'You can dream bigger': what writers prefer about stage to screen
A play in its conception is, for me, uniquely intimate and private. Eventually it grows to be the opposite of that and blossoms outwards, but there’s something about building it that initially feels delicate, fragile and personal. I think that might have something to do with my childhood; listening to conversations and writing things down, and that being the start of me thinking about plays.
TV feels a lot less private and there’s a part of me that’s very in control and adult and managerial with it. I won’t do any TV unless I’m exec producing as well, like I was in Succession. That means you’re involved in all the major decisions: casting, locations and lots of practical things, which I’d never be that interested in when writing for theatre. If I go to a television meeting I’m more armoured. In theatre I feel much more of a pure artist.
The creative processes are very different, practically and psychologically. In theatre, a bunch of people come together, discuss a play, then rehearse and perform it in real time. That’s a very sane thing to do. Filming TV is actually quite insane. It’s very easy to see how you can get lost and confused in a world where everything is fake, and you repeat the same thing over and over again. Whereas I think theatre is quite a healthy process. You have a narrative that you explore, which you then go through every night. It’s genuinely therapeutic.
My favourite moment in theatre is the tech. I find it very romantic. You’ve got all these people sitting in the dark, for 10- or 14-hour days, trying to build this thing. Nobody is at the centre of things. Everything is egoless. There’s you, the director and the designer, sitting in the middle of an empty theatre and staring at the stage. At that point, all possibilities are available.
Vinay Patel: ‘You can make almost anything happen’
I came to theatre quite late. I did a master’s in writing and had massive arguments with my coursemates; I just didn’t see the point in theatre. But then I wrote my first play to try to push myself. The way that it made my brain work – the fact I could make almost anything happen – there was real delight in that.
I never have to feel self-conscious writing for the theatre. When I did An Adventure at the Bush in 2018, the play spanned 60 years and three continents. There’s no way I’d get that on telly. What’s great about theatre is that you can start with ambitious storytelling right from the off. Theatre is a little space where you can dream a little bigger.
Telly is led by the audience in a way that theatre isn’t necessarily. Murdered By My Father was a BBC Three commission. I knew the audience would be relatively young, so I had to write a story I could place in front of them. Doctor Who was a similar experience. That’s meant to be a family show, which obviously affects the type of stories you can tell. You have to try to find the family-friendly way to explore the partition of India while still being truthful.
When you go to watch a play, you tend to be someone who is vaguely interested in theatre – whereas people can quite casually catch things on TV. With Murdered By My Father, an imam from Bradford talked about how he used it to talk to his congregation, and a sixtysomething woman from Cornwall sent me a letter saying the show reminded her of her dad. That kind of reach is amazing but it’s also scary, and inherently more intense. The responsibility feels much higher when you’re writing for TV.
Theatre is so much about potential. It’s most fulfilling when it’s really playful. I love the sort of theatre that makes me smile without realising it: the shows that are silly and reach beyond themselves, just because they know they can.
Rachel De-lahay: ‘It feels more like your baby’
Theatre is a dark room, with a spotlight, that you get to tell a story in. That feels really easy and tangible. Telly stuff feels more formulaic. It’s really fun when you nail it, but definitely a different rhythm.
The difference between them isn’t really about the dialogue. It’s about the rhythm of the text, and what those scenes are supposed to do to an audience. So if I need you to feel engaged with someone – and I need you to hear what’s going on in their head – that could potentially come out in a chunky piece of dialogue in the theatre. You go on a journey with the actor and you watch them on stage kind of cracking through the thought. In telly a lot of that can be done with facial expressions.
In both theatre and television you want to work with people who can help tell the best story with you. I’ve just worked on Noughts and Crosses, and I was 100% pushing theatre people forward and suggesting names. You’ve seen actors who telly people might not have heard of play lead roles in small theatres and shine. It feels like you’re part of a community because everyone’s pulling each other up.
You do go on set when you’re a writer for TV but I’m don’t sit with the director day in, day out, like I would be in a theatre rehearsal. In theatre, it just feels more like your baby. Although when I was working on Kiri, I got to watch Sarah Lancashire deliver a monologue I’d just written – that felt magic.
Jack Thorne: ‘When a play hits, there’s a real hush’
I tend to write the impossible into a play when I’m enjoying it. The first play I did with John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett was Let the Right One In. I started it with someone running through a forest, being strung up by their ankles and having their throat cut open. I wrote that knowing it wouldn’t be possible to replicate but that Steven and John would do something very interesting with that stage direction.
Telly can be like that, too. With National Treasure, I wrote a 16-page scene. That’s not how telly works, but you throw down the gauntlet and say: let’s see what you can do to sustain this. With His Dark Materials, I kept saying to myself: remember, you’ve got to take a nine-year-old with you. If this show works, the most exciting thing will be when the telly is switched off and a family talk about what happened. That’s the thing I try to keep in my head all the time: what am I setting up that sofa conversation to be?
Theatre’s a bit similar in that you’re thinking about the bar chat afterwards, but it’s also much more about an unspoken communication with the audience. It’s about getting rid of the rustle and it’s about people sitting forward. Everyone knows when a play is really hitting because the audience suddenly becomes very quiet, stops eating their sweets (except maybe on Broadway), and suddenly there’s a real sort of hush. You’re always striving for that lean-forward moment in theatre.