Thomas Bradshaw is our current Writer in Residence, you can read his blog here as he writes a new play for Soho Theatre.

Latest entry:
Tuesday 16 February
What does it mean to humanize characters? In the theater, this generally means showing that characters are just like you and me (Whatever that means). This implies that humans are homogenous. That we have the exact needs and wants. There is much truth to this when it comes to showing and describing emotional states. However, this is not true once societal context enters the picture. Therefore, dramatists should strive to show the true breadth and depth of humans in their own societal context. Instead of commenting negatively on ideas that we don’t believe in, we should seek to honestly present opposite points of view without judgment. By doing this we come closest to capturing the true complexity of humanity.

Monday 15 February
The play that I’m writing takes place in the United States and Germany. There are characters from the U.S., U.K., and obviously Germany. I don’t speak German. So, I’m writing the text for the German characters in English. And I think that they need to be speaking English because it will be performed for an English speaking audience. Though I could have their lines translated into German and then have sub-titles, but that becomes overly complicated, and the audience would miss some of the nuance of what’s being said. I think that having the German characters speak in English with a German accent will work. But what happens if the German characters have to converse with the characters who speak English? That gets really tricky. What do you do? Pretend that these people who are speaking English to one another can’t understand each other? That seems pretty idiotic. Hopefully, I’ll find an answer to this question, or maybe there won’t be a need for those characters to interact with one another!