‘Ill-fated Associations’ - James Metcalf writes about a life shattered by war
Rachael Parker shares three of her poems with The Yorker
The Yorker talks to three student playwrights premiering their work in the Drama Barn next term.
A poem by J Cridford exploring the imagination and quest for belonging
What's your play about?
Kinnear: 'Defenestrated' is, on the one hand, a slap to the face for the cliche detective story - classic, overused endings are ridiculed, and the largely unseen killer seems almost comical, being solely identified by the audience as 'The Man In The Bowler Hat'. On the other hand, it revolves around the idea that the lead detective's predecessor also attempted to solve this murder case and ended up throwing himself out of the office window. This chilling fact amongst a bizarre and comical atmosphere soon creates a macabre darkness, especially as the main character realises that everything that happened to his predecessor is now happening to him; he almost sees his own glass-shattering end coming, and fears that he won't be able to stop it; the question is, can he catch the killer before history repeats itself?
Crowley: ‘Shed’ is about secret places and the power that they hold over the people who visit them. Its plot deals with love, friendship, betrayal, death, leaving home, and coming home again, focusing on the lives of four childhood friends from a small town in rural England. The whole play takes place inside a small shack deep in an untamed patch of woodland near said town, showing these characters at their most private, and therefore at their most vulnerable.
Vickers: ‘Ramadan Amadeus’ is essentially a rework of the ‘Faust’ story, but since this particular myth has been in almost constant performance for well over 400 years I wanted to get as far away from the traditional images as possible. There's no fire and brimstone swathed in smoke and gloom, instead there's the colour and (to us westerners at least) strange beauty of Indian culture, while the magic becomes mathematics and music. The Faust/Mephisto dichotomy still forms the basis of the idea but in Ramadan Amadeus they operate as roles rather than real people. Mephisto and the other demons are parts of this Faust's psyche. At it's most fundamental this Faust's own ivory-tower intellectualism is an attempt to run away from life: from the guilt of his family's past, from the terrifying infinity of emotion. The demons therefore take the shape of past figures that weigh on this Faust's mind - Mozart, Darwin, Joan of Arc, to name just a few.
Why is it worthwhile seeing it/being involved/auditioning?
Kinnear: It's worth seeing because it genuinely has something for everyone - if you like comedy, it's not too intense to put you off the comedy scenes; if you like horror, that's there too, but a psychological kind of entrapment. If you're a philosophy fan, it deals with Free Will versus Determinism; do we really make our own choices, or is there a destiny binding us all? It's not too deep that it'll evade people who haven't studied drama in the past, and for those who have, the ending should be something to look forward to - I promise.
Crowley: It's a play which I've tried to lend a lot of variety and depth. I've always believed in William Goldman's maxim that the most profound kind of writing is that which is able to be as funny as it is sad while diminishing neither, and that's the bittersweet taste I want to leave in the audience's mouths. Most important of all is an entertaining yarn, and I've spent a long time plotting and planning to make sure ‘Shed’ has a few twists and turns to keep a chilly early-Spring audience's attention. There are eight juicy parts up for grabs, male and female, all of which I hope will present an actor with something they can get their teeth into. What's more, with all the plans for staging, set and lighting we have in mind, Shed should be a fun and exciting project to be involved with all around.
Vickers: Theatre as a means of communication to an audience is for me uniquely visceral, physical and immediate, so of course those are the qualities I want to emphasise in anything I do. Ramadan Amadeus should hopefully be a riot - Faust's as a tradition have to be an intelligent spectacle and that's exactly why they appeal to me. The barn is great space to really play with ideas, there are no corporate pressures or public expectations, you're playing with relatively small sums of money so pressure is far less and ingenuity becomes key - this goes for all the plays there. For the actor in me that's exactly the kind of work I'd want to be involved in.
How did you get into writing? Is this your first play?
Kinnear: I got into writing when I was 14. I'd written some 20min stuff which my friends and I acted out instead of assembly slots, and I guess I got greedy and wrote a whole play one day! This one is my 9th, but frankly, most of what I write is junk - I got lucky with this one!
Crowley: I got into writing through sketch comedy and short stories. Writing for performance, especially comedy, has always been something I've come back to time again, leading to three consecutive Edinburgh Fringe Festivals writing and acting for the shows Four Sad Faces and Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot. My only previous extended play was The Matchstick Man, a science fiction radio play which relaunched University Radio York's drama department earlier this year, netting a campus media award for the station.
