The events of the last couple of weeks have mingled together in one cohesive narrative in my mind, ably assisted by the drugs provided at Kings College Hospital on Friday, where I had a wisdom tooth removed under sedation - the drugs promoted a sense of mild euphoria and blurred the distinction between dreams and reality, causing forgetfulness, as they were supposed to do. And oh, what dreams - I'm currently making an inventory to see what other parts of my body I could get removed.
So I joined Twitter about two weeks ago and, although I'm enjoying the cameraderie with other writers and with theatre-makers and journalists, I particularly enjoy the updates from characters who inhabit an alternate reality - RichardMadeley, RealNickGriffin, MrsStephenFry, Count Arthur Strong, TheFuckingQueen, John Shuttleworth and his manager, Ken Worthington ('Got to go out now to Jessops, John'). I don't follow or try to interact with any celebrities on Twitter any more than I would in real life.
However, apart from comedy and cameraderie, there is another reason to follow updates from people you don't know on Twitter: As you will have read in the papers, even if you don't use the application, Twitter had a valuable part to play during the recent uprising in Iran. Several students tried to get the word out about what was happening, posting news, video footage and photographs, wanting to raise awareness around the world and also seeking assurance that the world was watching, even when BBC Persia and other sources of news had been jammed in Iran. They used Twitter to communicate with each other, as mobile phones were cut off and landlines tapped - a friend who has been in constant contact with family who have been out demonstrating every night in Iran said that even when she can get through on the phone, the calls will be monitored and interrupted; as often as three times in a two minute call.
On Saturday and Sunday night last week, just after the phoney election results were announced, you could follow any update on Twitter tagged with #iranelection and see events unfolding live, while reports in the press and on TV lagged behind or ignored the situation altogether.
By Monday, when people came back to work and logged into Twitter and started to join in, it soon became impossible to trust information coming from anyone other than the original sources. Lots of people on Twitter wanted to help but inadvertently took notice of mis-information posted by Iranian authorities and other saboteurs and repeated it. Others seemed to treat it as a game - they began to repeat nonsense, ignoring trusted sources of information, self-importantly giving witless advice, muddying the picture, making alarmist claims, etc. It was the equivalent of well-meaning villagers joining in a search for a missing person and trampling over the evidence, ensuring that even if a dead body was found, the killer would never be brought to trial. Or, worse, people treated it like some kind of interactive online event where the prize for discovering the game was the opportunity to take part, not realising that their ridiculous interventions could mess up communications and even endanger lives. Imagine the Maquis trying to hide injured British airmen in the Second World War, only to be beseiged by hordes of onlookers pointing, shouting, giggling and giving phoney advice as if taking part in a promenade theatre show.
By Monday/Tuesday many of the #iranelection updates on Twitter were spam/rubbish/lies, with links taking you to porn sites rather than pictures of the demonstrations in Tehran. At least by that time, the media had caught up and you could go to The Guardian, The Times, the BBC. They pretty much relied on updates from the Iranian students who originally posted on Twitter and continue to post for 18 hrs or more a day, as well as information coming from Iran via phone calls to families and friends here (foreign journalists have been banned from reporting) but at least they were filtering out the nonsense.
Other events that have been preoccupying me - though they are not life and death, like the events in Iran - have been much more personal. How to get my work produced. It preoccupies all writers, even the most successful ones. I went to BAFTA to the launch of the Screenwriters Festival which will be held in Cheltenham in October this year. Christopher Hampton gave a talk, in which he said that of 42 scripts he had written, only 13 had been produced. That's pretty crap, isn't it? If a novelist of the same stature had written 42 books, all 42 would have been published. The SWF is supposed to be an opportunity for writers to come together and celebrate screenwriting in this country (I went along two years ago, having been optioned to write a screenplay and having a TV project in development) but in my case the outcome was counterproductive. Screenwriting at the top level seems to be a miserable, competitive, highly-paid job which involves working within a narrow set of parameters dictated by a tranche of management with an eye on sales rather than artistic achievement. If you work as a screenwriter, you will get your heart broken, warned David Hare at the SWF conference I attended in 2007. Fortunately, very few ever get to his rarified level, so most hearts of aspiring screenwriters will remain intact.
However, I talked to Phil Barron at the event at BAFTA (Phil writes about the SWF launch here and here) and he expressed surprise that more people don't just go out and make films, rather than waiting for the nod from executives and funders. Most of the films he has made have been micro budget films. Before you turn your nose up, his latest is a star-studded affair. Details here. The message I took away was that it's better to go out and do it for yourself.
The same message came across at an event at The National Theatre organised by Sphinx, which discussed the representation of women on screen and on the stage, as well as opportunities for women performers, writers, directors, designers, production crew, etc. Details here. The conclusion was that, although women are too often represented in negative stereotypes on TV and are underrepresented in all aspects of film-making, the only way to fix this is to do something about it ourselves. Tracy Brabin used the adage that if the lobsters worked together to get out of the pot of boiling water, they might stand a chance. Interestingly, through a 'friend' on Twitter, I subsequently came across this open letter from a woman director on Women in Hollywood here.
And yes, sure, the negative representation of women (whether the objectification of young women or the invisibility of women over 40) on screen and in the press in the UK, the under-representation and comparatively poor pay for women in all aspects of work in the UK (not just 'the performing arts') are not life and death, like the increasingly bloody events in Iran. But if you're not happy about the way things are and you want people to know about it, you have to speak up. Equity has a petition you can sign here.
So what have I learned from the last couple of weeks? Drugs and Twitter are great, if used wisely and in moderation. Neither can change your life, though they might change your perspective on it. But most important of all, wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever your situation, if you want change you have to do something about it yourself. But you can't do it alone, you have to band together with like-minded people to make it happen.
