Mark Ravenhill is one of our greatest living theatre makers. I claim this in part because of the length of his writing career, 25 years+ and still going strong, and in part because of the variety of form and type of work. His work has extended into directing and performing. Mark will be co-artistic director (with Hannah Price) of the King’s Head Theatre. He has outlined plans to portray stories that would fly under the rainbow flag (a reference to the multitude types of queer stories out there). You can (and should) follow him on twitter here.
Podcast notes
Mark articulates why representation now for all kinds of stories that would fly under the rainbow flag is important and sketches out his vision as co-artistic director. We discuss the differences between German and British theatre cultures. The surprising lack of influence from visual art on British theatre (compared to eg German theatre or many other kinds of theatre).
The satisfaction of bringing a popular story, like David Walliams’ Boy in the Dress to a wider (out of London) audience. We chat about how representative (or not) theatre is touching on working class and outside of London audiences, if right wing playwrights are missing considering the British people keep returning right leaning governments; and how, of course, the landscape of public views and opinion is much more complicated than that.
The importance of listening in a world where many people are defending their right to speak (and many of those defenders having never been without that right to speak) - making space to listen to other voices.
Mark’s curiosity and love of life-long learning and what ballet has taught him. The differences and similarities in how he approached his recent biographical work about his mother, father and himself.
We play over-rated/under-rated and Mark rates:
Automatic writing
Speaking in verse all day
Dressing up or outside in techniques
Chekhov and non-English theatre
Theatre Games
(Only one of these is overrated)
We discuss the importance of Keith Johnston’s book Improv (note my podcast with Lee Simpson also discuss Keith’s work) and how Mark has used the exercises in the book.
I ask Mark, what question theatre should be asking today.
Mark finishes with advice to creatives on not being swayed too much by others (well-intentioned or not) advice.
Podcast and transcript below, video above. Podcast links:
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh
Listen below:
Transcript (unedited, typoes etc. likely), Mark Ravenhill on making theatre, stories of the rainbow flag and the responsibility of listening.
Contents
01:23 Representation of queer stories
11:25 German Theatre culture
20:00 Writing across many forms
23:35 On curiosity and learning new things
28:35 Useful hearing a play, not workshopping
32:59 Autobiographical writing
37:05 Learning ballet
40:10 On political theatre, political energy
45:02 Theatre representative of the country
54:45 Visual art (not) influencing theatre
57:55 Conflict on right to offend
1:02:57 Overrated/Underrated
1:11:59 What should theatre be asking now?
1:19:15 Advice for creators
1:24:59 What a productive day looks like
1:30:12 On finding identity
Ben Yeoh [00:03]: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be chatting with Mark Ravenhill. Mark, I believe, is one of our greatest living theatre-makers, and has recently been appointed Co-artistic Director of the King's Head Theatre. Mark, welcome.
Mark Ravenhill [00:16]: Thank you very much. Hi!
Ben Yeoh [00:17]: Hey, so I have to confess, I don't think I know as much about queer theatre as I would like, or perhaps better, all the stories which would be placed under the rainbow flag. But I guess looking back on a lot of British theatre programming over the years, I kind of feel like my opportunity to learn about these stories has been relatively limited and I think you've announced an ambition to better represent these stories. I was wondering whether you could tell me what you're thinking about and why and what you hope to achieve and do.
Mark Ravenhill [00:48]: Yes, I think in the last 15-20 years or so there's been quite an absence of those stories, particularly on the big stages. And there was quite a flurry of activity in the 80s and 90s. And when we think of representation, I think maybe naively, we think once you've made a step forward, you can't take a step back. But I think in some ways, gay stories, and because historically when it happened, they do tend to be dominated by a sort of white male gay stories. But they became quite fashionable in the theatre in the late 80s, and into the 90s, and I am probably a beneficiary of that. But you just sort of assume that once those voices are there and those stories are being told that somehow that's going to continue. And then I think there was a real sense of fun, fashion changing and for a young person arriving in London, where I'm thinking of myself arriving in London, obviously but I think the situation pertains to quite a lot of the country or the rest of the country.
There was suddenly an absence of those stories, and I think the gatekeepers, if we call them that, had sort of moved on and found that all a bit unfashionable. But I think now, particularly that we've got a much wider definition and sometimes, we use this great long LGBTQ plus or even add in other letters, and sometimes squeeze that down to queer. But now we've got a much more of a wider sense of those identities, maybe then, lots of those plays of the 80s and 90s. … that were of non-binary things, and gender-fluid things and trans people and a whole sort of spectrum, as you said, this sort of rainbow flag that there were so many stories there to be told, and so much to explore that I think it's time to come back with that agenda and it's a different agenda from the 80s and 90s. It's a much broader, more diverse, more sort of fluid definition, so it's always exciting when you feel that there are stories that have never been heard before, and experiences that haven't been heard on a stage and I've always been interested in reaching out to the big stages as well.
So I think there's a lot of valid work done when a community speaks to itself but I'm also excited about the possibilities when that community takes their works on to bigger stages and all sorts of people come and experience that work. And I think we're seeing some major revivals of things like angels in America and the normal heart but obviously, they’re American and they're from a few decades ago. So I think there's a sense that somewhere like the Nationals are looking for those biggest stories, and at the moment are programming those great plays and revivals of those great plays, but very exciting to incubate a group of artists that could go on and tell stories on those big stages.
Ben Yeoh [04:09]: So I guess you're becoming a gatekeeper now yourself. Are you hoping to both, I guess, catalyse these types of stories, but also act as a kind of platform to go on to larger stages? Like you say, at the National because sometimes they require a sort of a guest feeder or some people who are more sensitive to this wider range of stories where the kind of big institutional lethargy of some of the large institutions are not so set up to finding these types of stories.
Mark Ravenhill [04:39]: Yes, I don't think it's necessarily just been the case of the gatekeepers I think maybe a lot of queer artists didn't find playwriting that interesting at this very stage and a lot of the energies went into performance art and cabaret and put formatives all sorts of other things. I think maybe, you know, it wasn't all infected from outside, I think for whatever reason, sort of chicken-egg thing, lots of jazz artists were interested in other things other than writing plays. So sometimes it's even just saying to somebody, yes, it's great that you're making all this other work but maybe think about also producing a written text. And it's my aspiration, that some of those artists would go on to want to write for those bigger stages and claim their place in somewhere like the National but some of those artists might not want to I mean there's a completely [Inaudible 0:05:38] other line up of what people say.
I want to speak to my community and I want to do it in spaces within that community and that's a completely legitimate thing. I think I'm just there to say when we're developing work, but also think about maybe do you want to be speaking to a wider audience? Do you want to be in the big institutions or the West End? And how much of your voice can you carry through into those big spaces? But lots of artists might say, it doesn't interest me, I don't want to do that.
Ben Yeoh [06:16]: Do you think you might like to work with a recurring set of creators and artists, as well as bringing in sort of new artists and things like that or will it be more sort of, I guess, traditionally thought of as bringing in new programming, to kind of space in work?
Mark Ravenhill [06:32]: That's always the balance to be struck when you're running any sort of theatre or maybe to other organisations. All I know about my whole life is theatre but you want to build up relationships, to have a sort of family of people who return so that there's an ongoing dialogue. But you also want to refresh that and bring in new voices. So I think, getting that balance right between an ongoing conversation with a group of artists, and bringing in people who are in a new year as well. That's always one of the things on the dashboard that you're keeping an eye on, I think.
Ben Yeoh [07:12]: Great. So, yes, I think that makes a lot of sense and I consider you a theatre maker and I think you said that to yourself as well and obviously, a lot of your artistic practices around the writing and the writing of a play. And some of it, though, is about the work shopping, also the people, and the collaborative theatre-making. Do you view your work also in this way and do you think that kind of importance of that theatre-making piece where although you might have a writing text or writer, a centre, or maybe even not, that collaborative aspect of theatre is something that you'd hope to do more of or considering your work?
