To anyone wondering what to do when the arts are struggling: lift up the playwrights.
Why do people go to the theatre?
It’s a question that crosses any theatre maker’s mind when their work is shared with an audience. It’s a question that looms just as the actor makes their entrance, just as the director in the back row sees the house lights dim on all the heads before them, just as the writer listens to their words suddenly, magically spoken aloud. Paines Plough’s 50th Birthday Gala took a gutsy stab at that question and promptly hit the nail on the head: Because, every once in a while, we each need a sign that at least one other human out there feels the same way we do. And where can we more directly receive that sign of life than on a stage?
Culture shifts when we see ourselves reflected in the world around us. When we see different stories, relationships, and people onstage, we feel a little more comfortable holding things we might find uncomfortable, things that contradict our own perspectives, things that make us question what we are responsible for in our wild and precious lives.
When we watch a play, we know it was created by some human somewhere in the world. A human who – to all of society’s benefit – felt what we felt and also committed to putting those thoughts on a page. This is what Paines Plough has known for fifty years. If anything, the attendance list alone was a testament to the fact that whatever they’ve done for the past half a century has made a palpable difference, not just in the theatre industry but the wider world.
The night began with a monologue, written especially for the evening by James Graham, which kicked off a brilliantly orchestrated amalgamation of eight excerpts from past plays commissioned by Paines Plough. All of these were performed, directed, and written by some of the industry’s finest, many of whom got to enjoy it from the audience themselves.
Highlights from the evening included scenes from Sarah Kane’s CRAVE, Dennis Kelly’s AFTER THE END, Mike Bartlett’s LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, Chris Bush’s HUNGRY, Nathan Queeley-Dennis’s BULLRING TECHNO MAKEOUT JAMZ, and Duncan Macmillan’s EVERY BRILLIANT THING. Among the actors featured were Siobhán McSweeney, Alfred Enoch, Hugh Skinner, Meg Bellamy, Heather Agyepong, Ian Glen, Kola Bokinni, and Jonny Donahoe. Of particular mention were a filmed segment from Amy Trigg’s bittersweet REASONS YOU SHOULD(N’T) LOVE ME in Paines Plough’s original venue and several speeches from some of Paines Plough’s signature names, including James Graham, Roy Williams, and Mark Ravenhill.
For me, however, the showstopper of the evening was Tom Sturridge’s performance of Simon Stephens’ SEA WALL. I saw Sturridge do this piece back in 2019 alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, who performed Nick Payne’s A LIFE, at the Public Theatre. It was the first show I saw when I moved to New York City that spring. I was twenty-one, still interning at theatres instead of hospitals. So it was surreal to have SEA WALL gifted to me again, a few years later, after having moved to London to finally pursue a career in the theatre. If I was looking for a sign that I’d made the right decision in leaping from medicine to theatre, I found it that evening.
Sometimes, there are no words to explain what happens in a life. You can only go to the theatre and have it worked out for you onstage. Seeing SEA WALL again made me feel the powerful current of the theatre, how this craft has pushed me along under the quiet but sure strokes of so many playwrights’ pens. I felt what everyone else at the Criterion Theatre felt that evening: gratitude. Gratitude for Paines Plough’s perseverance, spending fifty years advocating for the careers of playwrights that have touched so many lives, including my own. Gratitude for the playwrights, who have given all of us a reason to go to the theatre. Gratitude for theatre itself and its insistence that the human imagination is worth putting on a stage for anyone to see. And gratitude for whatever the next fifty years of playwrights are waiting to reveal to us.