The Stage

Ravenhill - ‘theatre is failing playwrights because it is obsessed with new writers’

Published Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 12:30 by Matthew Hemley

Shopping and Fucking playwright Mark Ravenhill has criticised the theatre industry for placing too much emphasis on producing the work of first-time writers, claiming more time should be spent developing “long-term” relationships with talent.

Ravenhill, whose adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Nation is currently running at the National Theatre, said the industry considered it “sexy” to find a new writer and produce their work, but complained there is no support network for these writers once they have had their first play produced.

The playwright said theatres should instead be investing more time building relationships with talent to produce a number of their plays, but claimed this required a change in the way theatres and companies currently think.

He told The Stage: “There are a lot of schemes for first-time playwrights and things to get people started. But it’s then sustaining a career writing for theatre that is the really tricky bit. What you find when you are starting out is that everybody rushes at you and offers you schemes and workshops and all sorts of things to write your first play, but then they disappear, and the second, third and fourth play you have to come up with all by yourself.”

Ravenhill said theatres should think that they are “starting a relationship” with a writer that “is going to extend over time and will result in a number of plays”.

“It’s a different way of thinking and a way we are not thinking so much nowadays. We are so excited by the brand new that we push writers aside and rush towards the first-time writers every time,” he complained.

Ravenhill added that playwrights can help themselves by thinking “quite broadly” about their role.

“If you are committed to just being a writer of studio plays there is not a career in it. If you embrace the idea of children’s theatre, community theatre, dance theatre, it is possible to sustain a career almost entirely writing for live theatre,” he said.