Mark Ravenhill [07:51]: Yes, it took me a long time to reconcile myself to the fact that I was going to be defined as a playwright because I just didn't want to start it making up plays in my bedroom, I didn't know there were different things, I thought you did everything. So I made the costumes, made the sets, made up the words, acted it out, knocked on the neighbor's doors, and got them to come out and watch it. So yes, I think in historically a rather bigger scale than just me and my bedroom, but historically, there hasn't been such a strict division has probably been at its strictest in the sort of last century and getting stricter that as we squeeze out things like active managers and stuff like that; they got an actor or writer or director or designer.
And that's quite a sort of anomaly rarely in the history of theatre that those things are so divided. So I found that the thing that sort of carried me the furthest was my writing and maybe that is a bit of it that I'm best at, or I've got the best start. But yes, it's fantastic that my writing has carried me so far, I'm very lucky to have worked with people that have worked and have the work produced that I have, but there is always part of me that slightly wrestles against that and things, but I want to be a part of the whole process of making theatre.
Ben Yeoh [09:38]: You directed and I think you've even performed as well; I don't think you've gone quite as far as to what we might call live art but almost everything within the performative.
Mark Ravenhill [09:48]: Yes, live art performance; they did a sort of performance piece in Berlin at the nightclub Bergheim with a trans DJ and sort of found text and to a group of people, mostly drunk and on drugs, I think about two o'clock in the morning.
Ben Yeoh [10:07]: Live art. So that was sort of Berlin culture. Well, now that you brought up Germany, so you've done quite a lot of work in Germany and your work has been there, and you've been quite close to some German artistic practice. I was wondering whether you could comment on British theatre or what British theatre could learn from the German ways of doing things? I guess there's a kind of their process, they can have longer rehearsal periods from what I can tell, and perhaps a more collaborative way of working, and maybe also a little bit of their funding because their funding allows that or sort of the organizational part. Do you think there's much that British theatre can learn or is it just too different for such to happen?
Mark Ravenhill [10:50]: It's such a different way. Everything about it is so different and I think that's one of the things that's so fascinating about theatre is that's whatever it is, an hour and a half on a plane journey. And yet the whole sense of what theatre is, how it functions is, it's so different that in this globalized world where lots of other areas of life will be pretty much the same from one European country to another, and maybe even from one continent to another, that the whole notion of what theatre is, can vary from country to country. So I think the whole central jam idea of why the theatre is there is the amount of money that they give it. Everything about it is so different. That I think there's not so much we can just copy. I think Jim theatre became quite fashionable in the last sort of 10 15 years and so you see productions in London where director and designer have spent a weekend in Berlin, and seen work that primarily the sharpener and some of the aesthetic is copied but that's very much just like copying a little corner of the packaging of the pie. So yes, there are a few little design elements that are sort of copied, and maybe a little attempt to copy some of that acting style but I think it's, without that history, without that culture. I think what you have to admire is just the centrality of theatre in German culture and the thoroughness with which it's made and reinvestigate that sensuality and thoroughness in terms of our history and our culture. I don't think it's that productive just to copy the sort of superficial layer of the aesthetic.
Ben Yeoh [13:03]: Yes, I think I'd have to agree, I've even seen it in America. I know a little bit about some of those and that you can yes, as you said, copy some of the surface things but that's kind of just the surface element of the kind of a long either body of work, or historical tradition, or a way of working if you can't [cross-talking0:13:24].
Mark Ravenhill [13:25]: It's primarily the Ostermeier productions because they've traveled so widely. You go to Australia, lots of Australian theatres are influenced by that; quite influence on American Theatre now as well. And even Ostermeier is not typical of German theatre, in some ways, is a bit of an outlier in German theatre. He's a bit more sort of realism and texts and stuff than a lot of, it's not anywhere near as sort of postmodern deconstruction and stuff as the majority of German theatre. So it's nice in a way because I think he's fantastic, his work is fantastic, he's sort of almost thought of as German theatre for the rest of the world. But in Germany, he's considered to be quite...
Ben Yeoh [14:14]: Quite different.
Mark Ravenhill [14:15]: Yes.
Ben Yeoh [14:17]: And do you think, I guess we can't learn from it necessarily but as you say, because of the theatre funding, I guess it's mostly state funding but quite well-funded or at least well-funded, at least from where I see British theatre. And I reckon that can't be replicated, I guess but do you think that's at the core of some of why Germans and pasta history and everything but it gives them that ability to do that? Or I guess you have other problems sometimes when you're very state-directed or … always have to rely on another source of funding, typically not just box office and that causes kind of a set of problems and challenges in itself.
Mark Ravenhill [14:56]: Yes, the German theatre comes out of Germany unifying from all those tiny little states and every Jew in every court wants to have its theatre. And quite often, well, and I think always look sort of funded by the local prince or the local Jew, was it like 70 states or something, all those little principalities. So that structure is still in place and the status sort of replaced the funding of the duke or the product is very simplified. But it does mean there's very little commercial theatre and I think there is something healthy that comes from the dialogue between subsidized theatre and commercial theatre in the UK.
There often is a sense of like, sort of civic duty of going to the theatre in Germany and you can sort of see people start to behave differently and as they get closer and closer to the show coming down, putting on their special art faces and behaving in a special art way, and it can be a bit deadening sometimes. So I think an English audience tends to just carry on behaving pretty much like they would at a friend's house or in the pub or whatever, when often in the theatre and I'm not saying one thing is better than the other but they're different. And I think there are some benefits to the English, it is just sort of ease and lack of a special art head but this is something with a sort of reverence.
Ben Yeoh [16:31]: Does Germany have the equivalent of a pantomime or something like that?
Mark Ravenhill [16:34]: Oh, goodness!
Ben Yeoh [16:35]: No, I didn't think so.
Mark Ravenhill [16:39]: I don't think… o, you wouldn't have anything. If anybody from Germany can...
Ben Yeoh [16:48]: Yes, maybe they are a bit traditional, we don't know about.
Mark Ravenhill [16:54]: So it's impossible to understand what pantomime is, I think if you're outside of the UK, there's some great, like, cabaret stuff in Berlin. And there is a whole other scene outside of the subsidize, these are in different cities…
Ben Yeoh [17:11]: Yes. Well, I don't know, my perception is they don't have as much corporate sponsorship.
Mark Ravenhill [17:19]: Hardly any, I think. I think that would be considered why, if something is so revered, and so central to the life of the city and the civic process, so sort of quite close to sort of Greek ideal ever being part of the civic life of the community. You wouldn't want to put that together with corporate money. A bit wider, more in some of the other bits of the German-speaking world I think, Australia is more sort of relaxed about that, his impression, I guess, but if anybody there might be people, there will be people who will know a lot more about this. And if they're listening to this, then I'm very happy to be corrected because I'm speaking, generalization is.
Ben Yeoh [18:03]: Yes, I kind of mentioned it, because actually, that's one of the things I think which has changed over my sort of British theatre observation is that corporate money over the years has become a stronger force and that's partly because there's been less state funding. So you need money to make contact and I do think that has, I can't quite cut my finger on it, but I do think it has colored not necessarily, saying whether it's a bad or good color, people can debate that but has colored the kind of work which has come on to some degree.
Mark Ravenhill [18:36]: Yes, I guess it must have been, it's hard to unpick it and know how it has. And I think it's a mix. Yes. I don't know what effect it's had but it must have had some, yes.
Ben Yeoh [18:52]: And you've written across many forms, sort of a typical sort of straight play, but you've done opera, you've done musicals, you've done I guess what people might consider high art and low art forms. And it strikes me [cross-talking 19:09]. So always kind of practicing and learn, and do you think that's core to kind of how you see your creativity as opposed to like, I'm just going to write this type of thing, or I guess this is a kind of form function, how you've written kind of so widely across so many forms?
