DIG WHERE YOU STAND - Mark Wheeller

No one has been more surprised by the success of my One Act Play TOO MUCH PUNCH FOR JUDY than me. In it's short eleven-year history it has been performed nearly 4000 times to become one of the most performed plays in the world … ever!!! Someone recently pointed out to me that it has been performed an average of (nearly) once a day since the publication of the first edition ten years ago.

The conception of this play grew from an idea I had come across when I was working alongside Roy Nevitt, the director of Drama at Stantonbury Campus (an innovative secondary school) in Milton Keynes. Roy's philosophy to put "bums on seats" was to serve up plays telling stories from the local community … "Dig where you stand" was/is his motto. Milton Keynes, in the late seventies/early eighties, was a particularly interesting city to test out this ideology. Uniquely it had no shared history amongst it's various communities. Few of those who lived there had done so for much longer than a few months/years. Roy rose to this challenge and developed productions which, in my view, helped this infant city to gain a sense of "self". They were also incredibly successful at drawing interest from the local community and beyond, often capturing the imagination of local television … having the inevitable side effect of "bums on seats".

When I moved to Epping, in Essex I took the "Dig Where you Stand" idea with me although I'd never dared to try it out on Roy's territory.

My first attempt was to add some reminiscences from locals to a tried and tested Musical I had already written called Blackout, about the evacuation in World War II. These reminiscences were originally interpolated into the script reflecting the experiences of the central character at a number of different emotional moments in to the play. Although in retrospect a little clumsy the idea worked and added an extra level to the fictional story. It gave the fictional story a greater sense of reality and affected the make up of our audience significantly. Not only were we pulling in parents and friends … but we were drawing in a whole new audience of the "subjects" and their friends … not to mention other evacuees who were interested to compare their experiences with those who had spoken to us.

More recently for the final published musical I have incorporated the oral testimony into the script and now the fictional characters undergo the experiences relayed to me by those four evacuees … the sense of reality is quite amazing … in a review of the Musical in The Times Hugh David said:

"The experiences of the real life evacuees were vivid, honest and as characteristic of their period as taped windows and the drone of air-raid sirens. The evocation of the period was so good, I spent the first act waiting for Vera Lynn's entrance!"

I was convinced that through my quest for a "new" audience (by using local stories) I had hit upon something else quite by accident that pre-dated the current crop of reality TV transmissions.

Our audience related well to the "true life" nature of the Musical through the use of actual words (oral testimony), unchanged, from those who had participated in an event … it validated what I had to say about the war … I was too young to remember it … but in this review the words I had elected to use had evoked an era that I had never experienced.

I wanted to try and extend this methodology to tell the story of a contemporary hero. I chose Graham Salmon (who lived about 8 miles away from me) the World Champion blind athlete. Using only the words of the people who knew Graham best I (with the Epping Youth Theatre) jig-sawed a play (Race To Be Seen) and chose to premiere it in the Theatre closest to Graham's home. As an unknown Theatre group we were now able to command a packed audience (for three nights!) n a town that was (a little) outside our "catchment area". We then went on to perform the play on our home territory …. Again it was a sell out! We were now putting bums on seats by the interest generated by our subject matter rather than relying on the loyalty of our friends and relatives! This was such an important step. We then toured the play to Graham's old school, a Theatre near Grahams workplace… each time picking up incredible reviews that led to us getting a "reputation". The play was finally shown at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where it was selected as the Evening News Critic's Choice and Radio Forth's Pick of The Fringe. This level of coverage led to a publisher (Longmans) publishing the play!

I have recently re-visited this idea and have written a new play telling the story of Graham the man I came to know as a result of writing this play (as well as the sportsman recounted in Race To Be Seen). The new play Graham - World's Fastest Blindman! has just been published by dbda, and tells the whole of Graham's inspiring life… tragically Graham died in 1999. I really hope that groups choose to present this play and tell Graham's story … it has proved now that it is not merely a local interest story.

I guess that one of my main concerns when embarking on writing a play is that a local story will not have a restricted audience … restricted to the locality from where the story emerged.

Too Much Punch For Judy has convinced me that this is not the case. Again my Theatre group premiered this play in the town where the incident originally occurred stirring up much local & subsequently national interest … it is amazing to be part of the snowball effect of media coverage.

Too Much Punch For Judy tells of a girl who killed her sister in a tragic drink/drive car crash. Again … like Graham's story it is told exclusively through the words of those who were involved … the girl (Judy), her mother, the first witness, the Nurse at the hospital & the two Policemen who happened to be on duty that night. Soon the play was picked up by Road Safety Officers who put it initially into ever school in Essex … then England … then Scotland … and so on. After a number of successful years touring in the UK a request came in from New Zealand to tour the play extensively out there. I was asked if it would be ok for them to alter the location. I said I didn't want my answer to stop the tour but that I felt it would be less authentic if the location was changed. So this (true) story, set in a little Essex village (North Weald) travelled across the world … the question of changing the location) has never been raised again. Too Much Punch For Judy became the most performed play in New Zealand for two years in succession with Bouncers coming second! Perhaps it wasn't the fact that these were local stories that maintained the audiences interest in the first place … although in the early days that certainly helped generate initial interest … I think it was down to the authenticity of the words in the play(s).

People ask me whether I still use that documentary style… yes I do … but not exclusively … as a personal challenge I wanted to see if I could write a fictional story that has the authenticity of my documentary plays. Arson Around is the result … a fictional story (thoroughly researched obviously!) of death by arson … another serious subject. The play has not yet been released … when it is I will be curious to see if I have managed to make it authentic enough … meanwhile I have a problem … because it is a fictional story there is nowhere natural to premiere it … any offers?

Mark is a successful playwright and drama teacher. More information about the plays mentioned above, as well as details of his other plays can be found on his website.