Writing A Street Like This; a guest blog post by Alison Carr
Award-winning playwright and radio dramatist, Alison Carr reflects on the process of writing Unfolding Theatre’s new show; A Street Like This.
“It was in a freezing cold Space Six (RIP) that I first mooted the idea of a massive, impossible, sinkhole opening up on an ordinary street.
It was December and we were at that point in the pandemic where we could meet up in small groups for work, but you had to wear a mask, keep apart, and the windows had to stay open.
So there I was, shivering in my designated square marked out with gaffer tape, and the idea of a world-changing, life-changing, inconceivable event popped into my mind. I wonder where that came from, eh.
We played around with it for our week together, and while we’d had various ideas up to this point, this one seemed to stick.
It sharpened and evolved, and then we brought it to the group when the workshops resumed. I wasn’t sure how they would take to it, if it’d be too weird or I wouldn’t be able to convey it properly, but credit to them – they jumped aboard and off we went”.
“I have never written a play like this before. Usually it’s just me, an idea and a laptop and then more eyes and voices come into it from a first draft onwards.
But it’s never been just me for this project. Not in finding it or making it.
And that’s nice. Writing can be very solitary and isolating. It’s also very exposing. There’s a vulnerability to bringing brand new ideas into a room, or in some cases barely formed ‘somethings’, and inviting input. Sometimes that input has felt overwhelming, a pressure to include everything, but I’m learning to streamline and cherry pick what best serves the story.
It’s been a long road to our street. I sometimes wonder what we’d have made if we hadn’t been cut off as were getting started. It wouldn’t be this piece. Of course it wouldn’t, we’re different people now. And this play and story is all about people, at its heart. The characters, yes, but the people who have made it. Me, the Unfolding team, Ross, and especially the community company who have been so enthusiastic and generous with their ideas.
At a recent workshop they were rehearsing the play’s opening song – the first verse of which I scribbled in a notebook all that time ago in Space Six. It made me quite emotional to hear it. Because now it’s got more verses and music and voices, which perfectly encapsulates how this play comes from all of us, and needs all of us to tell it”.
