The Context of Creativity: Creating New Drama and Film about East German Theatre Censorship

The University of Edinburgh will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by commissioning the award-winning playwright Peter Arnott to write a play about East German theatre censorship, based on Laura Bradley's AHRC-funded research. This year-long project has been developed in partnership with the Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, and it is designed to enhance understanding of how the East German dictatorship functioned and eventually crumbled, and to stimulate debate and reflection on censorship and the political potential of theatre. The project will be launched with a live performance event in November 2014, followed by a monthly blog by Peter Arnott, a script development workshop, a public reading of the draft script, and a tour of rehearsed readings of the finished play. The filmmaker Susan Kemp will make a 70-minute documentary film that will follow Arnott's creative journey as he engages with the research and develops his play with actors and an audience. The film will thus allow Arnott and the Playwrights' Studio to reflect on the situation of playwrights in Scotland today, compared to the GDR. It will simultaneously open up the subject of East German theatre censorship and the work of Arnott and the Playwrights' Studio to a wider audience, including theatre practitioners in Germany and the UK who may be interested in staging the play. The project will culminate in a day-long showcase event at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2015, featuring a reading of the play, a screening of the film, and a roundtable debate on censorship. The participants will include international theatre practitioners and critics, who will use the East German play to start an international conversation about experiences of censorship today. The film will be entered at festivals and submitted to the commissioning editor at BBC Four, and further screenings will be arranged in Scotland and Berlin.

Who might benefit:

1) Peter Arnott
2) The Playwrights' Studio, Scotland
3) Campaigners against censorship (e.g. PEN International)
4) Playwrights and theatre practitioners in the UK
5) Theatres in Germany
6) The wider public

How they might benefit:

1) The playwright Peter Arnott will benefit from:
- access to high-quality new material: to Bradley's published research and to a selection of original archival sources, which will be translated into English for his use. Access to these sources is crucial if he is to recreate the distinctive tone and idiom of GDR censorship discourse in his play;
- funded time in which to write the play;
- the opportunity to write for the size of cast (6 actors) that the subject matter demands;
- developing the script in workshops with a theatre director and actors, and testing audience reactions both after draft 2 and on the tour of rehearsed readings;
- the increased public exposure provided by the public engagement events and blog;
- having a platform - through the play, film, and blog - to introduce his writing to theatres in Germany. The dramaturge of the Schaubühne, one of Berlin's leading theatres, has already expressed interest in the project, noting that it is rare for German playwrights to tackle material about the GDR.

2) The Playwrights' Studio will benefit from:
- the opportunity to support one of Scotland's leading playwrights and to engage people in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Andrews with new playwriting;
- using the film - and the comparison with East German theatre - to reflect critically on the conditions facing playwrights in Scotland and on the political potential of theatre;
- the increased awareness that the project will generate of its work, both in Scotland and, through the film, abroad;
- from developing a collaborative partnership with the HEI, which is set to continue through a series of theatre development workshops in 2015.

3) Campaigners against censorship will benefit from
- having a platform for discussing censorship and raising public awareness of it;
- discussion of a strict censorship regime that has now been abolished, as this shows that political censorship is vulnerable and historically contingent;
- use of an example from the European experience, which is likely to be readily accessible to UK audiences.

We will invite representatives of the Belarus Free Theatre, PEN International, and the international playwrights' organization The Fence to the Fringe showcase event.

4) Playwrights and theatre practitioners will benefit from the film's investigation of the effects that the market economy and culture policy have on creativity in the UK (particularly at a time when culture policy in Scotland is diverging from that in England), and from the exploration of international experiences of censorship at the Edinburgh Fringe event.

5) Theatres in Germany may also benefit from the play and the film, as they will tackle a subject that contemporary German playwrights have ignored. We will promote the play and film in Germany via Bradley's contacts at the Academy of Arts, McCartney's contacts at the Schaubühne, and our direct contacts with ex-GDR theatre practitioners.

6) The wider public, including schools, will benefit from (a) gaining an insight into the workings of the East German dictatorship and the roles that individuals played in it; (b) finding out more about censorship and the nuanced terms in which it operates; (c) gaining a direct insight into the process of writing a new play, through the public engagement events, blog, and rehearsed readings.