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Rona Munro Interview


Writewords talks to Rona Munro, playwright and screenwriter, whose latest play ‘Iron’ won rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Court Theatre recently.

What’s your background- give us a brief career biog.

I started writing professionally in the early eighties. My first stage play, ‘Fugue’ went on at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh in ‘81 and I had my first television commission the same year.

Since then I’ve written extensively for stage, radio and television, including ‘Bold Girls’ and ‘Iron’ for stage, everything from Dr Who and Casualty to one off dramas like this years ‘Rehab’ for television and feature films including ‘Ladybird Ladybird’, directed by Ken Loach for Film 4 and ‘Aimee and Jaguar’. I also write a comedy drama for Msfits theatre company every year.

How did you first start writing?

I started when I was about eight. I used to write fantasy novels, inspired, I think by the Moomins with titles like ‘The Puffin and the Ghost.’ I wrote plays around then too and got my class mates to put them on. I read like a demon, devouring books, it just seemed like something I always wanted to do, tell stories.

I was very lucky, I had parents who encouraged me without making a big deal out of it. I had a few fantastic English teachers. I had a wonderful relative in the writer Angus MacVicar, who encouraged me tremendously.

The first plays I saw on stage I produced myself with fellow students at Edinburgh university. This was back in the long ago days when the Edinburgh festival was completely affordable, both for theatre companies and audiences, you really could stage a play for about a hundred pounds and an audience could see it for fifty pence.

Nowadays few venture past the comedy fest and TV star bonanza of the central venues. However back then we presented a range of shows and I suppose I learned how to do it by doing it. After that I worked as a cleaner while sending off scripts to all and sundry.

After university I got involved with a group called the Edinburgh Playwrights workshop, a group of writers and actors who presented rehearsed readings of any play submitted to them, and I really do mean any play. They would give it an afternoon’s rehearsal then put it in from of the audience.

The scripts were not edited or altered in any way unless the writer wished to do so. After the readings there was an audience discussion which had a very effective structure. The discussion went round a circle. Every audience member had the chance to offer their opinion (if they wanted to) and speak, uninterrupted, before the discussion was thrown open to a free for all.

Unlike post show discussions that I’ve participated in since this meant that as a writer you got a sense of how a wide section of the audience felt about the play, not just the people who are comfortable talking in groups or offering opinions on theatre.

It meant that you saw plays that you couldn’t believe would work, that appeared to break every rule about what a well structured piece of theatre should be like actually turning out to be quite wonderful once an audience got at them. And as a writer it gave me an invaluable insight into the actors job, I don’t actually know how you learn to write drama without that.

The actors did their best to do what a writer wanted with a script, no matter how inexperienced that writer was or what difficulties that presented them with. Seeing what worked effectively under a process as generous as that was a real education. It also left me with the convictions which I still have, that actors are the writer’s allies, that good drama comes out of a dialogue between the actors and the writing and a good director is someone who facilitates that dialogue.

And I learned not to freak if someone still seems to be doing a sight reading of their lines in week two of rehearsal- if it took you nine months to work out how to write it, it’s not unreasonable for an actor to need two or three weeks to understand how to present it.

I still write for one of the actors I worked with back then, Fiona Knowles, who formed the MsFits with me in eighty something alarming.

What kind of response did you get in the beginning?

Audiences seemed to like my plays. That was very encouraging, I hadn’t had to deal with literary managers, script editors or producers at that stage. I responded to feedback from live audiences. It gave me a core of confidence that I wasn’t deluding myself that carried me through a lot. But I was also lucky enough to get professional work quite soon after deciding never to start the day job.

Who are your favourite writers and why?

  • Jane Austen because of her soothing precision.
  • Naomi Mitchison because she was inspirational, unique, years ahead of her time and because she brought history and imagined futures to life with a humanity that made each compelling and convincing.
  • Janet Evanovitch, though I think she’s churning them out now and I wish she wouldn’t because as a holiday read her Stephanie Plum books are the literary equivalent of the best chocolate.
  • ‘Knives in Hens’, by David Harrower, I’ve never seen anything like it before or since and it’s a stunning evocation of the power of language.
  • ‘Stitching’ by Anthony Neilson, once of the bravest most disturbing plays I’ve ever seen..
  • The Cohen brothers for just about everything they’ve ever done though I think I was the only person who didn’t like ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou
  • The Warchowski brothers, I don’t care if they blow it with the sequels, ‘The Matrix’ was one of the best S.F. films I’ve ever seen.
  • Also love ‘Blade Runner’ and the first two ‘Alien’ films.
  • ‘The Sixth Sense’ I don’t know anyone who saw the twist coming and it still works when you watch it again.
  • My other favourite movies are about movies and I love Robert Altman’s ‘The Player,’ because it makes you genuinely root for a murderous, lying bastard and ‘Living in Oblivion’ which still makes me laugh every time I watch it.
How did you feel when you first started sending your writing out into the world?

A combination of confidence and terror. But I felt lucky and excited to even have the chance to try. A lot of the time I still do.

What was your breakthrough moment ?

Well, probably a play we did a reading of at the Edinburgh Playwrights Workshop called ‘The Salesman’ It was a sort of surreal extended sketch about how Eve was framed, which sounds rather worthy but it was funny and poetic and enough of the right people saw it the second time we staged it to get me my ‘break’, professional commissions at the Traverse Theatre and for Scottish Television.

How did you handle rejections?

Tears. Anger. In retrospect I was always doing what was probably the best thing to do, plugging away trying to get something else written or presented, somehow, anyhow. They can knock you back but they can’t stop you writing.

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