Q&A Session With Merton's Own Master Of Children's Shows - David Wood OBE - Answers now back!

[LocalEditorMerton]

As a Patron of Wimbledon Bookfest (starting on 3rd October 2014), it seems entirely apt to celebrate with a special Q&A session with Merton's very own David Wood OBE.

David, in a career spanning nearly fifty years, is a playwright, children's author, actor, director, composer and magician. Variously described as "...undisputed master of children's shows" (Evening Standard) and "the most successful children's playwright of this century" (The Stage), he has had an acclaimed career which has seen him excite generations of children's interest and imagination across the world.

To give you an idea of the sheer magnitude of David's masterly and magical family theatrical reach, as we start to head towards Christmas, the undisputed "most popular children's dramatist there is" (BBC), will have shows running across the UK and indeed the world: from his adaptation of 'James and the Giant Peach' at Dundee Rep, 'Nutcracker Sweet' at the Blakehay Theatre (Weston-Super-Mare) to a South-East Asia and Australia tour of his recent (Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue) adaptation of 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'.

As Kate Stanbury (reporter) commented, "David Wood takes a picture book adored by multiple generations and creates a play that not only lives up to the original story but creates a magical theatrical experience that everyone will enjoy even more."

We are very excited that David has agreed to answer Mumsnetters' questions relating to his work, creativity, magic (and even life in Merton), on our website. Please do post your questions to David on this 'talk thread' by Friday, 26th September. We hope to put up his answers by the following Friday (3rd October 2014).

Q. Cubaba
OK - I'm going to be really greedy and ask a number of questions!!
You are a prolific writer and I wondered how you structure your days in order to get things done? Do you focus on one thing at a time or will you have multiple projects/creations going on at the same time?

A. David Wood
I must admit I find it difficult to structure my days, although colleagues often say how disciplined I am! It is true I often get up very early in the morning and get a lot of work done before breakfast. But juggling different projects is indeed tricky! One thing I started to do when the children were small was, with the kind permission of my wife, to go off to a hotel for a few days to write a play. This would mean I need not observe the usual mealtimes, sleep times and routine of family life, but just get my head down and finish the wretched thing! This system has worked quite well. By focussing firmly on one project for a few days, having done a significant amount of preparatory work before leaving home, the hotel stay can be very productive! This is partly because I don’t particularly like being away from home! Writing can be a lonely occupation! One of the problems is that creativity is not quite as simple as turning on a tap! If you allocate a certain number of hours in the day to coming up with a new idea, it does not necessarily mean to say that the magic will happen! This is always frustrating, of course, because it makes you feel as though time has been wasted. But I don’t think it has! Sometimes ideas need a bit of time to come together. I feel lucky, if sometimes overstretched, that I have a number of ongoing projects.

Q. Cubaba
Do you work differently based on whether you are writing your own play compared to when you are adapting the works of others for the theatre?

A. David Wood
The process is very similar. Once I have put together a synopsis, I just have to get my head down and write! The process leading towards the synopsis is a bit different, it is true. If I am writing my own play, I spend a lot of time thinking about ideas, creating a storyline, considering the characters etc. Then the structure gradually comes together, leading to the synopsis. If I am adapting something, the first stage is to read the source material many, many times. With my Dahl adaptations I read the book 20 or 30 times. Then I will write my own shorthand version of the story, thinking of it in theatrical terms. Sometimes this leads to a slight change to the running order of events, or even the omission of certain characters or scenes. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it makes me think of the story in theatrical structure terms rather than in book structure terms! This leads to the synopsis.

Q. Cubaba
When your children were younger, did you write stories just for them (whether they were eventually published or not)? And did they think they were good!?

A. David Wood
The honest answer is no! As I said in an answer to an earlier question, I very rarely tried things out on my daughters. They have always been very loyal supporters of my work, coming to the theatre to see the productions, even when they were much older than the target audience! As far as books and stories were concerned, I certainly used to read at bedtime, but always books by other people! And I never had the urge to improvise a story specially for them. This is just the way things happened. I never used my daughters as guinea pigs!

Q. Cubaba
Do you have a preference for writing books, plays, adapting books, or acting? If so, why?

A. David Wood
I enjoy the fact that I do lots of different things and that every day is different! Early on, I would have said that acting was my main love. But then the writing sort of took over! I still feel that I am mainly a theatre person, whether as a writer, actor or director or producer. But I do get enormous pleasure out of writing the books!

Q. Cubaba
What was your first reaction when you were informed of your OBE?

A. David Wood
When my agent rang up and said there was an official-looking letter waiting for me in his office, and when I went along and opened it, I honestly thought that a mistake had been made! The playwright David Hare was another client of my agent, and I wondered if it was meant for him! But once the news had sunk in, I was obviously flattered and delighted. I wasn’t sure about the citation, which said ‘for services to drama and literature’. That makes it sound really rather high flown and academic! I would rather the word ‘children’ had been included. Indeed one of the main pleasures of receiving the award was that I viewed it as recognition for the importance of children’s theatre, something which had rarely been recognised in such a way before. So I was delighted to accept it on behalf of the children’s theatre movement in the UK, in the hope that our work would be celebrated and valued even more in the future.

Q. OnTheHuh
You have adapted and dramatised the work of some incredibly famous writers. Who is on your wish list? And are there any new authors among them that have caught your eye?

A. David Wood

I don’t really have a wish list, although there are children’s writers I admire hugely. Alan Ahlberg is one, Lauren Child is another. And there are some excellent children’s novelists beginning to make their mark. I do believe that for the last decade or so we have been living through a golden age of children’s literature. To a certain extent, this has been reflected in the development of children’s theatre. Having said that, I would hate it to be thought that children’s theatre equals the adaptation of well known books. Yes, that is part of the story, but original plays for children are very important too. Sadly they might not get as much exposure as the adaptations, simply because theatres often want a familiar title.

