Lucy Kirkwood
Theatre has embraced a new culture: the culture of youth. Bright and hopeful young creatures are sprouting up from every corner of the industry, set to transform the way thegenerations of today and the future are responding to the stage. Over the past few years, the industry has witnessed a significant group of writers, all with their birth-dates lodged firmly in the eighties, scoop recognition and awards galore: Polly Stenham’s debut play That Face won the Evening Standard’s 2007 Charles Wintour Awards; Natalie Abrahami won the James Menzies-Kitchin award producing Play and Not I in 2005; and Bola Agbaje’s first play Gone Too Far! won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliated theatre.
And then there’s Lucy Kirkwood. Despite still being in her twenties, Kirkwood expresses a degree of antipathy towards this youthful direction in playwriting; whether it was the key to her success or not. “I think it’s kind of shitty how youth-focused new writing’s become. Obviously it’s worked in my favour, but when was the last time you saw a new play staged at any of the big London Fringe theatres by an unknown writer in his/her forties? [It] doesn’t happen.”
Whilst still in the midst of her English degree at Edinburgh, Kirkwood was plucked from virtual obscurity to become winner of the prestigious PMA award, and has never looked back since. From there she received her first two professional commissions from the National Theatre studio and the Bush. The irony is that the award winning play in question, Grady Hot Potato, had been rejected by the National Student Drama Festival, only to then be passed on to the jury of the PMA award.
So what is the key to cracking the more ’mature’ facets of the industry? Kirkwood suggests that it may be youth’s optimistic vision: “I always find myself leaning towards hope. Maybe that’s a function of me being a bright-eyed twenty-five year old – as age encroaches I’ll probably become a pessimistic and bitter old crone who writes nothing but interminable dystopian epics in which everyone dies at the end. Horribly.”
But it is easy to see why Kirkwood’s plays are so enthralling. They are “ambitious” and “daring” according to the Edinburgh Festival Guide, “dark” and “dramatic” according to The Independent. Such experimentalism ultimately contains a degree of risk, however. The Edinburgh Festival Guide goes as far as to suggest that Kirkwood’s innovative play The Umbilical Project (2006) contained an element of the “indulgent”. Kirkwood doesn’t see this as necessarily relevant, however; she sees audience reception as simply stemming from the quality of the writing. “I think it’s more about how well written it is. An audience will go pretty much anywhere with you, if they feel they’re in good hands,” she explains. “I have no desire to align my work as a whole with one particular genre. Right now I’m working on a play about sex traffic, one about Chinese-American international relations and a really odd comedy about spinsters…I like to keep things interesting for myself.”
Although Kirkwood may be reluctant to align herself with one particular genre, her work abruptly aligns itself not only alongside the industry’s love-affair with youthful experimentalism, but with the rise of female dominance. It is significant that the list of influential young British playwrights is predominantly women, from Polly Stenham to Bola Agbaje. Arguably, in recent years the doors to British theatre for women have remained firmly closed. Whilst women have made significant rises in the workplace, the British theatre still seemed reluctant to embrace change. But change is on the horizon. The appointment of Vicky Featherstone in late 2004 as the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland was seen as significant, and the numbers of women easing themselves into jobs in major theatres, especially the Gate and the Bush, has been rising ever since.
Kirkwood has a very direct attitude towards how far she thinks equality in the industry has come. Does she think there is an even representation of male and female influence? “Certainly not.” And is this because male writers are more encouraged to work within the industry? Seemingly not: “If anyone tries to tell you this is because of a lack of women writing, break their face.”
Sexual equality is an issue close to Kirkwood’s agenda. She is writer in residence at The Clean Break Theatre Company, which describes itself as a “theatre working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system,” a project about which Kirkwood is passionate. But just how effective is the theatre in addressing and challenging prejudices against women? “I think when theatre’s done well it can be the most powerful calling card for a ‘cause’ – the trick is convincing the audience they’re not watching a play about a ‘cause’ – they’re just watching a good play.” This may be true – and Kirkwood gives me a solid list of candidates who achieve this. But what about her own writing? Here, Kirkwood expresses a little deflation. “I was surprised when no-one seemed to read Tinderbox (2008) as a feminist play.”
Despite their reception, she still sees her projects as influenced by female issues: “I would call myself a feminist, by which I mean feel very strongly about the predominantly masculine exchanges and cycles and systems of power that govern our society both visibly and tacitly.” She is keen though, to prevent these views from being seen to define her work.
Kirkwood hasn’t only spread her creative vision across the theatre industry. She is also developing a TV series with Kudos Film & Television and writes for the Company Pictures TV series Skins. She describes the transition from playwriting to television writing as “like feeling another set of muscles you never knew you had getting stronger and stronger as you exercise them more.”
By flexing her promising muscles in both mediums, Kirkwood is sure to have an interesting career ahead of her. She says that she has plans to continue working in both theatre and television “until the point that I’m chucked out.” Despite her unprecedented success, she retains a focus on reality: “I know it won’t always be like this – but the wonderful thing about writing is that you can just do it. You can just sit down and start typing.”
Hopefully, her vision of age’s unpleasant encroachment eventually tarnishing her work will be evaded because a change towards the radical and the risky has given the industry an assertive boost. Kirkwood has proven this with candid brilliance.
Loading ...