Vickers: This will be my 5th play to be performed, but I've always got ideas in mind. Writing developed through reading, particularly folk tales and myths, ancient and modern. Stories have a basic pattern that has an almost infinite play to it. The more you write the more you think like a writer. Notebooks are the most useful thing in my life - they're an extension of my memory that lets me keep the whole idea space under control and work on one thing at a time - though it doesn't always work!
What's your writing technique?
Kinnear: Technique - start off with one really heartbreaking, harrowing, or just plain weird moment, just anything you can think of, and then work out how on earth people end up in these situations, and just write that! Most of my stuff involves the play building up to something so I figure out where to go before I work out how to get there, and although it might be a lazy technique, it's a good staple.
Crowley: The only consistent technique I hold to when writing anything, and one which I'd recommend to everyone trying to lasso their creative musings, is writing notes. Any time I want to try and nail down a broad plot outline, a setting, a character or the specific events of a scene, I just start writing in my notebook until something coherent develops out of the mess of cluttered and contradictory ideas. It's always helped me to refine my thoughts and more importantly, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a sheet of paper covered in your own hard work.
Vickers: Work. I've never understood the idea of writer's block - not because I don't get stuck and finding the right phrase is always easy, but because writing is ultimately a job like any other. You have a skill set and you apply it - certainly it's mental not physical and it's harder to define but it's still the same in that respect. The more you do the more you learn. You learn when to think and construct and when just to let go and run with it. One of the most important things is to let go. You might love a scene or a speech or a whole character but if they don't work with everything else they have to go.
Tell us a bit about you - what course/year you are on, career aspirations, inspirations, past Drama Barn (or other theatrical) experiences?
Kinnear: I'm first-year Law student, hoping to enter a Chambers in Civil courts... so, yeah, totally unrelated to drama! I mainly just stuck with my drama group back home for eight years, learned everything I know, got to it. Be nice to have something published, though fat chance on that!
Crowley: I'm a third year Writing, Directing and Performance BA student. My previous directing credits are ‘The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd’ from earlier this term, and ‘The Sword in the Stone’, Pantsoc's 2009 summer pantomime. I've also acted in a number of campus productions including lead roles in ‘Dick Whittington’ in early 2010, ‘Death and the Maiden’ in 2009 and ‘Yellow Moon’ in 2010. After I'm dragged kicking and screaming from York campus in June, I expect I'll be squeezing out a living behind a shop counter trying to find a way to make money doing the things I've loved doing for societies for the past three years. God help me.
Vickers: I'm a 2nd year English & Philosophy student. I'd love to write for a career, particularly stay involved with the theatre, although there are things in my head I know won't work on stage, that need the novel form or a camera lens to work. Inspirations is a big question - things delight me and keep me thinking every day. I'd probably cite the work of Neil Gaiman, Mike Mignola and Alan Moore (all of whom interestingly enough work primarily in comics) as well as children authors like Alan Garner as the start point for my writing. It's evolved along adoration for writers like Allen Ginsberg, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, J.M.G LeClezio - people who write these hyper-real forms of existence: electric words, full of life.
AUDITIONS!
SHED a new play by Tom Crowley Mon = 3-6.30pm LN/007 Tues = 6-10pm V/131 Wed = 3-6.30pm AEW/008
THE HOUSE OF YES by Wendy MacCleod Mon, Wed, Thurs = 6-10pm V/119 Tues = 6.15-10.15pm G/001
DEFENESTRATED a new play by Elliot Kinnear Mon, Tues, Thurs = 6-10pm W/035d Wed = 6-10pm W/035f
SPEAKING IN TONGUES by Andrew Bovall Mon-Thurs = 6-10pm W/035c
BLACK COMEDY by Peter Shaffer Mon, Wed = 6-10pm V/122 Tues = 6.15-10.15pm W/035f Thurs = 6.15-10.15pm V/131
ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE by Martin Crimp Mon-Wed = 6-10pm W/035 Thurs = 4-8pm W/035
THE REAL INSPECTOR by Tom Stoppard Mon, Wed = 6-10pm V/123a Tues = 6-10pm G/002 Thurs = 6-10pm V/122
RAMADAN AMADEUS a new play by Tom Vickers Mon, Tues = 6-10pm W/035a Wed = 6-10pm W/301 Thurs = 4.15-8pm W/035a
[Proofread before you post 
The email note and instructions in the last line and the double picture and caption at the top don't look very professional.]
Yup, corrected. Good interview!
I can't see a double picture or caption; seeing as the article was posted today, and it's currently 1am, I'd say it's fair to assume the original poster realised their mistake and corrected within the hour of posting. Corrections withstanding, it's an interesting interview - nice to see Dramasoc getting a little publicity for their auditions outside the mailing list.
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