Comments on: ATF 2011 – Good morning Friday!

By: Augusta Supple

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:17:46 +0000

Alison – thank you – I utterly agree. I think failure is a very big part of the pursuit of excellence. I think some playwrights get trapped in the plays they think they should be writing – in a style they think they have been (or have imposed on themselves) – and this stops growth.
For me the rudiments of writing can be taught, but originality can’t be.
Talent can only develop though confidence. Confidence that comes from support.
I do not believe that we should as a community as one artist suggested once that we should “punish the weak.” I also don’t think we should be so quick to judge someone on their “talent” if they haven’t been given time, space, resources.
We need to help our artists to have confidence to explore, develop and excel.
And I believe confidence erupts in successfully facing failure, not just celebrating success.

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By: Alison Croggon

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:35:40 +0000

Talent is not equally distributed, and no, it can’t be taught. If you don’t have the ability, no amount of training will make up for it. This is why I’m not an Olympic athlete. But talent MUST be nourished, and there are many ways of doing that.

Yes, 90 per cent of writing is hard labour. The other 90 per cent (who said I was a mathemetician?) is failure. You probably learn more from failure than you do from success. So every writer must ahve room to fail. As I said yesterday, the most exciting playwrights I’ve seen have emerged from collaborative companies, making work and putting it on whether or not anyone says they can. I think playwrights are crucially theatre workers, and unlike other writers they have to understand the form in three dimensions order to write for it. Otherwise, you’re better off with prose. That’s been true since Shakespeare. But surely the place to start for a playwright is reading lots of plays? Curiosity about the form as a literary art as well as a collaborative art, and curiosity about the ideas that drive it, from Aristotle to Brecht to Cixous to Etchells and beyond…

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By: Augusta Supple

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:41:58 +0000

I agree – i don’t think talent is something that just hits someone on the head. For me I think the best qualities a playwright (or any artist) can have are these things interest/curiosity in the outside world and practical experience and a highly attuned sense of intuition and nerves of steel and eternal optimism and being able to work with others.

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By: Molly Dean

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:10:58 +0000

Um… what’s the saying 10 percent talent 90 percent hard work or some such thing? Practical training is super super important. You can be good without it. But with it, you can be great. Virtuosity comes with training and practice, practice, practice.

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