we are family

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I am lucky to live in the North East, not only are you never more than 20 yards from a Greggs outlet but there is also a strong community of writers here, fostered in no small part by companies like New Writing North. Newcastle is a good place to be a writer, there are lots of us, of all persuasions, some one would say a family of writers. Now, I don’t mean family in that sappy, church going American sense, but more of a big extended mess of a family, seething with insecurity, back biting, resentments, even incest, but we understand and care for our dysfunctional group more than an outsider could or should.

Like any family we suffer from in-fighting, envy, a sense of being over looked and on occasion less loved than our more attractive siblings. We chase the same opportunities, prizes and funding, we gloat, gossip and socialize together. We come crawling out of the woodwork to support one another in our rare successes and commiserate when it all turns out to be another dead end. This family extends out of any writer’s home town through the internet, contacts and forums. I am not alone in having had huge amounts of help and guidance from people I’ve never met, because they, like me, are a writer and know how frigging hard that can be. It doesn’t stop at my peers, I never cease to be amazed and grateful for the help and guidance offered up freely by established writers to people like me, struggling on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

This sense of belonging to a community of like minded people, this band of brothers, this brave few…Ok, overkill, but you get the point, and this means that like any family you get pissed off when one of your own is treated unfairly, a point I would like to illustrate further with the following example:

To summarize, one talented, sassy, writer whose energy and success, writing and social skills make me green with envy took her hit Newcastle play to make it a bigger hit in Edinburgh. Equipped with awards and brilliant reviews she has moved on to a month long run at a top London theatre. For arguments sake, lets call the writer, Fifi, and the play, ‘Whitby’. Fifi’s writing truly reflects the writer, a strong political conscience, warm, witty, original and smart. ‘Whitby’ sells out for the whole run, ‘Whitby’ is loved by audiences and the great majority of the press, ‘Whitby’ surely deserves its plaudits. I am both envious of her success and happy for her. If Fifi was a business I would buy shares in her, incredibly hard working, multi skilled and confident, she is one writer who is destined to go far.

So far, so good, then I read a derogatory, snobby, ‘review’ by, for argument’s sake, lets call him Mr BoJangles, which was so far removed from every other professional response to the play as to be laughable. He actually boasts of turning up his nose at ‘Whitby’. What sort of pompous twat thinks it is clever or seemly to talk about ‘turning up their nose’ at a play? Did he hitch up his plus fours before or after his turning? He derides the fact that Fifi has the talent to write for television as well as stage. It is a bitter, vindictive, unpleasant little review and it made me pissed me off. We all have to roll with the punches, we all have to take bad reviews but this was more a drawn out sneer than a meaningful response, positive or negative to a piece of writing.

When you see a review that so flies in the face of the positive responses to a play , I have to wonder, why? I am not the only one, a debate has been sparked by this, a debate which includes critics, bloggers and writers.

What exactly was it about this well acted, written and directed play that had Mr BoJangles’s man thong in such a twist?

Perhaps:

Enjoyable, popular, unpretentious plays have to be demolished because they are popular, unpretentious and enjoyable.

Was it anything to do with the fact that the writer is new, northern, female and young?

Is he starved of attention?

Was it that the audience had to sit on cushions and furniture and his arthritis was playing up?

Who knows, only Mr Bojangles, his review made no sense to me.

Now going back to this family point, Mr BoJangels has written a play which opens at the end of the month. Our family of writers has a new, red haired step child in its midst. Despite the mean spirited reviews he has dished out in the past, I hope, as with all plays, that any reviews are fair and made in response to the work not the author. I hope Mr BoJangles finds his new family of writers supportive, more supportive than he deserves. But then again, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that somebody had broken into the theater overnight and shat on his set.

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Tags: critics, family, new writing north, Newcastle, plays, press, writers