Young Playwright Interviews: Thomas McClure

Our next Young Playwright Programme interview is with Thomas McClure.

How did you feel about sharing your work with other people?

At first, I felt very unsure, always wanting to add this and that or clean up the edges, fearing people would see right through it or would see merely a block of text that wasted their time. It was a very scary experience. As it went on, this fear only escalated. Having people and professionals start to question your work, the inner aspects and outer framing, from the point of it all to the very word choice, made me worry that I was giving them a mess to try and sort through. Everyone through the process was very open and really helped to make the process comfortable for me, which greatly helped as we entered the final stages. The fear still lingers, but instead of keeping me back, it pushes me forward to want it to be questioned. Understanding myself was a big part of creating the final piece and figuring out what I wanted to say was the biggest struggle for me throughout. In my final piece, I was very unsure of what I was writing and the level of criticism and insight and support from my peers really helped me understand what I wanted to write. In the end, the questions helped me to know what I wanted and how it could be conveyed effectively.

 

Did you find your voice?

I think I’ve found one of my voices. At the start of the programme, I had many different ideas of who I am and what I want to write about. Through the workshops and the playwriting, I was able to narrow down the perspectives I wanted to show the world through, the meanings I wanted to impart and the style I wanted to utilise. One of my blogs regarding my experiences goes into more detail about finding a more literal voice, exploring my relation between my mental voice, my writing voice and my speaking voice, as well as that of characters and situations. Through this programme, I’ve been helped to work through understanding myself, and I feel like I know where I can reach and what my current limitations are and what I should work on next, as well as who I am as a person, what I believe in, and what messages I want to explore in my stories.

 

 What do you plan to do following this experience?

 I’m currently a student at the University of Glasgow, studying creative writing, and so that is my main focus after this programme is finished. I had always wanted to pursue creative writing academically, but it was Ali Anderson-Dyer and the other professionals I worked with in this programme that gave me the confidence to apply for a course. I also plan to keep in touch with the people I have met in this programme, and hope to work with them in the future, as well as meet up after the world has doused enough fires. Overall, I plan to continue working on things to be released, I have a lot of things in the works but no plan is ever certain with me unfortunately, but seeing how things go, I could be popping up sometime soon with something new.

 

What advice would you give to people considering joining this programme in the future?

Brainstorm ideas throughout. This was mostly just a problem with me, as far as I’m aware, but I didn’t explore a lot of ideas in the early stages and I think that became a problem near the end. In the middle stages I started to form a few ideas but then I overstructured them and made every little detail so intrinsic to the story that I had forgotten the core concepts and themes and what it meant to me.

I suggest new playwrights compile as many ideas they have in a mind map. Keep your original ideas, themes, personal meanings, all separate and then when you get an idea that would alter the original one, add it in a new bubble connected with a line. This allows for different paths of ideas to form from similar concepts, themes, and meanings and so makes it much easier to ‘kill your darlings’ and backtrack points in revision. This also keeps the original points intact so you can essentially remember what you wanted, allowing for easier progression. This won’t apply to everyone but for some it will really save them if they have similar fears of clarity as myself.

Also, maintain good communication, the team will understand any problems you have and it’s better to pop a message saying you’ll be behind than to just hope they won’t notice that it’s a few days late. Most importantly, trust yourself and look after yourself; everyone in this programme is here to help and they are very understanding, try not to stress yourself.

 

Images courtesy of Thomas McClure

Interview by Claire Watts