Breaking Character: With her latest play receiving its world premiere in New York this month, we caught up with the award-winning writer Jaki McCarrick to hear about her creative process. Her play, Leopoldville, won the 2010 Papatango Prize for New Writing, and her most recent play, Belfast Girls, developed at the National Theatre Studio, London, was shortlisted for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 2014 BBC Tony Doyle Award. It recently premiered in Chicago to much critical acclaim. Belfast Girls has been touring in the US and Australia. In this interview, Jaki shares the inspiration behind Belfast Girls, offers an insight into her writing routine, and gives some advice for aspiring playwrights.
2 comments:
I am not a playwright and not really a writer at all so reading this article about the writing process and what goes into writing a whole show was very interesting. Something I love about her idea for this show is that she knew she wanted to write an all-female story, but she didn't force a story. I love that she waited until she found a story that really spoke to her. Something else I admired about McCarrick's writing process is that she writes poetry as well as plays but again she doesn't force something to be a poem or to be a play; she thinks in terms of what best suits the idea to decide how she should write. Something I found really interesting is that she writes out her scripts longhand and then types it later. Again I am not a writer so I found it so fascinating that she writes longhand and then types later. I also think that her advice about social media to new playwrights trying to promote their work was great advice because she is right, you can't get a lot of work done and take some time to do creative writing if you spend all of your time on social media.
I think that Jaki McCarrick is very interesting because her plays are so different. She is writing about these stories, such as the Orphan Girls, and the stories she is telling all relate back to her. I think the most interesting part of this article is when she talked about her creative process and how she writes. I've never tried to write a play before but I have tried to write stories, and it is really hard to do. She says that she tries to write at least three pages a day, if not more, and I find that really admirable. It is hard to force yourself to write when you don't want to. I also found her advice to be good. Social media is free, and if you can promote yourself on it, why shouldn't you. Most people have social media, so it's a great way to get the word out.
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