Mark Ravenhill [19:28]: Yes, I think, I was 30 when I had my first play produced, which isn't so hard, but in terms of having your first play producers a little bit older than some people but I've been working in theatre for nearly a decade by then. So, I could sort of see that lots of people's playwriting careers were for many people, just one play, and then they would disappear off.
Ben Yeoh [19:54]: Wonder at the Royal Court and you never hear from them again.
Mark Ravenhill [19:56]: Normally, it's TV development and often make quite good living for 2030 years after that, maybe even something not being made, but being in TV and film, script development, and sometimes a second play, sometimes a third play, but you know, only a tiny handful, anything after third play. And I'd loved theatre since I was one, and wanted to make theatre since I could remember. So I think it was quite clear from the beginning now that I'd managed to get something on and get it on, I still think the best sort of beginning for a career has been first played at the Royal Court. I got my foot in the door, I wasn't going to take it out, I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life.
So I think I was pretty conscious of pacing myself and thinking, okay, got my foot in the door at 30, I'm not going to let them take it out until I'm at least 80 so that's 50 years. So pacing myself and trying different forms and working in different relationships, sometimes being more of a collaborator, sometimes being the servant of a much bigger sort of project or something very solely authored right down to just writing my monologue and performing it there all the different permutations of how you could be as a writer, making a piece of live theatre would just sort of pace me through that time, but also keep on making me a question and learn. So, I'm not sure I could have articulated it exactly like that when I very first started, but I had that instinct. And I searched around for those collaborations and different possibilities because I think there's probably only so many original authored plays in you, there's probably not unless you're extraordinary, there's probably not 50 of them, it's probably one every year that you could write for 50 years.
Ben Yeoh [22:04]: Even Shakespeare didn't manage 50.
Mark Ravenhill [22:11]: But he's dead. I'm older than Shakespeare when he dies.
Ben Yeoh [22:15]: … that's one thing I think of your brilliance is in this multi-decade career across many different forms. And then this aspect of how I would put it is almost a lifelong learning aspect, in the beginning, learning about operas, but then you more recently, we can talk about even things sort of slightly askance, like learning ballet, but learning poetry thinking about philosophy. And I'm always interested in creative artists who have this lifelong learning, maybe, obviously deepen their own, say, core art but have all of these adjacent arts, but some of them go very deep, is that been important to you? And what have you learned that just enriches your creative process? Did it just feel like your curiosity just takes you down that path? And you kind of say,
Mark Ravenhill [23:05]: Yes, I think it's largely a curiosity. When I went to university for the first time I had access to a huge library, rather than just your sort of local library, with the sort of large print books with a pension and that entire sort of stuff. When I had access to a proper big library at Bristol, I could never just stick to anything that was on a syllabus or a course. So that was one of the things I discovered there, like an aging team just wandering through the stacks and getting drawn one day to maybe reading about philosophy or history or economics or anything. So I did quite a lot of that at university, just sort of almost like spin the wheel and find out as a way it's like not doing the work but there's to do so. So it was either in the library doing that, or in the Student Union, making plays where we just put on our productions, there was a separate from any study.
So, I didn't do very much of anything that was on the syllabus, but I did do half my time doing this sort of random reading and half the time practically putting on plays with my peers. So, I think it just sort of continued that practice, I just that curiosity so, just over the years, I still do the same if I go into a library or go into falls or whatever, is just have a wander around and maybe get drawn to an economics work or I mean, not heavy economics, but sort of pop economics or you know how the whole part of these books I'm talking about. Yes, and I think probably that does feed to the playwriting. I don't think it can certainly hurt to be thinking about those things, I think to be a bit more of a rounded person, because in the last 30 years, English education has become a very national curriculum, and everything is driven. So, education has become more and more about not looking off the path and just focusing on exactly the things that you've been examining needs to take to pass you.
I was just a little bit before that time so there's still a little bit of space and education. So be able to look off the path and I think that that, to me, is really important. So, I think if you've got a sort of national curriculum, things very much in your blood, there's a danger that you just carry that through the rest of your life. So have you set yourself the task of being a playwright, all you do is at the beginning you could move between different playwriting groups, reading each other's plays, and reading plays that are no older than the ones that have been published in the last five years and it becomes quite a sort of inward-looking sort of circle so?
Ben Yeoh [26:15]: The questions become quite narrow, one with circular.
Mark Ravenhill [26:19]: Yes. And often without any reference to contemporary literature or contemporary visual arts, that's nothing German theatre is very good at its very ofay with what's happening in contemporary visual arts. We don't tend to have much of a crossover in our faces unless it's very much sort of performance, we don't tend to have much of course there is between what's happening in contemporary visual art and theatre. So it just makes life more pleasurable as well, to have a slight sort of radio for sort of Melvyn Bragg sort of attitude to the world where you're just sort of, finding out little bits of interesting stuff about the latest developments in whatever.
Ben Yeoh [26:23]: Well-read enough, yes. I feel it infuses your work, I guess that raises two things for me one was on the visual art point you commented on but the second, I guess, was the process because it seems to me that you do enough reading and research around whatever you're interested in but you don't go to the nth degree. And then you will write your piece or your draft, and then you have a very important kind of, I guess, either rehearsal or work shopping period that you do, and I'm interested in, I guess, all of us working from home for this period. Is that kind of work shopping in-person element? I guess you can sort of continue just writing your drafts and now it's reopened. Has that been a difficult missing element? And have I miss portrayed, a very surface outline of having how you'd like to work in that in person, but that we've had at the moment, has that been a difficult missing part for you?
Mark Ravenhill [28:05]: Yes, I haven't found, extensive work shopping that useful, I think unless you're joining a company to sort of with a different position as a writer, sort of, serve, sometimes you place yourself sort of lower down the hierarchy if you like, and you're sort of creating material for a company went away, the directors and advisors, whatever more important, I've seen a couple of times put myself in that situation. But if I'm writing a play, which is my play, I sometimes found workshops that just take that time when you could be [cross-talking 28:50], getting the play better and lots of voices being added in that you somehow then feel a bit obligated to try and satisfy them and go up some blind alleys doing that.
What is useful is to hear a play out loud, that's normally all I need, it jumps off straight away, where the play comes to life and where the play is treading water or where the play just hits the deck. So I've been very lucky during the lockdown because we set up a group of friends with whom I was in university. We've been doing online, Saturday night zoom readings of entirely new work so all the stuff that I've been working on, I've had a chance to hear over the last well coming up for 18 months now, isn't it? And we've read other writers' work and sometimes I've mentored young writers and we've read their work and stuff but the process of any time I want to be able to hear what I've read has been made possible during the lockdown and then we have a nice chat about it afterward. And because they've all gone off into the world and become doctors and social workers and historians and all sorts of things, and there's normally somebody, wherever I've written about who knows a lot more about it than me.
So, it's been useful reading it with a group of people, we're all in university together and took plays together but inevitably most people have gone off and done different stuff, loads of interesting different stuff. So, it's useful to read your play with people…
Ben Yeoh [30:41]: Yes, as opposed to a narrow dramaturg, or something like that.
Mark Ravenhill [30:45]: Who can read them because they're very literate people and they did some University acting? So the reason well, but then actually, they've also got this huge sort of hive mind with pretty much know everything about everything so I've been able to feed off that as well as I don't know the thing with whatever might be radiotherapy as you wouldn't do that you would do or whatever so, yes, that's been amazing.
Ben Yeoh [31:09]: Yes, I currently see on that took me about I feel like I'm not sure if you'd recall, but the only time I've sort of been forced on to the London stage, I say all the time, I got a couple of more pieces of recent was a rehearsed reading for an early version of the cut, where I think I was assisting John Tiffany. And it was that and I played Geeta, who thankfully had no lines in the scene that I had or the whole reading, but the learning process, just sitting in a rehearsal room, even for me, there was a kind of fledgling creative, was extremely informative, both listening, and then discussion, and you're enjoying and handing, and occasionally, observational that, but that working was important for sort of alive feedback piece.
