Xana
Marwick had not long given birth to her first child when she started writing
the play that would become Nests, which opens in Edinburgh this weekend as part
of a month long tour. The original idea was to do a new version of Hansel and
Gretel enabled by a bursary from Playwrights Studio Scotland. The initial
result, under the mentorship of fellow writer Clare Duffy, was by Marwick’s own
admission “all over the place. I was really sleep deprived, and started writing
this demented version of the story, which had this ghost boy in it.”
Only
later, while in residence at Summerhall, did Marwick ditch the fairytale
elements of the story. This was on the advice of playwright Douglas Maxwell.
“He
read the play, and asked what I was actually interested in, which was the boy
and this father character, and Douglas just said to forget about Hansel and
Gretel and concentrate on that.”
A reading
of Marwick’s play at Imaginate children’s theatre festival led to an approach
by Heather Fulton, director of Moray-based children and young people’s theatre
company, Frozen Charlotte. This led to Frozen Charlotte co-producing Nests with
Marwick’s Stadium Rock company for the current tour.
“The
story is about a boy who turns up starving with his pet crow outside a caravan
where an alcoholic middle-aged man lives,” says Marwick. “They start off being
suspicious of each other, but the boy uncovers a secret about the man that
changes things. For me, the play is definitely about poverty, and about how
some young people can fall through the net because of that poverty, but it’s
mainly about adult responsibility, and adults who think they’re woke, but who
can’t see what young people might be going through.”
Much
of the impetus for the play stems in part from Marwick’s personal and
professional experience with young people.
“Both
are really important,” she says. “I’ve worked with young people for years in areas
like Easterhouse and Niddrie, and some of those young people I’ve worked with
have slipped through the net like the boy in the play, because their families
aren’t getting the support they need. Even so, these young people are
incredibly resilient, and I hope the play reflects the positive aspects of
that.”
On a
more personal level, writing Nests so soon after having her son was born opened
Marwick up to something even closer to home.
“Your
mind goes back to your own childhood in this solipsistic kind of way,” she
reflects. “I didn’t have a life anything like the boy in the play, but I
definitely didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth either. My life then was quite
chaotic. I was entitled to free school meals and we lived in single bedroom
flats. All the grown-ups around me were very loving and quite hippyish, but
there was also drug addiction and people in prison, that kind of thing, and I
think having my son made me think about how I don’t want him to
grow up like that, and also made me question what an adult’s responsibilities
actually are.”
Marwick
maintains that “the story’s totally not autobiographical, and the boy in it isn’t
based on any one of the young people I’ve worked with, but there are young
people who are vulnerable, and who think adults know what they’re doing when
they really don’t.”
Marwick
is a graduate of what was then the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama’s
Contemporary Theatre Practice course, and Nests sounds a far cry from her early
live art work.
“For
me then, the most important thing was experimenting, and just trying to find my
voice,” she says. “I suppose I always wanted to write, but I didn’t feel I had
a place doing that.”
Marwick
had directed her own work from a young age, and her move into creating work for
young people shifted her perspective. A version of Hansel and Gretel that did
make it to the stage at Platform in Easterhouse changed everything.
“It
was originally going to be devised,’ she says, “but then I panicked. The show
was going to be seen by 2,000 people, and was being paid for by the venue. What
if I started devising it and it ended up being crap? So I wrote it, and to my
surprise it worked well.”
Marwick
ended up being selected to take part in the BBC’s Writers Room scheme.
“That
was it,” she says. “I could call myself a writer.”
On
the eve of Nests taking flight, Marwick’s second child is due to be born in
January. With several writing projects at various stages of development
including episodes for a new CBBC series, how this affects things remains to be
seen. Given that Nests was born in part from her experience of becoming a mum,
things might well work to her advantage.
“That
whole sleep-deprives year was one of the most creative times I’ve ever had,”
she says. “My brain worked in this really strange way, so it was like being on
drugs or something.”
While
dealing with serious issues, Nests is leavened by a playfulness which has
filtered through all her work.
“The
most important thing that I want to get over is that it’s an intriguing story,”
she says, “and I’d like people to come away from it thinking about the responsibility
adults have towards young people. Discussions about poverty are happening
already, but hopefully Nests will give people some kind of idea about what
young people are capable of.”
Coming
from the background she did, Marwick is more aware of this than many.
“I
come from a really confusing background, class-wise,” she says. “I left school
at fifteen and never looked back, and it was only as I got older that I became
much more aware of all that.”
Marwick
has started putting the age she left school on her CV.
“I’m
not saying I’m living some kind of Hollywood lifestyle or anything,” she says, “because
I’m really not. But if young people see that, it might make them think, and
maybe realise that just because you leave school when you’re that age that you’re
not a write-off.”
Nests,
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday-Saturday; Tron Theatre, Glasgow, September
13-15; Byre Theatre, St Andrew’s, September 20; Macrobert Arts Centre,
Stirling, September 21; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, September 22; Paisley
Arts Centre, September 26; The Barn, Banchory, September 27; James Milne
Institute, Findhorn, September 28; Banff Academy, September 29.
The Herald, September 4th 2018
ends
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