anyone can pretty much play, direct or produce it any way they like. Just don’t tell me about it.


Question: Is the initial producer part of the creation or the reaction?

Creation. They collaborate as producer, and that’s good. (Someone sensible needs to sort out the money.) Writers collaborate as writers. Directors as directors, and so on. That’s not to say one person can never do two jobs. I just don’t think they can ever be actively doing both jobs at the same exact time. Plus, I find perfecting the writing so fucking challenging that I wouldn’t want to take on another job, thanks very much.