Mark Ravenhill [31:59]: Yes.
Ben Yeoh [31:59]: So you've written a kind of very personal piece recently addressing sort of memory, dementia, your mother's story, but partly yours and your father's. And also that form of work seems to, very much represent the kind of story and the like, of that, was being kind of almost a memoir type of piece. Did you approach that differently? And, again, I guess there is learning ballet, and all of that, how is that for you?
Mark Ravenhill [32:31]: I've never written anything anywhere near as sort of autobiographical as that. I hadn't thought that's what I wanted to do and I was quite surprised at the beginning of my career, the shopping and fucking I sort of gradually came to realize that lots of people were assuming people do the first play that it was autobiographical. And then I thought, well, that makes me slightly more dangerous than I have them but it was quite weird to realize that people thought, you must have written your life down in shopping and fucking, which was, there's some emotional truth in there, I'm sure that you draw on, but my life is nothing like any of those characters. And I certainly didn't start off wanting to write about my life but then, you know, eventually, I got to the stage where I thought, well, you've never written anything autobiographical.
So, you should do that because maybe there's some avoidance going on there or something and I thought, well, I'm going to do it, that I'm going to do it, I'm not going to slightly change the names or slightly change the slide. If everybody's going to have the real names, and the real place names and everything and I'll be as true as I can, you have to compress things to fit them into a time frame, there's some stuff where you had to sort of change things a bit, to make them A, to fit into a 90-minute, minute play but as little as possible I tried to do that. So, once I'd made that decision, to just be that autobiographical, then it was pretty much the same process as writing a pain factor was a little bit of a shortcut there because you sort of knew these characters in this world and this story inside out. So, then crafting things out of them, and then crafting a structure out of them was still a job of work but it was pretty much the same job of workers, if I'd invented characters and story and stuff that just would have taken me that bit longer to, I guess, to imagine fictional things.
So, it goes through this sort of process of being shaped, and by the time it comes out, although it's drawn on the truth, it starts to sort of have a life of its own so, I never let things happen that didn't happen in real life. But sometimes you take two or three events, compress them, make them happen on one day when they would have been spread out over a couple of years, or do all these little things. So I'm sure in the end, it comes out becoming a sort of parallel universe event but drawing as much as I could on the truth, we all remember things differently. So my dad claims not to remember some of the things that were in the play where I remember them very clearly and so you have to go, well, some of this filter through my memory, and then other stuff is filtered through stuff my mum told me, I wasn't there for stuff that happens before I was born. So it's often her version of things so she remembered it in one way so, in some ways, it's just a record of different people's memories and there, they can be quite inaccurate.
Ben Yeoh [36:00]: Storify it, I was speaking a couple of weeks ago to Lee Simpson, who has this idea that the further back in history you go, we Storify our lives through our memories or filter to other people's memories. So, what did you learn from learning ballet? I think you've sort of commented that it's, you go into ballet, and you kind of just have to dance. So it's almost a kind of mindfulness, meditation type of aspect, but does it help people through that?
Mark Ravenhill [36:29]: I am mindful of it. Yes. I sort of meant to do it for years and years and then I finally did a little Google search and found that there was a beginner's ballet class at the city lit in the centre of London, which I loved and I've done lots of little classes and courses there. So I signed up for a term of beginner’s ballet. I think it's the precision of it, it's just very good for suppleness, flexibility, all sorts of stuff but I think having to execute this very precise and demanding sort of news, with this incredibly romantic music going on. There's this tension between the sort of technicality and the precision and the music, that's quite moving to be doing it. I think just the music alone, I've often been too ornate and sort of sugary and too romantic for my tastes but I realize once you combine it with this fear sort of discipline it's the two rubbing up against each other, which.
Ben Yeoh [37:3: Kind of makes the music less overwrought which is usually as.
Mark Ravenhill [37:43]: So yes, I don't know it's just good to put yourself in a situation where you're not going to be very good at it. … you will never be there. I've been living, on the whole, wanting to be very good at the things that I do. So, you have to very quickly let go of that, I will just throw myself into this and I will work and I'll do everything that the teacher asked of me but there's no way obviously that I'm, and again...
Ben Yeoh [37:56]: I'll never be able to leap like that so Yes, and I'll never any bit in any way be anywhere near a professional ballet stage. So you're just doing it for itself, which I haven't done very much in life I think and just going yes, you know, I might well, by the end of the term still be like the worst person in the class. But that's okay, it's not as quiet as that, that is sort of goal-orientated, sort of uncompetitive sort of thing, I haven't often thought.
It's a nice break from; you're not striving down a kind of measured, meted success type thing. Some of my friends who like ballet, because they claim they don't find it very political, I'm not exactly sure about that but that's sort of their claim. And then within the theatre, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's not often if you're overtly political it kind of doesn't work. But I was wondering about what you've thought about, I guess politics within the theatre or how one is that, because I guess a lot of your work has themes you can get through it but often, you're not trying to be in overtly, like George Orwell or a David Hare kind of on the nose sort of political point, but more exploring stories or characters, and things like that, or a time or a place. Do you think that's like a more I guess, I want to say a more powerful form of theatre, but just I guess it's a different form and how do you view that?
Mark Ravenhill [39:51]: Yes, I guess. It's a big old error, isn't it? But I guess, on the whole, my feeling is that the actual action of the play and the arc of the play will embody your sense of the world and in many ways, you are in control of that. But also in some ways, you're not sort of releasing something by just committing to telling the story without editorializing or commenting. And if you're genuinely radical, then there will be a sort of radical energy released by the performance of the play and if you're small C, or maybe even big C conservative, or maybe don't want to be, that will be released by the performance of the play. So, I think with my writing, sometimes I back and thought, I'm trying to get rid of it, there's still sort of editorializing, characters sort of saying things that are a bit of a sort of comment and stuff. So in a way, I suppose my senses cut out the characters saying political things.
And it's the actual central thrust and energy of the play that will embody political energy. And that might be very different from how the playwright perceives, I think that's the main thing is that we work very hard in everyday life and now in virtual life in social media, to create a personality to project an image of ourselves and construct personality. And I think if playwriting is just another form of constructing that personality, which is better and nicer, or sometimes it's richer and more provocative than you would be if playwriting is just another continuation of that sort of ego-building, then it's not so interesting, whereas I think if playwriting is a space where that sort of manufactured construct itself, and that ego can be let go off, and the plays bigger, and maybe not says in one minute or quote, but embody something that maybe you didn't even know you thought or felt was bigger thought or feeling yours. And that, to me is sort of, it's quite idealistic but to me, that is my sort of ideal form of theatre.
Ben Yeoh [42:29]: And I've observed audiences are drawn to say flawed characters trying hard at something, right, this idea, there's no good, really evil thing that multipoint well, as you said, playwrights asking those kinds of questions. I do wonder a little bit, though, that, I guess this touches on our first original point, that a lot of theatre has been, I guess, left-leaning, not centre-right, I kind of think maybe Tom Stoppard might be I think it's politics more complicated like that but maybe out of those, you might say he is a little bit but often not and then often straight, white male, broadly elitist, left-leaning. And then you look at, well, Britain or the world, and well, I guess the British people, again, it's more complex, but on the surface has generally returned right-leaning governments bought, I think we have quite a complex politics, but again, it's just this idea that actually, the more complex plays which have gone more than just that have been a little bit more perhaps successful.
And I was wondering with this representation, because probably more and more of my friends who aren't really into theatre have had a slightly declining interest in a theatre, maybe because it feels it doesn't represent them. And naturally, that's because they're anything but that so they might be right but they might be left they might be, not straight or whatever color that it is. And I don't know how true it is but I was challenged with this idea that actually, you know what, although there are exceptions, you're talking to this slightly too small box. And that's why these efforts have whether it's a rainbow flag or even a centre-right flag or just anything, which is an old straight white male, not to sort of thing. There's good stuff there but just too kind of put that in that box. Do you feel that's got any truth to that observation? Or do you kind of feel that that's maybe [Inaudible 44:26] presented?
