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A politician bounds on to the stage to talk about the future of theatre. “I’m here to help,” she announces with an unctuous smile, holding an iPad. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of a celebrated touring company. The politician tries to convince her audience that technology will lead the way. Drama is not real but “artificial” so, moving ahead, wouldn’t it make more sense for artificial intelligence to produce it? “Let’s reset!” she says, whooping at her idea.
The scenario is, thankfully, artificial itself: a short new satirical work by James Graham, written to mark the 50th anniversary of Paines Plough, which has championed new writing and helped kickstart the careers of Graham and a glittering alumni of other leading British playwrights.
The scene, performed by Monica Dolan and exuding The Thick of It vibes, opened a gala event on Monday at the Criterion theatre in London. Joint artistic directors Katie Posner and Charlotte Bennett, hosting the night, spoke of new writing not as “the future of theatre, but as theatre itself”.
The small but mighty company was conceived by David Pownall and John Adams in 1974 over a pint of Paines bitter in a Bedford pub called the Plough. It has since nurtured writers including Sarah Kane, Mike Bartlett, Abi Morgan, Duncan Macmillan, Dennis Kelly, Simon Stephens and Chris Bush. Graham, now its patron, said a monologue he wrote for the company, about the miners’ strike in Nottinghamshire, inspired his hit TV series Sherwood.
Others there alongside him paid homage and reminisced. Mark Ravenhill spoke of becoming literary manager and inviting Kane to be writer-in-residence, during which time she staged her savagely lyrical play, Crave. A script-in-hand extract of that play was searingly performed by Alfred Enoch, Rebekah Murrell, Siobhán McSweeney and Thomas Coombes.
Extracts of other works formed a kind of “greatest hits” compilation: Stephens’ monologue Sea Wall (originally performed by Andrew Scott) was delivered with great potency by Tom Sturridge. Kola Bokinni’s comic riff from Nathan Queeley-Dennis’s Bruntwood prize-winning Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, was another highlight, as was Jonny Donahoe’s performance from Every Brilliant Thing, which has travelled to New York and toured extensively since he co-wrote it with Macmillan.
The National Theatre’s incoming director, Indhu Rubasingham, and theatre producer Ellie Keel were among guests speaking of their collaborations with Paines Plough – Rubasingham in tenure at the Kiln theatre where she staged Amy Trigg’s Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me (which Trigg charismatically reprised in a screen extract) and Keel as co-founder of the Women’s prize for playwriting.
Morgan recalled how Paines Plough had saved her life as a writer in the 1990s but also spoke of the deluge of writers leaving theatre for screen work. Live performance was not “locked behind glass” as “a slick multimillion dollar series,” she said, with what sounded like a note of bittersweetness, given her TV credits.
There were many reminders of the need for arts investment. The evening was part of an initiative aiming to raise £50,000 to develop new writing talent. There is an auction lot, One Page Play, promising a personalised play written by Bartlett, Bush, Kelly or Roy Williams for the highest bidder.
