Happy New Year…it’s murky out there but in here it’s warm…

This blogging lark’s taken me a while to get my head round but I’m getting there slowly, I hope…if I’lm not, bear with me, it can only get better – ahem. Apparently. Last week I caught Radio 4’s Front Row’s Special on (young) Female Playwrights and girls, I have to say, by & large, you don’t know you’ve got it so good! Polly Stenham, Lucky Kirkwood, Lucy Prebble, Alia Bano et al…you are undoubtedly extremely talented, but you are also undoubtedly heading up a zeitgeist – and  I hate to say it, call me Devil’s Advocate if you like, but I definitely see a new and recent trend for female writers – only let’s pray it stays, let’s pray it lasts and isn’t just a ‘zeitgeist’ that burns out.   Largely from the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme (and yes, spare a thought for the older writer, older by – well, over 25, yep over the hill who does not deserve, apparently, a leg-up – whilst personally I’m impressed these very young writers have so much to say: I didn’t feel I had anything much worth saying until I was 33 and wrote my first book…whether it was worth saying, well, that’s your call not mine.) Anyway, the writers on Front Row had much to say but some were outraged when asked if they thought their sex had anything to do with their success.  Not that I think it should, of course it shouldn’t: writers are writers, male or female, the talent’s there or it’s not and if it isn’t, well hopefully you’ll keep the dream alive.

Of course there’s absolutely no doubt that in any genre of writing, literary, crime, poetry, film & TV screenwriting, plays, the whole damn shebang, that men have outnumbered women since time immemorial and it’s dull and wrong, heinously wrong and of course it must must must be redressed asap.  But that’s how it’s been.  Meanwhile, incremental changes occur eg our first female poet laurete, Carol Ann Duffy – and thank God she’s such a bloody good poet, frankly such a much better one than…well you get my drift.  But the female writers on Front Row seemed disingenous to me and to be slightly missing the point.   “I don’t even want to answer the question about sex” was the general cry – but why then was there a programme about ‘female’ playwrights in the first place???  Hey, ladies?  Because there are so blooming few – and because suddenly it is getting easier, as it should, to be a woman writer and succeed.  Because a lot of the fusty famous old male farts in theatre don’t necessarily have that much to say anymore.  Because women shouldn’t just write about emotions – but then, hey, maybe we sometimes, oh dare I say it, maybe our emotional responses are sometimes more instinctive.   And because, sorry, it’s suddenly fashionable to use female playwrights.  Long may it last.

Anyway.  Some of the writers didn’t strike a discordant note: not the lovely Chloe Moss whom I know and whose work is so strong, or Ella Hickson or Enron writer Prebble, these women seemed grounded and realistic – but a couple of the writers, well, their tone was kind of annoying.  Sorry, girls, but the world does not owe you a hearing just because you can write.  Yes, it’s more than outrageous that Royal National Theatre’s first play written by a woman only went on in 2008 (Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin – ironically about suffragettes).  But however talented you are, you’re also incredibly lucky to be having your voices heard so widely, not that they should be decrying gratitude – but let’s not kid ourselves that there is a huge amount of luck involved with any art form: writing, acting, singing, whatever…Call it what you like, serendipity etc – but let’s get real.  You can be bolshy and arrogant as you like, but a little humility goes a long way – and you are also lucky to be coming around in a time when the artistic directors and the TV commissioners are finally wising up a little and opening up your options. It’s been a long fight, but I think it’d pay to realise that there have been hundreds of  female writers before you who have not had the chance to be heard, whose work was undoubtedly every bit as worthy and talented as yours – and there’s undoubtedly another few thousand sat at home penning stuff which one day, for the Grace of God, may also get heard.