Mark Ravenhill [44:28]: No, I think that's true and I think, you know what's happened in the theatre is representative of what's happened in the wider country. So, going back to the 20s, and 30s, hundreds and hundreds of little, often weekly repertory theatres all over the country and actors will be traveling all over the country, particularly the beginning of their careers being paid terrible money and living in terrible digs. But actually, would be living in all sorts of little towns up and down the country and being part of those communities. And then as the 60s and 70s came along, lots of those small little unfunded weekly reps goes down, but you had a very active network for a while of well-funded regional theatres. And still, as we're moving around the country and still playing, we're moving backward and forwards between those theatres and coming into London and going back out.
So, the dialogue between London and the rest of the country and Liverpool speaking to Sheffield, speaking to London, speaking to Brighton, or whatever was going on. And their regional theatres funding was very substantially cut in the 80s, and has carried on and many of them closed, the whole weekly wrap thing went and but, in a way, that's been sort of replicated by just the number of fringe theatres in London. So it's not quite the same as a weekly wrap, but essentially, that very lowly paid stuff where you might be starting your career and hoping you'd get a job where you could live on the money and stuff. Instead of having hundreds of those around the country, we've got hundreds of fringe status, suddenly, now more in the rest of the country, but still very concentrated in London. And the amount of touring is has been cut back and back so the money, as in the rest of the economy, has been drawn towards London for making theatre, and the offer and sometimes the pressure from the Arts Council to tour the work and to share the work outside London has been taken off, there's been a sort of acceptance, so it's possible now to write plays, and direct plays and act plays until almost entirely exists within London. And not to see, that play gets a second production in Bolton or something.
How does that play go down in Bolton? How does that play go down in Scarborough? Or I'm acting in a play out, all the audiences respond in this way, in Birmingham, and so you can see this sort of reflecting the way that of, that everything has become much more focused on London, and that sort of alienation that people feel in a lot of the rest of the country. So, I think there's been a lot of exciting moves forward in terms of sort of progressive thought and liberal thought and left thought, in terms of people making Theatre in London, but I think carrying that out and testing that against a wider audience hasn't happened. So, I was very keen to do this Boy in the Dress adaptation of David Williams, because it opened in Stratford. And it's got a very simple ask of you, it's just saying, how can your objective this little boy wants to wear a dress to school and it stayed while I'm speaking it because it's so charmingly and lovingly constructed by the end of the book, you just have to go let the boy wear the dress. But, in real life, that's still quite a big ask, but if you played that in Hackney, then on a chance it's going to be on site from the beginning, but Stratford. Builders, many of them do go to the Royal Shakespeare Company quite regularly.
But that area of the country had, I think, the highest number of leave voters in the Brexit referendum of the whole country. I think we often say it was the northeast and stuff, but I think I might be right that the Midlands had an even higher. So, I think it's an area of the country that thinks very differently from [cross-talking 49:06]. So, I thought it is more exciting to open that play there and still, because it's just so charming, and you can't argue with it. That three generations of families often come to those shows and grandparents buy the tickets, bring mom or dad bring the kids and they all go on this journey with the character, Dennis and his dad and his community who all get to the stage of going, let the boy wear the dress, but it's a much more exciting journey to go on with people from that era of the Midlands because as you say, we are a strange little bundle of sort of contradictions. So, although we keep on returning right when governments, suddenly more people become much more liberal about things and still there is an underlying sort of sense of fair play and justice in the [cross-talking 50:03].
Ben Yeoh [50:04]: We like the underdog; we have a sense of fairness.
Mark Ravenhill [50:08]: And have faith and things like just basic faith in National Health Service and we believe in gun control, you don't even have very cranky voices aren't arguing for more guns. So we're very different for not from America in that respect because I've never come across anybody who's lobbying for guns and although some people think it has very little criticism, the NHS has a voice. So lots of our core values are still quite socialist, so we are a whole bundle of contradictions and in a story like David's Boy in the Dress, our sense of fair play, and as you say, the underdog means that in the end, we might be cheering on something that's quite a sort of liberal cause and could be framed in another way to another audience, that might be a more complex argument about trans rights and all sorts of things. And this story doesn't dig into the real complexities of the argument but for a big broad audience, it carries them on a journey. And so, that area of work is important to me as well, I'd like to find other projects that can do that, that have that broad, sort of popular appeal, and maybe can't always deal with nuance that you might want to talk to if you're talking to a loyal core audience, and quite a sort of big, colorful, warm sort of human brushstrokes can talk to a big audience.
Ben Yeoh [51:40]: And move them to a place that they've never been or haven't considered in that way and in that sense, transform them to much bigger respect and you might, [cross-talking 51:49].
Mark Ravenhill [51:50]: I mean, you never know, all the experiences that audience has, but just that sort of collective sense of it, yes.
Ben Yeoh [51:56]: That's one thing that strikes me that people on the comedy circuit still sort of have, they have to test objects and things, but they turn around outside of London, I'm very much happy to, okay, we tell our jokes in Cardiff, we tell our jokes in York, some community halls, whatever, and they get immediate feedback about what works, or what doesn't work. And I have, I guess, some friends who would probably consider themselves working class and go, you know what, the theatre isn't, isn't my thing, I feel it's an elite high art thing. They don't speak to me, and that type of thing and comedy seems to have still got closer to that in a way that at least some and then that's it. So, whether you could argue the centre, right people don't have a thing, or these working-class people don't have a thing feel that they're represented in theatre, the rainbow flag doesn't feel like it's represented. So, it feels like actually, there was a big gap and a lot of theatre people might think, and actually, this is where great work, as you say, born dress and things like that she closes that gap on many levels, and it can be popular as well, doesn't have to be for that sort of, that narrow audience.
Mark Ravenhill [52:11]: Yes, it's certainly an area of work that I'd like to explore. I think it's great sometimes to be in London and have sort of share stuff with people and pretty much sort of appear or whatever. But I think it's a really good test. Also, sometimes stepping outside of that, again, I'm sort of always opting for trying all the different things.
Ben Yeoh [53:32]: Well, so that brings me back to the part on visual art I wanted to pick up on because I guess when Shopping and Fucking came out, there was the kind of YPA thing and it was, like, loosely associated with that sort of art movement. And then, maybe at a time, I guess there's a phrase of in-your-face theatre, I'm not sure I completely agree with all of that. But there was a time where there seemed to be a theatre movement and a visual arts movement and then it seems to have decayed away and visual arts are doing their own thing, particularly in the British one, and it's still very much there. And that link with theatre hasn't been there as much as you said, in Germany, and even to the extent in the US, it seems to be a little bit of a twice link.
Mark Ravenhill [54:15]: A very visual, auditory, and visual sort of culture, aren't we? Yes, I don't think there was any great dialogue between the YPA and the place that is written time, but there's just something in the air so...
Ben Yeoh [54:27]: Yes, it's that period, been sorted for here's and where's that kind of thing?
Mark Ravenhill [54:31]: Yes, it's happening in music. There wasn't a massive dialogue I was aware of, but that these things all seem sort of emerged at the same time. So, they sort of, there was something ghostly, and I can't claim it to be, I can't claim that I am either but to be aware of the sort of language of talking about visual arts and referring to contemporary visual artists. Somehow not in our culture, German's a little bit surprised they start referring to stuff to do from the visual arts and I said, look a bit confused, you must know the work of [Inaudible 55:08] they're the most important photographer of the last 10 years and just don't. I don't know why that's, I guess it goes back to taking all those visual images down of the church walls in the...