Q. OnTheHuh
If I was to start a book collection off for a godchild, what would be your top ten recommendations?

A. David Wood
I hesitate to recommend actual titles, because every child, like every adult, has different tastes. My answer to your question would be to give your godchild the chance to look at lots of picture books from a very young age. This might involve going to the library on a regular basis. Eventually the child will look through the shelves and boxes of books and pick things out that particularly catch his or her eye. Going regularly into the children’s department of a bookshop is another good idea. Most of them encourage children to actually look at the books. And, of course, going to storytellings is valuable, plus actually reading to the child on a regular basis. It seems to me that it is the allowing access to books and the encouragement of ‘playing’ with books, rather like toys, that could well be the godparent’s contribution to the early development of a child’s reading habits.

Q. OnTheHuh
Have you become involved in the campaign to rid books (and toys) of gender bias in their display in stores and in the way they are marketed and designed? Is this something that you feel strongly about?

A. David Wood
There was a television programme the other night in which scientific experiments were trying to prove that boys and girls had differently-wired brains, which led them to choose particular toys – trucks for the boys, dolls for the girls! The programme questioned the ‘nature or nurture’ arguments and was interesting, but not conclusive. I can see that the attitude of adults towards young children can make assumptions that are totally unwarranted. I certainly don’t like shops that have pink and blue sections, actually marked ‘girls’ and ‘boys’. Most of my books have been about animals, and I would like to think I have featured as many male animals as female. Certainly, in my plays, I always try to make sure that female characters are as proactive as male characters in the storyline.

Q. PottyMouther
Am a huge fan of your work and wondered which book you've adapted has been the most challenging to translate to the stage and why?

A. David Wood
I answered a similar question earlier on. It was posed by HaydonWomble.

Q. PottyMouther
Also can I have another cheeky one, what are you reading right now?

A. David Wood
I am a fan of Sophie Hannah, who, apart from being an award-winning poet, writes very clever crime novels. I have just finished her book, THE TELLING ERROR. Sophie is the daughter of the children’s writer, Adele Geras, with whom I performed in lots of shows at university! I am also reading Lisa Chaney’s biography of JM Barrie, whose life and work has always fascinated me. PETER PAN was, I think, the first play I ever saw, and must have had a huge influence on me!

Q. CaptainNjork
I'm interested in whether you have had to make changes to how you produce children's theatre as the volume and sophistication of children's TV and film has grown so much since you began your career. Is it hard to compete with mega-budget Disney movies like Frozen? Do children expect more spectacle in the age of CGI and special effects?

A. David Wood
Yes, children today are exposed to much more product on screens large and small than when I started. But I don’t believe that children have become more sophisticated. They may know more earlier – thanks to television, mainly. But when it comes to the theatre, it is quite remarkable how unchanged children seem to be from when I started in the 60s. There is something about the scale of theatre, the fact that it is witnessed communally rather than individually, and the fact that it is live, that somehow engages with the child far more than even the most compulsive computer games. What I mean by that is the engagement is different and more immediate, somehow. Children seem to become more emotionally involved with characters and stories in the theatre than they do in the cinema or in their own home. This manifests itself in a willingness to join in. Audience participation sparks a unique energy. It is rather like a crowd watching a football match. There is an electricity. Not only that, what I love about an audience of children is that they will still gasp at the sight of a simple shadow puppet. A piece of cardboard representing an elephant, say, with an articulated trunk, moving across the screen seems to be able to excite them as much if not more than the most sophisticated computer graphics or animation.

So I honestly believe that if a good story is told well and with imaginative theatricality, children will be enthralled just as much if not more than if they were watching a mega-movie-spectacular-blockbuster!

Q. LocalEditorEaling
Thank you for coming! Do you think that UK children's theatre is in a good place now? How has it changed since you started writing in the 1960s and what would be your 'big ask' for taking it forward over the next fifty years?

A. David Wood
There is much more children’s theatre around today than when I started. You are quite right. And what is particularly encouraging is that there are many more theatre practitioners who genuinely see children’s theatre as a career rather than as a rung on the ladder towards ‘real’ – adult – theatre. Writers, directors, designers, composers and actor now often specialise in children’s theatre. There are many, many more companies, small-scale, middle-scale and large-scale, both subsidised and commercial, presenting the work in theatres and studio spaces all over the country. Even the National Theatre after many, many years of ignoring children, have begun to commission plays for the under-fives, as well as put on serious family productions at Christmas. All this is really positive.

However, there are still problems! Money is one. Children’s arts overall only receive 1% of the arts funding cake. When you consider that children of 12 and under make up 15% of the population, this seems very unfair. Even the BBC only spends 2½% of its budget on original material for children. Furthermore, there is still a certain attitude towards children’s theatre which relegates it to the second division! Critics don’t review shows for children, even in the West End, as often as they review shows for grown-ups. Many theatres still only think of children at Christmastime! A year is a long time in the life of a child! Many drama schools pretend that children’s theatre doesn’t exist! So, all in all, I would hope that in the future there will be a general shift in attitude towards the work. It will become an integral art of every theatre’s programming, rather than an optional extra. It will be as important in the Arts Council’s manifesto as any other form of theatre. It will hopefully be considered an art form, along with ballet, opera or mime. It will be seen as a vital part of a child’s education, both to witness professional performances and to have the chance of taking part in drama classes and productions. It will be accepted as a spur toward creativity and self-confidence, something that teaches teamwork and tolerance, something that gives children something just as important as conventional academic ability. That’s what I hope for the future!