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| Getting There Sharman Macdonald | |
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Not screaming, not shouting, just writing. Sharman Macdonald on the pleasures of being a playwright, and how she started. It's the result of a bet, this writing life. I was desperate for a second child. Desperate never to act again. Most of all desperate to stop eating lentils, French bread and tomatoes. We were broke, Will and me. We had one child. My hormones were screaming at me to have another. So. Will bet me a child for the sale of a script.
A life. I've never worked for higher stakes. I wrote When I was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout. Writing was such pleasure. All those words that had never been there before. First put my son to bed. Will was on tour. Then make the front room totally tidy. I always wrote lying on the floor, fire full on, heat at my back. A green notebook. Fountain pen. Cigarettes. As I got into it, the hours stretched. I could write in the morning when my son was at play school. If he had a friend round I could write while they played upstairs.
There's a world of enchantment children create when they play, a bubble of peace you can feel all over the house. Sometimes their games went straight into the writing. Two of them were on their way upstairs. 'Willie games?' one said. 'Yes,' said the other. It sparked off the whole sex theme in When I was a Girl. The Bush bought the play. My daughter's fourteen now.
Before the bet I wrote deeply dark pseudo-Baudelairean prose poems. Long ago consigned to the flames. The first dialogue I wrote down was when I was an actor. I was doing a television series. I'd improvise dialogue to keep myself amused during camera rehearsals.
I'm afraid of writing. I was then and I am now. Not of the blank page; I'm afraid I'll never do what I can do. I haven't done it yet. Each time I start something I think, This is it, the best, the only. Then I get to the end, and I think, Oh God, that wasn't it at all. It makes it easy to move on, to try to find 'it' in something else.
My mother was a huge inspiration. She was a difficult woman. Bright and brash. Kind of magnificent. She and her mother were great storytellers, gossips I suppose, bitches really. Nothing wrong with a good bitch. 'Do you think I like being put on stage?' 'Do you have to write about sex?' 'You should pay me royalties.'
The theme of my early plays was nearly always the same. Knocking women off their pedestals. Seventies feminism put us up there. It didn't feel comfortable to me. I don't like goodies and baddies. It's too simple.
In the beginning I didn't work to commission. Now I do. Partly it's money. Partly I need the outside discipline. I have no plans. Never have had. That's a huge fault. I have 'wants'. I want to write another libretto. I want to work with Alan Rickman again.
I want to collect money, but it's a strangely elusive substance. There's still great pleasure in writing. But it's fingers on the key pad now, not a fountain pen.
My play After Juliet was a commission from the education department at the National for BT National Connections. It's very rhythmic. Almost verse. It's about peace, or the lack of it. My daughter's idea. She wanted me to write something about Rosaline, Romeo's first girl-friend.
I've watched nine different productions so far. I love actors, they're my joy and inspiration. There's another fourteen productions to go. It's been a thrill, a joyful experience. I lead a privileged life.
This article appeared in Stagewrite Summer 1999
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