Ben Yeoh [55:25]: Yes, maybe. And this was sort of hinting at that just because that interlink about whether theatre reaches out or to the extent that it has in history with all of these, other creative arts, the outside of London, all of those types of things. Conundrum, so maybe people will disagree, though, they'll say, this work is based on the church and these visual things. And then the last one on art is just because it's just on the mind, I was reading critic in the New York Times recently, who was commenting on this Titian show, which is gone sort of global, these six brilliant old masterworks, which I think in terms of visual arts have been, consensus, are masterpieces. But they were writing about how, I guess this comes under this right to offend idea that the themes and a lot of these paintings, essentially, male Gods dressing up raping women and that type of thing, are now when you look at it in the modern-day lens, very difficult for our so this interesting tension, but it's far enough in history that we can reconcile that.
But if you fast forward that to more recently, I think there's a kind of now quite a lot of challenges, creatively we're having with themes or work, or, I guess, artists own lives, whether they've been troubled or have difficult politics or different personal lives, the vast form that art or not, and then to how much extent that we have the right to offend, whether you're discussing things around identity, or politics or just stories that you think to represent yourselves. Do you view us as a particularly more challenging time now, just an iteration of some of these age-old conflicts which we had between the sort of creative, the political, the personal, and the public? And do you think these are questions that theatre should be asking now or indeed, this is kind of correctly asking now?
Mark Ravenhill 57:25]: Yes, I think I've quite a sort of conflicted feelings about that. Certainly, my sense, growing up, and sort of discovering, mostly sort of teaching myself was that, it was good to be exposed to art from all different periods of history and things that had values that were different from our time. And that you didn't have to endorse or agree with something to read it or to look at it and stuff. So, that's sort of the way of thinking that I grew up with, so I guess that's quite ingrained for me. Now, I can see that some people would say, well, that's okay because you're a white man so maybe you can go, well, let's look at all sorts of stuff that's uncomfortable and difficult and as a white man, you're not as threatened or offended or unsettled by going, I can see that there was an argument. So I sort of, in two minds about this, I can see there's an argument, say, it's much easier for the position of privilege, to say, I'm going to expose myself to all these different troubling images of troubling narratives and stuff.
But I feel a bit regretful if we just write off whole areas of the history of literature and art and stuff but that's where I am from the generation that I am and the background I have. So I think that's a decision that individuals have got to make. And I think it's not a bad thing, that at the moment, we're more mindful of what offends, and what troubles and what's upset. I think there was a danger that it almost became a habit to be sort of provocative for the sake of it and sort of a little bit cowardly, in a way a little bit sort of kids playing, sort of knockdown ganja the game not that you when you knock on somebody's door and run away, that sort of provoking and they're not taking any responsibility for that. So, we're in a different era and so it means even if you grown-up before that, as I've done it needs a little bit of navigating, you're finding the way around it, but on a whole, I think it's good that and certainly produces different ways in which is different work from me that you're more mindful about the possibility of upset and offense. And maybe it's not necessarily always a good instinct to go, I don't know, hopefully I never did that but the provocative is necessarily good in itself.
Ben Yeoh [1:02:27]: Yes, and as you said, it's uniquely suited to theatre and uniquely reflective of human rights; the right to speak and the ability to listen. Great, I thought I do a small section of the kind of overrated underrated sort of quick-fire, or you can do correctly rated things and then I have a couple of final sorts of questions, although I wanted to also touch on Keith Johnston, who I know has been quite important to you, so overrated underrated. You can pass on items but overrated or underrated, automatic writing, or just writing it out?
Mark Ravenhill [1:03:11]: Underrated, overrated? I guess underrated, I think it's important to have that ability at various stages in the process, to just unlock the mind and cover pages. I think you need that, you then need to have the opposite skill of different states to edit and shape. But I think to train yourself and to learn that ability to just splurge is an important part of a writer's toolkit.
Ben Yeoh [1:03:44]: Great, attempting to speak in verse all day or at least for a significant length of time.
Mark Ravenhill [1:03:51]: Underrated worth doing. I did a fantastic class workshop thing with some [inaudible 1:03:57] students where we did a whole afternoon of improvising in rhyming couplets. And it becomes scatological and rude so quickly, and it's very funny and we couldn't believe that for about two or three hours all the improvisations were in Roman couplets and I've never laughed so much one of those times when you fear that you might die laughing.
Ben Yeoh [1:04:25]: Very good. Dressing up to find yourself or find your character or I guess these are outside ways of thinking about the world.
Mark Ravenhill [1:04:34]: Yes, again I guess on the whole underrated, I think having some clothes to put on and right at the beginning of rehearsals is good. Again, that's strange sort of anomalies about the English theatre is that we rehearse these plays without adding in any of them but sort of material aspects of often of what's going to be in them and that's one of the differences with the German theatre that they have the majority of rehearsals are in costumes, wigs, set, lighting. The whole production is made as a production rather than people in their clothes with a mocked-up floor, and then suddenly at the end of all this extra stuff, every other aspect of the production is thrown at it, so yes, I say get a costume on as soon as you can.
Ben Yeoh [1:05:24]: Great. And then how about Chekhov or maybe, I guess I'm thinking about non-English theatre from the point of view of British theatre.
Mark Ravenhill [1:05:36]: O, Chekhow specifically, yes, I would still I guess, underrated I don't think you can rate Chekhov. His plays are just extraordinary. So yes, it took the English theatre quite a few decades to catch on to Chekhov, a long time after other countries. And we're still in but we now like, 60 70 80 years into quite substantial books to check off, but they still keep on throwing up. I could quite happily [watch his plays regularly] tell you what, once a week for the rest of my life.
Ben Yeoh [1:06:23]: Great. And then maybe the last one on this would be theatre games or maybe games in general.
Mark Ravenhill [1:06:31]: Okay, well, then maybe overrated. I think you're going to rehearsal play for me, it's become too often a bit of a habit that the first hour, two hours somewhere else versus being in the first three hours of the day. I've spent time playing games. I think the best way to trust each other, communicate with each other, and play with each other is through play.
Ben Yeoh [1:07:01]: Through the work, yes.
Mark Ravenhill [1:07:02]: So, yes. If I was setting some rules for the theatre beliefs, I would ban during the rehearsal process, theatre games. I think they're great for training and great in other contexts, and maybe you'd be loud, like one hour maximum for the whole rehearsal process, isn't it? But it's just on the whole; it's the director just putting off the actual responsibility of getting the rehearsal started. And I have seen them stretch into the third hour of the day and it's just like, no, stop, you don't trust each other review if you're rehearsing the scene together.
Ben Yeoh [1:07:45]: Yes, exactly, or get a team with trust for another. Great, okay, and then maybe just the final kind of two or three questions then. So one was around Keith Johnston's book Improv, which does have a bunch of games in it, although a lot of them are designed, I feel for exercises and interestingly, a lot of them are exercises, kind of designed by writers. So, I guess it's not an underrated book, because sort of every most theatre practitioners come across it but I'm always surprised that actually, not a lot of them have tried to do either the whole book or even significant points of it, they kind of almost look at it as a kind of historic foundational text, rather than very live practitioner text. But is this something these exercises you still use today or teach from or how important is it? It's enormously important for Improv performance people, but I think it's underrated, actually, for all theatre practitioners or writers or whichever arc you come from.
Mark Ravenhill [1:08:51]: Yes, I bought a copy when I was at university and dipped in an aspect of directing, we'd sort of devised a show so I sort of dipped in aspect, finding techniques to sort of devising a student show. But I hadn't read the introduction, I don't think because it was then sitting on my shelf for a few years and then when I pulled it out, years later and read the introduction and realized that this whole stuff that's in the book and began in the Royal Court writers' group. There wasn't even a writers group Keith was asked to found a writers group and they sat in the rooms and what is a writer's group? I don't think anybody has had one before in the UK. What are we going to do and they started to try stuff out and people are chucking ideas and Keith sort of facilitating it?
