The thing with writing is, nothing’s wasted. There are things I wrote years ago that I continue to pull out and dust off and send out. And it’s happened again just now. Breaking In, which you’ll find as one of the scripts on this site, has been chosen as one of the plays that Drip Action will put on during a festival week in August. Which will be its third outing so far.

Breaking In was written in 1997, and the rehearsals started with the play two thirds written. Which is one way to do things, but not necessarily one I’d recommend. Fortunately we had two excellent actors in Johnny Lynch and Dee Whitehead, who guided by director Cris Green conjured up the characters from that first chunk of story, and then cemented it all into place when I coughed up the final third of the script.

The play was requested by Nottingham Playhouse, one of four off-stage productions I did there. I learned a lot doing those shows, not only writing them but getting involved in producing and direction, and — most important — having access to gaffa tape, the secret currency that theatre shows work on. They asked for a play about the power of language, and I did my best by incorporating what I was learning about hypnosis at the time as part of my NLP studies. The part where Greg and Jill are talking at the same time at the end uses a lot of that knowledge — fun for me to overhear from a RADA tutor in the audience that he was ‘entranced’ by the show.

It’s true to say that we attracted a larger audience to Breaking In than the Playhouse managed to pull to their main stage production of the time. Which I like to brag about because I wasn’t paid to write the script, so technically I can’t call it a commission. Sucky attitude, I reckon: if you’re going to ask people to write shows and not pay them, the least you can do is give them payback in some other form. Being able to use the word ‘commission’ would be a start: besides, what else do you call it when someone asks you to create some work for them?

Johnny and Dee were both in their 40s, and that and their relationship to the characters gave the production a particular feel. Johnny, quite a character himself, went out one night and only used lines from the script when he talked to people. One way to rehearse, I guess. A few years ago, a chance came up to put it on again with performers in their early 30s. David McCaffrey and Louise Hooper brought a very different energy to a production directed by Iain MacDonald at the Hen & Chickens in Islington, for a series of performances as part of the venue’s Guerrilla Theatre Week. Just as fun, though the organisers failed to produce the press reviews that we’d been promised. Hey ho.

And now it’s up for another showing, as part of a one week festival in which a number of plays will be performed. This time round I get to experience the novelty of payment — £150 isn’t much, but it’ll get me to Arundel and back to see it playing, and if I’m lucky I’ll receive another £200 for the best play. Fingers crossed. It ain’t all about the money, that’s for sure — but it’s just as surely welcome.

All this for a one-act two-hander, the starting point of which was me wondering about a man and woman whose first sight of each other is at extremes of their experiences — his appearance in CCTV footage on Crimewatch, and hers in a porn mag, the photo taken by a man who’s part of both their lives. If you like the sound of that, and you enjoy a good bit of swearing, I reckon you’ll get on with Breaking In.