Writing in Coffee Shops: Confessions of a Playwright

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If this sounds like a hoot, do trip along to the depths beneath Waterloo Station. Otherwise, it would be safer to remain at platform level. The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre: Cottesloe, London". The Independent. 18 March 2011 . Retrieved 21 December 2018. Filthy Business (2017): ' A superbly modern Mother Courage …If plays survive by creating meaty roles for actors, Ryan Craig's new work is destined for a long life' (Michael Billington, Guardian) It’s great that theatre is opening up to people who were previously marginalised,” says Craig. “That’s a good thing and we have further to go. But are we going to tell someone from an Armenian community that they can only write about an Armenian community? That doesn’t make sense.”

Ryan Craig, author of What We Did to Weinstein and Charlotte and Theodore, has a different worry. “They are not responding to playwrights because they don’t know what’s going to offend or what’s going to work. They don’t trust themselves and they don’t trust the artists. And because the rules about what’s sanctioned keep changing, they need to keep all their options open. It’s depressing because theatres seem to have forgotten how vital they are to the cultural conversation. They have decided to follow and not to lead. Playwrights can’t do that or their plays will be hollow, ephemeral and dead.”What We Did to Weinstein ( Menier Chocolate Factory) - 2005. Nominated for Most Promising Playwright at Evening Standard Awards. [37] She’s ruthless and manipulative but everything she does is done with great deal of love and the best of intentions. But as with all these things the result is not necessarily what she imagined. “ Instead, she gets advice from bland, occasionally blustering Logan, an old English-accented friend from schooldays, played by Calum Callaghan. The fact that they seem to love each other is somehow never broached.

See Michael Billington, “The Holy Rosenbergs – review,” The Guardian, 16 March 2011; Charles Spencer, “The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre, review,” The Telegraph, 17 March 2011; David Benedict, “Review: ‘The Holy Rosenbergs,’ Variety, 17 March 2011; Paul Taylor, “The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre: Cottesloe, London,” Independent, 18 March 2011; John Nathan, “Craig discovers his rubber soul,” The Jewish Chronicle, 17 March 2017. It’s always been hard for an unknown writer to get a play read. It can take months to get a response to an unsolicited script. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about produced playwrights with serious CVs and professional profiles, who are actively encouraged, invested in and commissioned to write new plays for Arts Council-funded theatres, being messed around then ghosted. And, as happened in real life, two questions arose in the play: Who inherits the business, and who wants to inherit the business?

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I’ve been trying to write this kind of family business drama for years because of my own family history,” he adds. “They started this rubber company. It was a classic story of immigration from eastern Europe: no money, no skills, yet somehow having to build something of your own to survive and make a life. It was a world within in a world; a state within a state. And this is what Yetta does in the play.”