Once I read that, it was sort of Angelico and Edward Bond, and I think maybe Wally Shriner and all these people in the theatre upstairs, that wasn't the theatre upstairs, then just a sort of abandoned room, trying to find out what the essence of drama was and how it's going to form their playwriting once I realized it was sort of playwrights, with Keith, it sorts of initiated all that sort of spun my head around. So, then I started, and I'm thinking that I wanted to write by myself, I just sort of started going through the book, and just sort of drawing on it to make up my writing exercises. So, instead of being in a room and improvising a play, a kitchen table and just sort of opening flick through and think, now that and sometimes they would quite quickly translate into an exercise that you could do on the page, or sometimes I'd have to sort of think of what the essence of it was, and sort of inventing it myself. But I sort of gave myself a sort of summer's course in like, playwriting exercises through dipping into that book so that's what got me started playwriting.
Ben Yeoh [1:10:41]: Great, and maybe ending with the last kind of a couple of questions broadly. What sort of questions do you think theatre should be asking today? Or I guess this is partly a question for the industry as a whole. And then are you particularly have any things you're particularly curious about that you think are very worth investigating? I guess it's partly alluded to, there's a lot of talk in the theatre about maybe building back better or differently, which is a country sort of conversation about how everything might be affected and then just, I guess, the nature of some of the questions and challenges of our time now.
Mark Ravenhill [1:11:26]: Well, I think a fundamental question is, as with so much of our lives, is the disconnect between theatre, and this huge thing, which we know is the most important thing of the next 100 years of climate change? And where the theatre sits with that, this was still only tiny, tiny baby steps. And I think the theatre pretty much, historically, certainly the Western tradition, it is a humanist tradition, it's a thing that places the human being at the centre of the universe and of the world, pretty much the exclusion of anything else a play is about what human beings do to each other. So, some other cultures and other civilizations did, were much more sort of humble about man's humanity's position in the world and their relationship to the natural world.
And in a way, the very central act of making theatre was to say, I am a human being, I'm the centre of the world. So, there are lots of practical things to do about theatres, countries' contribution to carbon, zero economy, and that entire sort of stuff. But I think there's a huge question that is just the actual basic humanist instinct of theatre, an act of grand noising humanity, above its place in the natural order. And it can you make theatre, if you think of the natural world, ourselves as being part of the natural world and not stepping outside of it and also that natural world being bigger and, in many ways, more powerful than ourselves, that would be to sort of giving up humanism, and would that mean, to give up the theatre? I think that's a huge and probably unanswerable question, but not posthuman because that sort of takes you down the road of the sort of Cyborg sort of further.
Ben Yeoh [1:13:59]: AI Sci-Fi.
Mark Ravenhill [1:14:00]: Yes, I'm not so interested in a post-human sort of Cyborg theatre, but a sort of humanity humbles and whatever it would be a non-humanist theatre. Is there even a thing or does theatre just stop to be, seems to be?
Ben Yeoh [1:14:20]: That is super interesting, has got my brain was in because I think, you had communities or you hear stories in an older time, people would perform for trees and rivers, because they thought, why would the river not be as powerful? Or the tree is powerful, it sustains our life, it's there that lives longer than me. Why would I not have some sort of relationship with it? Not what we would think of as day-to-day, but certainly some performative act with non-human actors there's that.
Mark Ravenhill [1:14:53]: And what would that mean going forward? Because it's dangerous to like, be nostalgic and sort of an idealized sort of ancient civilization. So rather than go I wish I was living by the tree. So if there's…
Ben Yeoh [1:15:07]: [Living in bark clothing]
Mark Ravenhill [1:15:09]: What would it mean moving forward? I don't know. That's the question that's playing around in my head and I'm pretty confident I'll never know the answer.
Ben Yeoh [1:15:17]: Playwrights don't need the answers.
Mark Ravenhill [1:15:19]: It's interesting to sort of conceive of that. Yes, we've got somehow this district, it is almost impossible at the moment to find a theatre form, where we can talk about this thing, and also all sorts of other phones, where we can talk about this thing which, now the vast majority have acknowledged it's the most fundamental.
Ben Yeoh [1:15:49]: It's an existential risk, but it's interesting. I find it interesting looking back over the last 10 or 20 years, I can't find maybe there's one or two and I'm thinking of climate work here. Maybe April di Angelis has put on [a recent play] and there's been a couple that, but there hasn’t been that successful fear of making around climate because the nature of the forum seems to be so hard to grapple with this. To be fair to the theatre, it's been quite hard in books and other creative work full stop. Maybe because of your provocation, because art is typically or essentially a human endeavor and climate and the natural world are essential, well, humans are a part of it. But we are actually, in that context, a small part and therefore, our art seems to have real trouble encompassing that, and actually, our policy and minds seem to have real trouble with our intersection with that world, which would seem to be an actor and to your point, an existential real question for the theatre to try and grapple with, or perhaps it can't really, which is, probably an interesting question in itself.
Mark Ravenhill [1:16:58]: Yes, I know, there was a nice quote in the Charles Ludlum book that I'm reading, at this stage in New York with data meticulous, and he said something about, I'm paraphrasing now. But "If you're not failing to live up to your ideals, then you haven't set your ideals high enough." So, I think, you accept that you're not going to live up to your ideals but that gap between setting your ideals as high as you can, as I say, that sort of idea of like returning ourselves into our humanity to nature and existing within nature, that higher ideal and the gap between us attempting that that's often the rich area for creating art, I think that guides you through.
Ben Yeoh [1:17:47: And if you don't set your ideals high enough, we just don't seem to produce as good as the stuff in kind of whatever our endeavors are, yes, for sure. Great, and then my last question would be do you have any advice for well, I guess we could do a couple of types of people like advice maybe for creative or young people? Or maybe you have advice or thoughts just in general on being human, I guess, that's made me very wide, but you might have one for theatre people and creators in particular, but you might have sparked off like, actually, you know, what this is? Well, we touched upon a couple of things about sort of listening and some of these [Inaudible 1:18:30], some of these gaps in representation. But I would be interested if you have any other advice or thoughts that you'd like to share with people?
Mark Ravenhill [1:18:44]: Okay, I think the advice for creators; maybe this applies to everybody in the world. And there's a curious thing. I think what people ultimately want from you as a creative is your unique voice. But actually, so much of what they offer along the way mentoring and script editing and criticizing and training and everything doesn't facilitate that and you grow to be watchful of trying to please people and trying to fit in and lots of young, obscene mostly right. Am I allowed to do this? Will they like this? And because that's a lot of the signals that you're sort of given along this way of people, genuinely, when they get it they want that unique voice. It's not just so you can't learn particularly in training and to teach yourself, then it's innate, but in the search to find that unique voice. People often throw so much stuff at it, that you went with people who just want to work out how to jump through these hoops, and please these people and even get quite scared, am I even allowed to do this.
So, returning yourself all the time to ultimately what they want, even though they give me these very different signals is a unique voice and to earn that unique voice, you've got to be very honest with yourself, very rigorous with yourself, tough with yourself, but you do it to yourself and form and shape and honor that unique voice. And it has grown culturally over the last sort of 30 years, but that sort of endless mentor, endlessly workshop, endlessly edited, endlessly everything sort of culture facilitates against that, when you genuinely do, develop and home and offer your unique voice, it is still the most precious thing and people will be excited by it and honored it. But that needs confidence in yourself and some arrogance. I think culturally, we're very keen now on humility, and niceness particularly England, obviously, niceness. But the act of making your work has got to have strong elements of arrogance, about it as well, I think so don’t be afraid to own things like arrogance.
Ben Yeoh [1:21:42]: Yes, that seems insightful to me, because I sort of see young filmmakers or writers. And how I would put it is they're trying to write to somebody else's tick box, which is doubly worse because one, it's somebody else's and secondly, it's a kind of tick box that you're just trying to work towards this note and you might have contradictory notes. And therefore, you're not building anything, which is yourself.
