Listening and Watching - The Price of a Fish Supper

 A couple of weeks ago, MAD Productions staged another handful of performances of my play The Price of a Fish Supper, originally produced at Glasgow's Oran Mor as one of their A Play, A Pie and a Pint series. It's a single hander, i.e. a long monologue and consequently a very 'big learn' for the actor involved, but Ken O'Hara (above) has made the part uniquely his own. 

For me, once he is on stage, he is Rab, the troubled but essentially decent ex-fisherman who hangs about the harbour and tells his tragic (but often very funny) story to whoever will listen. 

It's a play about the long, sad demise of the traditional Scottish fishing industry, a play about friendship and family, about where and how people fit into the world in which they find themselves, and the possibility, or otherwise, of redemption. It's a play that tackles adult themes and pulls no punches. 

Thanks to Ken O'Hara and to Isi Nimmo, who directs, the play has had a long life beyond that first well reviewed production. I've done the occasional after-show Q & A session. Every single time, somebody has asked me or Ken if he ad-libs it. And every time, he points out that, with the exception of the very occasional phrase, it was all written down. Carefully constructed by me. Even down to the way it's written on the page, orchestrated, almost like a long poem. (If you want to see for yourself, it's available here, published by Nick Hern Books.) 

I always wonder if they would ask the same question if I were young and male. I suspect not!

All the same, it's Ken who brings Rab vividly to life. Plays are meant to be experienced in performance. Not as words on a page.

It also makes me think about how Rab first came into my mind, telling me his tale before he told anyone else. Which is what it feels like to write in a single voice like this - you listen and your character speaks.

In the 1970s, I did a postgraduate Masters in Folk Life Studies. My dissertation was on the fishing traditions of the Carrick district of South Ayrshire. I interviewed many elderly fishermen over a period of a year. and their vivid descriptions of the herring fishing have stayed with me ever since. Even more to the point, my husband was once a trawler skipper here in Ayrshire. Eventually, he moved on to skipper charter yachts and then came ashore to work as a woodcarver and artist, but he too had stories to tell. We had and still have friends who worked at the fishing. So there was a certain amount of immersion going on for me - and many of the tales told in the play are certainly based on truth.

After the most recent production of Fish Supper, it struck me that one of the most valuable pieces of writing advice I can give anyone - whether you're aiming to write plays or fiction - is to watch and listen. Watch how people behave. Listen to how they speak.

You have to be fascinated by people. All kinds of people. What they do, what they say and how they say it. 

The Price of a Fish Supper - staged in Ayrshire at last!

Ken O'Hara as Rab, The Price of a Fish Supper, Ayr Gaiety.

This week, my play The Price of a Fish Supper finally had an Ayrshire production, with Ken O'Hara as Rab, and Isi Nimmo directing: three performances at the upstairs studio in Ayr's excellent Gaiety Theatre. 

What a joy it was to see it.

This play was the first one I wrote for the Oran Mor's 'A Play, A Pie and a Pint' season in Glasgow. Even then, it had been sitting on my PC for a while, with scant interest shown, until it was passed on to the late and much missed David McLennan, by Dave Anderson. Almost immediately he contacted me to say that he wanted to stage it. That first performance was directed by Gerda Stevenson, with Paul Morrow as Rab, and was extremely well reviewed. It was produced at the Edinburgh festival fringe and went on to have a production on BBC R4 (although we had to cut out all the swear words for that one!) It was also published by Nick Hern Books as part of an anthology called Scottish Shorts and as an individual eBook.

Cue forward some years and Isi, who had directed Ken in a splendid version of Alan Bennett's heartrending A Chip in the Sugar, asked if I could recommend any more one man plays. 'Well, I might have something,' I said. And pointed both of them to The Price of a Fish Supper. That was some months ago. Eventually, we were offered space at the Gaiety and the play has proved to be more successful there than any of us anticipated - the tickets sold out quite quickly, and the Gaiety added a matinee, since there was such a waiting list.

The interest in this production was, I think, down to a number of things. Ken is very good at publicity - proactive and imaginative. It goes without saying that he's also very good at acting! The play is about the demise of the fishing industry, which means a lot to many people here, but it's about a lot more than that. I still find the central character heartbreaking: he's an alcoholic ex fisherman, but I think all the time, watching it, you realise what he might have been, what he could have been in different circumstances. I had Ayrshire in my mind while I was writing it, and hearing Ken perform the play with an Ayrshire accent, with the energy of the language of the place where I live and work, was something of a revelation, even to me. I suddenly realised that I had written it with the voice of the place I now call home very firmly in my mind - and here it was, on the stage.

Ken 'got' it in a remarkable way. So did Isi. I'd forgotten how much I like theatre when it goes as well as this. This is the first production of any drama I've been involved with for some time. I'd also forgotten that peculiar, nerve racking sensation of wondering what an audience will make of it  - and the sheer pleasure of knowing that some combination of skills has made them 'get' it too.