Evernote got hacked last week.

To explain: Evernote is an app that lets you capture text and pictures from the internet, organise them into ‘notebooks’ and save these to the cloud. I use it because, like many of us, I always have ideas for productions floating around in my head, gathering mass as I read the news each day.

Following the hacking, all Evernote users had to change their passwords. This meant that upon logging into the site, I was faced with the whole unwieldy cache of notes, rather than just clicking on the ‘add’ icon in my browser as I usually do. There were 120 notes to sift through, and it felt good and bad to remember why a project caught fire or stalled: good to have outgrown a project, but bad to be reminded of a project that had outfoxed you, or when someone beat you to the same idea.

I had that beaten-to-it feeling last year, when I heard about a new musical touring the US, set around the pioneering sitcom I Love Lucy. Six years ago, I’d talked to composers about an opera based on the relationship between I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who were married in real life, and the gulf between that relationship and the American Dream as it was developing each week on the new and exciting world of TV. In real life, Ball and Arnaz were battling the prejudice that attended Arnaz’s Cuban ancestry during the anti-Communist fervour of America in the ’50s. My idea was for a show that alternated scenes set backstage with painstaking recreations of the episodes, with each ‘world’ affecting the other. The current show, I Love Lucy: Live, is more of a confection, an exercise in nostalgia, and I like to believe that my show would’ve been more interesting – but so what? I didn’t write it, and now the moment has passed.

I dragged those notes to the trash and clicked ‘delete’.

An hour later, I found another dead project, one that still hurts.

It would have been a solo show based loosely on the story of an American journalist, Josh Wolf, who in 2006 was jailed for refusing to surrender to the FBI video footage he’d shot the previous summer during anti-capitalist protests in San Francisco. Long story short: Wolf claimed that he was a journalist and couldn’t betray his sources; the authorities argued that he was merely a blogger and a shit-stirrer, not the sort of person who should be protected by journalism laws. Wolf spent 226 days in prison while the US judicial system debated citizen journalism, then a new and complex area of law. During his incarceration Wolf managed to keep up with his blog, and as the case progressed, his articles became increasingly kooky. There seemed huge scope here for a piece about unreliable narrators, and about the complexity of being right for the wrong reasons.

The issues still excite me, but I couldn’t make the pieces fit. On reflection, I was scared of making a show about protest in which the protagonist is so compromised. Without other characters to balance the story, I feared that my sole contribution to an important debate could be hijacked by those on the political right. The alternative would be a piece of theatre so loaded with qualifications and apologies that it would start to disintegrate.

It was too hard, at least for me, so I stopped. And as I dragged that file to the trash folder, I felt relieved that I won’t have to birth that problem child. Even if I could overcome those concerns, the news cycle has moved on in the years since: it would feel like a period piece.

Unlike a paper notebook, a digital archive never runs out of pages – it’s like having an infinitely large rug that you can keep sweeping rubbish under. The danger is that, if you don’t clean up every now and then, those scraps will become counterproductive, no longer loading your imagination but weighing you down.

The internet performance artist Ze Frank posits a dangerous drug called ‘brain crack‘:

“If you don’t want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not execute them. You can tell yourself that you don’t have the time or resources to do them right, then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you’ve got those good ideas that you’ll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack and the longer they wait the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals, and everyone’s clapping for them… But the bummer is: most ideas kinda suck when you do them. And no matter how much you plan, you still have to do something for the first time. And you’re almost guaranteed the first time you do something, it’ll blow. But somebody who does something bad three times still has three times the experience of that other person, who’s still dreaming of all the applause.”

I wonder if we should go back to placing human skulls on our desks, Elizabethan-style, as a reminder of our mortality. We have only so much time to make a mark, and we shouldn’t spend that time trying to fix ideas that we know, deep down, aren’t working. Ask: why haven’t I moved this project forward? Why didn’t I make that phone call? Why haven’t I brought together those production sketches into something bigger? Why is that script still a fragment? And be honest: when do we need more information to decide, and when are we just procrastinating?

It’s almost spring.

So get cleaning.

