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This week we launch a new regular blog, What Simon Says…
Simon Harvey Williams is a writer and works on the Box Office here at the Tobacco Factory and every week or so he’ll be posting what’s on his mind. you’ll be able to find out more about Simon in next week’s installment.

Why do people write? It’s clearly not about the money unless you’re in the John Grisham or Stephen King league and in theatre it’s an even tougher question to answer. In theatres up and down the country there are box office assistants and bar staff dreaming of having their great masterpiece performed to universal critical praise followed by an Alan Yentob documentary devoted to their genius – ok that might just be me. In reality most writers are pretty unassuming characters and while the actors are taking their bows and soaking up the applause the writer is probably obsessing about a clunky piece of dialogue from the second scene. So if it’s not about the money or the applause what does motivate writers? After struggling to find a decent answer I resorted to Wikipedia and found a quote from Andre Debus III, which was so spot on I was tempted to pass it off as my own; ‘‘I think what I love most [about writing] is that feeling that you really nailed something. I rarely feel it with a whole piece, but sometimes with a line you feel that it really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to hear/read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.’ For me having an audience forget they are sat in a dark theatre auditorium and to really emotionally invest in the characters and events unfolding in front of them is a real achievement. Daniel Kitson’s recent performance at the Tobacco Factory 66a Church Road was a classic example of how affecting great writing/story telling can be. The play was a one-man show about his old home and his failed attempts to buy the ramshackle property. It was a simple narrative where nothing dramatic happened but it had me gripped by the tiniest details and smiling in recognition at the seemingly inconsequential but moving moments in life.

The focus this week at the Tobacco Factory is very much centred on writing. In the main house the Bristol Old Vic final year students perform in Brian Friel’s classic play Translations which he wrote in 1980 and is regarded as his masterpiece. It is set in Baile Beag, a small village at the heart of 19th century agricultural Ireland. Friel has said that Translations is “a play about language and only about language”, but it deals with a wide range of issues, stretching from language and communication to Irish history and cultural imperialism. Despite the 1833 setting, there are obvious parallels between Baile Beag and today’s world. Meanwhile in The Brewery there is a double-bill of new writing. The Self Help Group and Kurt Cobain’s in My Cupboard by local writer Felicity Gibson. Both plays are very different in content, but in the end ask the audience the same question: “What gets us through life when the going gets tough?” Finally on Sunday sees the second instalment of this year’s Script Space with a new play by Phil Booth called Dry Spell. Script Space is a scheme to help discover and spotlight new writing talent and the fact that it attracted 325 people to submit their work again demonstrates the enthusiasm there is for people to express themselves through writing and to have their work seen.