Stage | The Guardian: It took Georgina Duncan a few seconds to realise that Indhu Rubasingham, when announcing the winner of the Women’s prize for playwriting last week, was talking about her drama, Sapling. The 30-year-old recalls the moment: “The first sentence I heard her say, I was like, ‘That could be any of the plays.’ Then I was like, ‘Holy shit! This is the maddest thing that’s ever happened to me.’”
2 comments:
I loved that this article emphasized the research that Georgina Duncan did during the writing process for her play Sapling. She “took prison tours” in Belfast, where the play is set, and met actors and townspeople to talk about her ideas and learn the city’s history and geography.
It was interesting to find out that Duncan has a background in acting! The theatre community is so interconnected: I know production staff who sing and act, and actors who love the production side or the directing side. It is part of what makes theatre so magical. It makes sense that Duncan’s playwriting is elevated because of her background. As the author puts it, there is an “aliveness to her words.” I also enjoyed hearing that Duncan reads her play aloud as she works. That seems like a great way to check if the words make sense and read right.
I can imagine it was so gratifying to hear that Sapling won Duncan the Women’s prize. It is always great to hear about successes in theatre.
I think it's really important to continue to highlight and support women writers, especially those of the global majority. It is super disappointing that we still need separate awards to highlight women's achievements because the original awards have just awful statistics around who is winning awards. It is great to highlight women writers but I wish we lived in a world where that happened without having to create a separate award and instead we could just not be sexist in non-gendered award shows. This writer's experience with acting seems to have a super positive impact on how she writes for actors. The unique background of every writer is very interesting because you can see how the lives of people change how they write. Taking actors into account when writing is certainly not always necessary or even good but it can be great in some situations.
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