BrokenCrow Play Clinic @ The Everyman

As part of our residency at the Everyman Theatre, BrokenCrow were delighted to be able to host our first official Play Clinic this January. We had an open call for submissions and were pleasantly surprised to have filled all of our slots within 24 hours.

Our intrepid playwrights were Ruti lachs, Robert Carey-Elwood, Eoin O’Donovan and Shaunna Lee-Lynch and we had a lovely weekend in the back room of the Everyman reading and discussing their diverse body of work. It’s not an easy thing to serve up a developing script to anyone, let alone a murder of Crows who are determined to dissect every word.

Inviting in external practitioners has always been something we do and it has led to some really strong relationships. But, what is more important, is that it makes the work better. It is a huge benefit to a playwright to hear your words at the right stage in a process. Those things that seemed perfectly natural when a voice in your head can seem very different when falling from an actor’s mouth. Not to mention the mixture of emotions experienced when watching people digest your work… The giddy thrill of hearing them laugh at the right time and the nauseating lurch of hearing them laugh at the wrong one.

It’s not for the feint-hearted.

As makers, we have a duty to our art form to insure that we send out the best possible version of our vision. Every half-baked show that was staged before it was ready can create an audience who will think twice before forking out for a ticket next time. You can damage, not just your own brand, but that of the entire industry. In a cultural landscape where the “validity” of what you make is a fluid discussion, then sometimes, all we have to grab hold of is professional rigor and craft.

As a company, we have been working hard to be as ruthless and honest as possible with each other. It’s an ongoing challenge but we feel that the benefits of this kind of creative peer-review make it worth the effort. We were happy to be able to share this process with some new faces.

Fair play to all of the playwrights who came along and thanks for coming to play with us.

We hope to do it again soon!