SS – For me it is fundamental and increasingly creative and exciting. As wrights rather than writers our work concerns itself with shaping and making. Dramatic structure is like song structure in music. It contains the force of the melody and idea more than any other element. I always wanted to be a songwriter. At university I realised I couldn’t sing and that the theatre could be a form that synthesised my teenage love of drama and live music, so I just started writing plays. I try to be as creative with the structure of my pieces – fundamentally how many scenes there are, and where and when they are set – as I would be with language or image or action. KP – Do you prefer to adapt existing stories or produce original drama? What are the challenges of each? Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-10-21 09:14:21 Boxid IA40265017 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier While the show has now run its cause at the Victoria Hall Theatre, which was sadly not at capacity, it is well worth keeping an eye on what these fabulous young talents attempt next. Simon Stephens – I think my main advice would be to encourage playwrights to concern themselves with the work rather than the career – to worry about getting their plays as good as they can be, rather than negotiating the vicissitudes of the industry. Theatre remains a meritocracy in the UK, I think. So, keep the plays taut and dramatic, original and challenging. And keep working to get them as good as possible.

SS – The thing I look for is making sure plays are dramatic rather than descriptive. Build them around behaviour rather than thought or feeing. I would concern myself with this rather than with worrying about originality. If you are true to your sense of the world and determined to wrought the plays with as much clarity as possible, your own voice will define the originality. Manchester Royal Exchange's Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom works wonders in this co-production with a highly talented but inexperienced cast, several of whom get great monologues.Nightingale, for example, feels that "Stephens doesn't prepare for [the play's closing atrocity] too well" (ie it's a bit far-fetched). Coveney and Billington both take issue with some of the characters' cris de coeur, citing "a defence of the young which sounds too like an authorial statement" to Billington's ears, and "horribly like David Cameron" to Coveney's. By the end, which perhaps has more in common with Hamlet and could be seen as the ultimate advert for single sex education, we begin to understand the thought concerns and obsessions of seventeen-year-olds today.

A well-written story is a gripping story, whatever the format – TV, film, radio or theatre. The fundamentals of story structure transfer across genres, and remain essential to hooking and retaining an audience. With its reliance on text, without the framework of camera angles, theatre is often viewed as a valuable training ground for screenwriting, as well as a celebrated medium in its own right.

This play contains examples of:

After three-quarters of the 105 minutes, we move on to a different level, as pre-exam stress begins to boil over and something a little nastier develops, led by the class bully. The problem is that his behaviour is so far over the top that someone would have stepped in, though by doing so they would have eliminated the explosive final scenes and in doing so removed the purpose of the play. With this being a naturalistic play set in the modern day the writing and language is what you would expect from people this age who go to a fee-paying grammar school. Essentially your average sweary teenagers with a slightly more extensive vocabulary. The language fits the setting, characters and story well. SS – ‘Should’ is a dangerous word. But I always consider my audiences. I think of the plays as being a conversational gesture. I tailor my conversations to resonate with as much life as possible with the people I am speaking to, and I think of my audiences in the same way. I tailor my conversations to resonate with as much life as possible with the people I am speaking to, and I think of my audiences in the same way. The Australian premiere was on 27 July 2012 performed by pantsguys Productions in association with the Australian Theatre for Young People [4]