Careers are fragile – we must be careful not to force out talent

Seven weeks into lockdown feels grim, doesn’t it? Being a freelance journalist or critic is much like being a performer. We’re all wondering when the work will come back.

One way I’ve found to assuage my hunger to write about theatre is by committing to write a love letter each week on my website to a production that changed my life. It’s my way of paying tribute to the impact a work of theatre can have and, therefore, the vital importance of renewing our shuttered arts industries.

But the trip down memory lane has also reminded me of the times when the industry – and particularly its critics – has got it wrong.

In the year 2000, teenage me was mesmerised by The Three Birds, a debut play by a playwright named Joanna Laurens at the Gate Theatre in London. The Three Birds was a retelling in fragmented verse of the classical myth of Philomela, who seeks revenge on her brother-in-law after he rapes her and cuts out her tongue. It’s a myth that has proved overly popular fodder for poets and playwrights.

But Laurens approached it with an ingenious interest in how language connects us to, and separates us from, people. Philomela and her sister Procne are exiles from their country, and so Laurens develops a specific set of language patterns to separate them from their new, threatening neighbours.

Everyone who saw The Three Birds seemingly loved it. It won Laurens the Critics’ Circle Theatre award for most promising playwright and the Time Out award for most outstanding new talent. When her next play, Five Gold Rings, opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, it was as if a target had been painted on her back.