You might not automatically associate Charles Dickens with vintage vinyl, festivals, busking and burger joints, but Theatre Alibi’s new adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop might just change your perception. Featuring malignant loan sharks, bent lawyers and wide boy rappers, Daniel Jamieson’s new adaptation plants the action firmly in today’s world, incorporating a soundtrack spanning the decades from Elvis to Professor Green. The adapter tells Laura Turner more about the tour.

How did you come to work with Theatre Alibi?
I started working with Theatre Alibi as an actor when I left university in 1989. It was for a show called The Withered Arm based on short stories by Thomas Hardy. At first they gave the job to a bloke who could play the accordion and act but he dropped out so they gave job to me instead (I can’t play the accordion)!

So tell me about Curiosity Shop.
Curiosity Shop is Theatre Alibi’s version of a novel by Charles Dickens called The Old Curiosity Shop. In Dickens’s original, the Old Curiosity Shop is an antiques shop owned by Little Nell’s grandfather. In our version, the action has been transplanted to the present and the shop has become a record shop selling mostly old vinyl. The book is 73 chapters long. The play is 84 pages long!

What drew you to such a huge project?
It felt like it had relevant things to say to people now. It tells the stories of several young people whose lives are undermined by the weakness and the malice of older people. That felt very relevant now because of the tough time young people are having at the moment getting an education and a job. Also, the novel has brilliant characters – very colourful and vivid – that felt like they would work well on stage.

It certainly seems like there’s little “old” about your curiosity shop. Was it an easy transition into a modern context?
It wasn’t always easy but it was always fun! It became a sort of game or a puzzle to imagine what the modern version of a Victorian travelling waxworks show or Punch and Judy were, for example. It was a deliberate decision. Dickens will always feel immediate and relevant if you look at it carefully enough, but setting the story now helped me to inhabit it more fully imaginatively.

What was your journey into writing?
A few years after starting work as an actor, me and several other actors decided we wanted to call the shots ourselves so we agreed to put on a play and discovered how hard it is, and how rewarding. Everyone took responsibility for the job they were interested in – I’d always fancied myself as a writer so I wrote the play. I enjoyed it very much (although found it very scary!), it went well and I’ve never looked back.

Are you very involved in the rehearsal process as a writer?
I’m around in the background, ready to give advice if required, ready to change anything in the writing that doesn’t work, helping to make artistic decisions if I’m asked. Nikki, the director, and I talk very thoroughly before rehearsals so we’re on the same wavelength. But you’ve got to give people room to make the show their own.

Where do your inspiration or influences come from?
I get inspiration from all sorts of places, not all theatrical. I’ve always loved Complicite and some of the work of director Katie Mitchell – I thought The Waves was inspirational. But I also love film – old stuff by directors like Powell and Pressburger, Carol Reed, Orson Welles, new stuff like any Studio Ghibli films directed by Miyazaki, Wes Anderson, Michael Haneke – various things. I read a lot of fiction too, all sorts, which I find very inspiring – Cormac Macarthy, Haruki Murakami, Graham Greene, WG Sebald. I’ve also always found art very stimulating in relation to theatre. Artists are such interesting people anyway, but theatre is a visual medium as well as a literary one, so art is very inspirational. Looking at paintings and photos gets my brain working differently.

What’s your advice for aspiring playwrights?
Write as much as you can! Make it as quirky and individual as possible – don’t feel obliged to copy other people to get noticed. Get feedback but don’t get put off – what one person says is never the whole picture. Get in the habit of writing more than one draft of stuff – you can make it much better second time round.

What’s next for you?
Don’t know yet! I’m doing more stuff with Alibi hopefully. I’m adapting a kid’s show for them from a story by Michael Morpurgo called I Believe in Unicorns about a boy growing up in war-torn Bosnia and the importance of books in his life. I’m in the middle of a residency at the Mood Disorders Centre at Exeter University researching and writing about people with depression, which is harrowing, fascinating and, in many ways, uplifting.

And finally, give us a hint of what audiences can expect from Curiosity Shop?
Hopefully, lots of colour – vivid characters and a vividly told story with lots of Alibi’s characteristic ingenuity. And lots of cracking music too. And a brilliant design! All the ingredients for a good show, I reckon.

Curiosity Shop is playing at the Exeter Northcott Theatre until 16 March, then touring until 27 April. For more information, visit http://www.theatrealibi.co.uk/curiosityshoptour.php.

