Why this play, and how? Questions playwrights must ask themselves
Lela & Co is a play about a person trying to tell a story. It is not a happy one, but even in the darkest of stories there is room for comedy, and Lela is eager to entertain. Despite her determination to see it through (and she is very determined), her need to do so is troubled by the temporal nature of the theatre experience. In an hour and 20 minutes she will have lost you. The house lights will go up, the spell will break, and your imagination will be your own again, turning naturally from suspension of disbelief to criticism.
When I was first approached to write the play that became Lela & Co, the difficulties of telling Lela’s story became mine, too. It is not a particularly unique story; there are other plays, films, television dramas, documentaries and petitions that all follow a similar narrative. It is a timeless story, and a placeless one, with no strong, current political or theoretical allegiances. There is a saying in the theatre world that is meant to help you judge whether a play is good for programming or not: why this play, and why now? From the writer’s perspective, this doesn’t seem to be the right question. More pressing is: why this play, and how? How to tell this well-told story in a way that is worth the telling?
Watch the trailer for Lela & Co
The poet Glyn Maxwell wrote that, “Whoever masters form masters time.” I quite like this rather cryptic message, because although he is directing his advice at poets, it can be offered to playwrights, too. It seems, actually, particularly necessary for the playwright because they are fighting, more than most other artistic media, against time. Master time, and you can master the theatrical form. Master your form, and you can master time. All this means is find the answer to the “and how?” of my question: find the form that best reflects your content, your story, and you are, if not mastering time, at least starting to work with it rather than against it.
Lela & Co is, formally, a monologue. It had to be a monologue because someone who has been forced to remain silent is trying to tell a story that she urgently needs to tell. It seemed right that she should finally be given the chance to tell it as she likes, in her own words and only her words. However, Lela & Co is a monologue with five speaking characters and two actors. This, by definition, means that it isn’t a monologue, but I agree with Edward Albee when he says that “since art must move, or wither – the playwright must try to alter the forms within which his precursors have had to work”. Lela & Co required that the traditional monologue form, while still remaining recognisable, be altered to reflect its content.
‘Art must move, or wither’ … David Mumeni (Man) and Katie West (Lela) in Lela & Co. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
That content is conflict. This story explores varying levels of conflict, each reflecting and contained in the other: in the mind, on the body, between people, within and across borders, across history too, and, of course, across time. There is a war in this play, and it is suggested that there have been many wars for many years. This world’s inhabitants have been, and are being, shattered by violence, and they helplessly recreate what happens on a vast public scale within the walls of their homes, in the minutiae of their relationships. Any war has its opportunists, and there are those with very good reasons for not wanting Lela to tell her story. Just as Lela’s world and body are shattered in conflict, so the form reflects its content, and her monologue is interrupted, undermined, fragmented.
Lela & Co not only contains war, but formally manifests one because Lela must fight her Co to regain control of her occupied narrative.
Form and the choice of form can be a political act. Sometimes telling a story is what you do for a living, but sometimes you tell a story to bear witness, or make testament, or as therapy, because you need it to be heard, and you need to bring some formal coherence to your own experience. There can be pleasure in the telling, or relief, or grief. Probably all three. There is a woman somewhere in the world – there are, sadly, many such women and men and children – who has a story to tell but is not able to do so. As this woman, and those like her, are unable to tell their stories, Lela seizes the moment to tell a tale inspired by them instead. She has her content, she has found her form, now she needs to master it. The clock’s ticking.
Lela & Co is at the Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, until 3 October.