Introduction

Wrights & Sites

Wrights & Sites is a surprising alliance of four performance makers, who celebrate four very different approaches to theatre wrighting.

In 1997, South West Arts called a meeting, challenging regional writers to organise themselves and secure a slice of Lottery Pie. Several of us saw the opportunity to set our own agenda, generating a project that would genuinely nurture experimentation. We also knew that even if we failed to secure funding, this was a chance to register our professional needs and desires.

Wrights & Sites was not the first writer-led performance initiative to take place in the South West in the 1990s. Three of the team who later became Core Members of Wrights & Sites were at the heart of the new writing company Platform 4, who performed in non-theatre spaces, 1993-95. All of us, at various times and in various places, had been involved in the production of new work. Yet too frequently, new work seemed 'new' only by virtue of the copyright date and not in terms of ideas or aspirations. We wanted to set up a project within which we could define performance writing and the role of the writer/theatre maker, genuinely looking for new theatre forms and modes of operation.

A meeting was held at the Imperial Hotel, Exeter in 1997. Of the ten or so people invited, four turned up. It was this quartet, Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner, who went on to establish Wrights & Sites.

Taking inspiration from Platform 4's use of non-theatre spaces, we wanted to push this further, to create work in response to place, rather than to use site as a quirk of production. We also wanted to challenge ourselves to experiment, to push forward the boundaries of theatre and performance. We did not aim to establish a house style, but cherished the existence of mutual and unforced respect. Not all of us were happy to describe ourselves as 'playwrights', since the term implied a preoccupation with literary texts. Those of us who felt the word might be applied to us, also felt limited by the assumption that words and words alone must be our medium. All of us felt that 'new writing' was bound up with all the languages of theatre. As a group, we preferred to drop the first syllable and call ourselves simply 'Wrights', a word which suggests craft and physical activity.

The dual commitment to theatre-making (as opposed to playwriting) and non-theatre spaces led us to coin the name: Wrights & Sites.

We developed an idea for a season of site-specific performances on Exeter Quayside: The Quay Thing. The project was to take place in three stages:

Pilot (March 1998)
A week of performances by Core Members, comprising four twenty minute pieces as an evening programme. A testing ground for further work.

Community Workshops (April-June 1998)
A series of workshops with six community groups. Each group would create a short piece to be performed as part of an evening's programme in the main season.

Main Season of Work (July 1998)
Six new works to be created by four Core Members and two additional Wrights. Each piece to be accompanied by one work by a community group, see above.

Our application for a £97,000 Lottery A4E grant was drafted in consultation with South West Arts, Devon County Council, Exeter City Council and interested community groups, as well as a number of other informal advisors.

The application was submitted in summer 1997 and an application for 5% partnership funding was made to Exeter City Council in September 1997. In November, we heard that the A4E application had been successful, but negotiations with the City Council failed to produce partnership funds and these were sought elsewhere. This resulted in a postponement and compression of the project, with the Pilot eventually taking place in July, the workshops in July/August and the main season in August/September.

Our difficulties with the local authorities are referred to in the following commentaries and need no further discussion here. One positive effect of the delay was that it allowed us to add a preliminary stage to the project. The Theatre Department at Dartington College of Arts was eager to involve us in work with students in early 1998. Simon Persighetti and Cathy Turner led a project in Topsham, Devon (a small town with its own Quay) developing site-specific performances with a group of second year students. This proved inspirational to us and valuable in its own right.

Partnership funding secured (from Dartington, Exeter Arts Council and dB Sound and Lighting), we were fortunate in being able to appoint a highly experienced Administrator, Bob Butler. With his assistance, a company was recruited: twelve Performers, one Visual Artist, two Stage Managers and two (in the event, three) additional Wrights: Eileen Dillon and VOID: Performance (Liz Swift and Peter Ireland). Applicants were invited to an audition weekend in Exeter for what proved to be an exciting two days of site-specific experimentation.

We also established contacts with six community groups who were to participate in the project. These ranged from well established groups, such as Age Concern and the Waterfront Writers in Plymouth, to individuals who had expressed an interest in the project. The community element was always intended to be quite small, with only five workshops scheduled with each group. However, over fifty people from the local community were eventually involved in creating exhibitions, writing, singing and performing.

By Summer 1998, the personnel was established and work could commence.

Since The Quay Thing in 1998, there have been a number of satellite site-specific initiatives from company members. Pleasure Grounds, a project in Newtown, Exeter (spring 1999 and 2000), was led by Simon Persighetti and realised by students from Dartington College of Arts. Bubbleworld was created by Phil Smith for his back garden in Danes Road, Exeter (July 1999). The Dig (June 2000), created and performed by the four Core Members of Wrights & Sites, was commissioned by South West Arts to mark the launch of The Year Of The Artist. Exeter Phoenix, the original location of the University of Exeter was the host site for this seven hour performance. Additionally, all four Core Members have been awarded Year Of The Artist commissions to support residencies and the creation of new work in three Exeter sites (the Underground Passages, the city centre bus fleet and the University's Physics Department). Wrights & Sites are currently planning a major new mytho-geographical project for summer 2001.

The commentaries that follow do not attempt to cover every aspect of this large-scale (sometimes unwieldy) project. This publication is not a manual for site-specific performance. Nor do we aim to set out an artistic manifesto. Previous supplements to STP have often been play-texts: our publication stands somewhere between record and reflection. Perhaps it is most useful to think of it as a site, where six very different Wrights have set up environments which invite diverse types of exploration. Perhaps the project, The Quay Thing, is itself the site, each of us occupying different territories within it.

It need not be navigated by our suggested route and we hope for scribbles in the margin.

Wrights & Sites remain committed to the production of new work and the challenge of engagement with new people, places and practice.