Image credit: Curiosity Shop in rehearsals by Steve Tanner

Staged in a bathroom, Jack Thorne’s recent Soho Theatre hit Mydidae is an intimate exploration of a young couple’s relationship on the anniversary of a shared personal tragedy. Commissioned by DryWrite as its first full-length play, it was produced at Soho in 2012 and now transfers to the Trafalgar Studios for a West End run. A week before the new run begins, Jack Thorne told Eleanor Turney more about the production and his experience of writing.

Tell me a bit about your background – how did you get into theatre?
Well, it’s not a particularly wonderful story! Boringly, I wanted to be a politician, then I wanted to be an actor. Then I went to uni and discovered that I didn’t like politicians and I didn’t have it in me to me an actor, so I decided I wanted to be a director. I couldn’t afford the rights to put on someone else’s play so I decided to write one, and then I discovered that I really liked the writing and not so much the directing bit at the end. I wrote a lot of plays and sent them off to a lot of people; eventually the Bush put one on and it’s gone from there.

How did you start writing professionally?
After that first play, I kept directing and quite enjoyed it, but I wasn’t especially good at it. I loved writing more than anything else and slowly that become what I did. I write for telly and film as well because I like working with other people. I really like collaborating and I like the whole process of putting on a show. I like making stuff with other people. Although I am quite shy and prefer my own company, really, I like what other people do when we collaborate and I think I’d miss that if I was just writing on my own.

Can you describe your writing and re-writing process? Do you like to be in the rehearsal room?
A script always changes in rehearsals, and when you’re working on a telly or film script, the amount of drafts you go through is extensive! You’ll always be changing things. But I’m not that keen on being in the rehearsal room – it’s a bit overwhelming. I love other people doing their thing but I don’t think I’m helpful in the rehearsal room. I’m there at the beginning, but I’m not really a rehearsal room writer. I’m picky about the directors I work with and they’re brilliant – much better than I would be! I’m always there if they want me, I just think that when I’d finished Mydidae, I knew who the characetrs were in my head; I knew them back to front and I don’t think that’s a helpful thing to take into a rehearsal room. The rehearsal room is about actors discovering who those characters are and the director helping them to do that. Having someone there who thinks that they know all the answers isn’t helpful! Having the writer there to ask “what did you mean by this bit?” isn’t that helpful, they need to work that out for themselves.

What advice would you give to young playwrights?
Keep trying, don’t give up. They might be lucky and be a Polly Stenham or an Anya Reiss, or it might take a bit longer. I wasn’t an overnight success, and I’m not sure that I’m truly successful yet myself. Keep plugging away. Also, find a person you trust who’ll read your stuff. It doesn’t have to be a theatre professional, it could just be a friend who gets what you want to do. You need someone on your side but who is interested in making you better, someone to force you to think about your work. But you also need someone to be there when you get rejected and to support you when everyone else is telling you that you’re rubbish. I still get far more rejections than acceptances. You have to be resilient, and having an ally is invaluable.

And what can audiences expect from Mydidae?
It’s changed a bit – not for the new venue, although that will shape matters in terms of direction – just in terms of things that weren’t quite right in the script that I can now fix! Theatre is a living breathing thing and it can change – that’s a brilliant thing. Having the opportunity to take a step back has been brilliant. Audiences can expect a couple of phenomenal performances – that might sound like someone flogging his stuff but I feel incredibly lucky with the performers we have in this show. I really think that young actors should come and see it, because these actors are just that good. What these two create on stage makes me very proud to be a part of it. It’s an intimate, natural play about the things that lure us into the dark. It’s a play about little things, but there’s a lot of little things, it’s pretty dark but also, I hope, hopeful.

Mydidae plays at Trafalgar Studios from 5 to 30 March. For tickets and more information, visit www.atgtickets.com/trafalgarstudios.

Image: Jack Thorne

A unique, fun and challenging look at our current economic climate, MONEY the gameshow is the creation of writer and theatremaker Clare Duffy. Inspired by the real global events that have seen us enter a time of financial crisis, the production takes a light-hearted look at the value of money, but without sacrificing anything in terms of emotional and intellectual impact. By taking part in a live casino game complete with real coins, the audience are drawn into an interactive world where decisions have real costs and there’s always a price to pay. Clare Duffy tells Laura Turner more.