Mark Ravenhill [1:22:09]: And I think you know where you want to be with a piece, please go through draft after draft, at least mind doing what most people's do. But if you have got a gut feeling about where these pieces want to go if other people are giving you feedback, you will sometimes quite often hear things that you can use. And then you can filter it wow, yes, but only if those notes are feeding that sort of gut instinct of, I need to say this; I need to find a way to say this. Once you're off beam, and you're writing different drafts of a play, or whatever it might be, to satisfy all the different things that are coming at you. You've sort of lost it and you might as well be doing another type of a job. So maybe that just applies to life in general, as well. No, I think more than yes, I guess, but I think specific to the work making it a work of art. I'm not; I don't think maybe in general in life, that a strong sense of ownership of your arrogance is a good thing. I think that's peculiar to the work is making work of art and it's not arrogance about yourself, it's an arrogance about the work. So, I think in many ways, the arrogance is there for the work and that can be quite cathartic and hopefully, you have more humility and the rest of your life.
Ben Yeoh [1:23:42]: Although I might apply to a sense of self, not sort of arrogance in, your strength of opinion, but just on who you are, I guess I meet young people who, again, they're told how to be so this is normal, and they have all of these conflicting messages. And I just say well, just ask yourself honestly, how you want to be if you can and follow that thread, which seems to be a similar thing, wouldn't necessarily touch it with arrogance, but just listening to yourself and then going well, if that's you, you don't have to listen to all of these other people about how to be when you've got a sense to develop your sense about how to be.
Mark Ravenhill [1:24:21]: Yes, that's good.
Ben Yeoh [1:24:23]: And so it's a productive day a lot of writing for you or like two or three hours of writing when you're not productive day rehearsing would be you’re the rehearsal room you get lots of great stuff done.
Mark Ravenhill [1:24:33]: Yes, I know writing I normally find because I don't quite often even turn off the phone and I don't check the internet and stuff. So, what I might do is total concentration, which I think is quite unusual for people working. I read an article once that said, the number of times people are in an office in their seven eight-hour day, how much time did they spend doing the job that was on their job description. And I thought it was going to say like two hours out of the eight or something. But I think it's something like about 37 minutes, I think to get text messages for somebody else going to get [Inaudible 1:25:10] all this, and then answering emails about parking spaces and whatever, that the actual job description job was something like I'm considerably less than an hour, I think. So actually, I think when I'm writing, I got no other emails to do about the parking space, I've got a water cooler to go to and people are not over, they're not in the office kind of take a message. So, it's full-on concentrated so I find after about three hours, that I'm sort of a bit punch drunk. So I find about three hours a day of writing is enough, but by the sound of it, it's equivalent to about three weeks.
Ben Yeoh [1:25:48]: Are you morning, afternoon, after some Pilates or ballet or can you do it anytime?
Mark Ravenhill [1:25:53]: With me it varies, it varies just when I'm writing something, I just say that I will write and I set myself a word count, like 1000 words a day. And sometimes we wake up in the morning, I'm full of it, and I write my 1000 words, but sometimes I haven't got a lot of lack of confidence or something or whatever and I just put it off enough. But if I've got a deadline, where I won't let myself go to bed until I've written those 1000 words so the very worst comes to worst, I'm there at 11 o'clock at night until sort of one-two in the morning to actually [cross-talking 1:26:24].
Ben Yeoh [1:26:23]: So I think you might be right, there's a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, which is done the business rounds about a lot of people taking two jobs in during the pandemic because they don't have to be present so online, and they juggle them both. So these people who are wanting to do to do that, and it seems to be a thing so maybe you're right, I'm still quite influenced by I think if I recall correctly, you've set up the workshops, maybe based on something that Sarah Kane had said in this is going back about 20 years ago, but doing an espresso weekend. So getting a lot of work done in like, four hours writing it or writing on a weekend, a lot of surges of work and so I've always liked trying to write more and not just [cross-talking 1:27:09].
Mark Ravenhill [1:27:09]: I think that was all Sarah's thing, but yes, I think she just felt that the quite a lot of people, I think all stages of their writing career, but near the beginning that there's so much procrastination, but it was all inside them because they talked about and thought about it for years and years. And if you just said you've got to write this in, it was like a long weekend…
Ben Yeoh [1:27:35]: [Writing a play in a] long weekend, I think that was it.
Mark Ravenhill [1:27:37]: We were at Paines Plough, and we opened up the building.
Ben Yeoh [1:27:42]: The place in Aldwych (London), wasn't it?
Mark Ravenhill [1:27:44]: Yes, people could read, we tried to sort of hang around and bring people cups of coffee and stuff if they needed it. So quite a lot of people's plays, a lot of people surprised themselves and found that they could write like an hour, an hour and a half's worth of material in sort of three days, whatever it was. And I think it did kick start a lot of plays but it wasn't [only] Sarah’s thing, if you had sort of lock-in that it would get people having to sit down to write instead of spending another year.
Ben Yeoh [1:28:17]: Great. And then any other final advice? We can pass on that because we've done the creators.
Mark Ravenhill [1:28:24]: I don't know whether I'm in a position to give anybody any advice any general area. Ben, any area?
Ben Yeoh [1:28:34]: Well, I guess I'm hinting towards, perhaps if you are a minority, as in this is probably if you're not a straight white male, or you're not feeling like that. And maybe you're younger, and you're thinking, there's a lot of contradictory things you hear on social media, your friends saying different things, this is wider than just coming out. But just to kind of try and find your sense in place in your world seems to me, I'd like to say as difficult as ever been, but actually, it strikes to me when I speak to some of the young people that I still do a little bit, it seems to be harder than it was in our generation it or like call it 80s 90s, early 2000s where there was all of that and there were other things we were dealing with, like HIV and all of that, but then today, you've got this whole other plethora, and I think young people are finding it seemingly hard I don't know if you had a thought on that.
Mark Ravenhill [1:29:37]: Sort of contradictions, because if you were sort of young gay teen, you can very quickly on social media find like, thousands of guys. Gay TikTok is made by other gay teens and YouTube has like 100,000 coming out stories on YouTube from gay teens and staff. So you got to access the things that in my judgment we like pre-internet, so you didn't even hear anybody coming out or something. So I guess it reflects a lot of the wider so it wasn't so there was access to all this like information or even just knowing that there are, 100,000 subscribers, that YouTube channel of the gay thing that speaks to you and stuff. And that doesn't seem to so you can sort of offer a little bit of reassurance but then crossing that over into the real world, people get there in the end, don't they, but crossing over into the real world, how you actually make friendships and then relationships and long-lasting relationships doesn't necessarily seem to help that most towards those and in some ways, learning the whole vocabulary of everything through mediated sort of virtual reality, maybe makes it even harder too.
Ben Yeoh [1:30:57]: Now this messy human-ness.
Mark Ravenhill [1:30:59]: Yes, this is just a wider problem for us in a sort of, virtual world, isn't it? So that's my advice.
Ben Yeoh [1:31:10]: That's fine; it's just an observation about where we have. I slightly blame dating apps, partly for the fact that we don't speak to wider circles of people because if you go back pre-app, you'd have to kind of meet a lot of people to see whether they might be lifelong partners or not. And most of them are not going to be right by their nature, but you have either interesting conversations or get together because you had to put yourself out there. And now because the app, an algorithm, thinks it can do that for you and other reasons, you do that. And so actually, that sort of thing is potentially narrower and so this messiness of the conversation of figuring it out seems to be…
Mark Ravenhill [1:31:15]: I've got a piece of advice, which is coming to the king's head theatre, where everything is live, and we will almost certainly meet your life partner. Talk to them in the bar or at the end of the show you will meet your life partner at the king said there. So, when Hannah and I take over in Easter 2022 - it is the place to come for dating.
Ben Yeoh [1:32:21]: Yes. And that is the only reason to write plays is to try and find your life partner. So I'm joking that you are probably, anyway, super excited to chat, I am also excited to find out how everything's going to go at the King's head theatre and your future work. So Mark, thank you very much.
Mark Ravenhill [1:32:43]: Thank you.
