Rebekah Bowsher’s blog | Write to Play year 3

Dear future Write to Players

When I sat down to write this blog. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know who to talk to. I didn’t know what to talk about. I wasn’t thoroughly convinced by blogging as a process or my ability to do it. And then I remember seeing one of the new Write to Players and I thought – what do I wish I’d known at the start of this adventure?

So Dear future Write to Player,

You are about to embark on a journey. A journey altogether too long and simultaneously too short. The days will feel endless and yet the months slip by. You can’t imagine it, but in less than a year you will have sixty plus pages of a play. The scary thing for me was at this point I didn’t even know what that might be yet. And it could be anything! About anything! About anyone!

You know you’ve got master classes, and several weeks of focused play writing as well as sharings of shorter work. You know you’re going be at different theatres. But, you feel sick because you don’t know what you’re going to write; you don’t know who you’re going to meet, or where any of these things are going to be. You’re terrified that any minute someone will shout – “you are not a playwright, leave now.”

Except they won’t. Because you’re part of the Graeae family now. And Jenny (Sealey) took our band of nervous, scared and shy Write to Players and made us stand up on the first day and learn sign language, so now we’re fluent (only kidding – sort of). And Chloe and Amit nurtured us and cheered us on. They helped us connect with mentors who got ‘us’ and what we were trying to write. And they took our sensitive fledgling work and took it to the next draft.

I’m not gonna lie. We are still a band of nervous, scared and shy playwrights. But we are playwrights and we all own that name now.

Write to Play is an amazing opportunity. That’s why I applied, and why Sarah, SJ and Rick all applied. I assume it’s why you applied. And it’s true. In one year, I don’t think I could have made so many connections, networked, written as much as I have, and learnt so much about how this crazy industry works had it not been for Write to Play. All of those opportunities made all the fear worth it. But getting to be part of the Graeae Family? That is the real, but unexpected, bonus.

So throw yourself at the opportunities. Ask every little question and make connections. Write all those things you’ve been too nervous to write before. Learn. Grow. And most of all – enjoy.

Don’t forget to invite me to your sharings next year!