How did MONEY the game show come about? I was astounded when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. When that happened it was so clear there was no backup plan for the global systems of money, that is the systems that make modern western capitalism possible. I had been interested in speculations and rumours about a possible crash prior to 2007, then of course there was the run on Northern Rock in September 2007. But when Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail by the US government and that threatened to actually break the whole system in September 2008, I was really shocked and in some ways quite excited. For me it is the biggest story of my adult life, although I don’t think it has fully played out yet.

Also, I had written a completely different show the year before about a couple who had ‘put a pound in the pot’ for every day they were together. When one of the couple runs away they take their half of the cash with them. I wrote that play to be performed around a long dinner table covered in 500 pound coins. I used the ‘real’ money as part of a fictional drama and that led me to see that coins on stage are not quite the same as money held in the street or shop. So I put this theatrical discovery together with my interest in the economic crisis of 2007/08 and MONEY the gameshow was the result.

So how exactly does the gameshow element of the performance work?
The first thing that happens is that the audience is divided into two teams and each given an ‘ex-hedge fund manager-turned performance artist’. These two characters ‘Queenie’ and ‘Casino’ explain that in the show there are 10,000 real pound coins on stage, which the audience can play with. The show is a series of interactive games demonstrating some of the ways bets are made in financial services to ‘make money’. These games are interspersed with scenes from the lives of the two ‘ex-hedge fund managers’ and show how they tried to bet that the US sub-prime housing market would collapse. The show has two different possible endings. This is decided by the outcome of the games. So, if Queenie’s team wins then Queenie doesn’t have to perform the losing character’s part that night.

There is a lot of audience interaction. There are six actual games that the two teams play competitively. There is also a scene where an audience member plays a role in the story and of course the outcome of the play is determined by the outcome of those games.

What made you decide to use real money on set?
The show is all about asking ‘What is money?’ so it seemed quite important to have some of it actually on stage. The really interesting thing is that it seems to almost stop being money while it is on stage, during the play. The show aims to ask the audience to suspend their disbelief in the usual role, character and even value of money.

What does money mean to you?
Money to me is something I know I cannot live with out. I see that it runs through our whole lives from birth to death. It runs through the everyday mundane things and the epic life-changing moments. Money has existed in all human societies since the beginning of history. (The first known examples of writing are accounts of debts between traders.) However, there have been many different forms of money in different cultures and times. The kind of money that we have now, I think, is almost broken. It is being kept propped up by implausible (perhaps impossible) government bailouts. We need some radical new ways to value our selves, goods, services and the things we chose to believe in.

So MONEY the gameshow is a way of reflecting on the changes we’ve seen over recent years?

Yes. Any way of understanding the ridiculous state of money can only be helpful… at least that’s what I hope.

I started writing after I left university, although I’d always wanted to be a writer. My university course was part Theatre Studies and part English Literature so I’d been studying theatre and plays for three years. On the course we made lots of shows through devising processes, we also put on plays in a more traditional way. That’s how Unlimited Theatre started, six students at Leeds University deciding that we wanted to carry on doing what we’d been learning about at university as our job.

I made a shorter version of Money at The Arches in 2011, since then I’ve been continuing with the research, talking to lots of people who actually work in the financial sector. That was fascinating. I’ve also been able to work with a bigger budget thanks to The Bush, Unlimited and the Simon Gray Award. That has allowed me to explore the world of the play with amazing designers, Rhys Jarman designing the set, Richard Godin, the lighting designer, the sound designer Matt Angove, as well as David Edwards, the composer. They’ve been an amazing team alongside having more time to direct the script with Simon Perkins stage managing and of course Lucy Ellinson and Brian Ferguson as Queenie and Casino.

What can audiences expect from a night out at MONEY?
A lot of fun, to take part, to cheer and boo, to be silly, to be told a story, to win (and to lose) and to be asked questions.

MONEY plays at the Bush Theatre until 9 March. For tickets and more information visit http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/production/money_the_game_show/.

Image credit: MONEY in rehearsals by Simon Kane