WRITER IONA RAMSAY SHARES HOW SHE PUSHED THE BOUNDRIES OF HER OWN WORK TO CREATE STORIES THAT SHOCKED AND STUNNED AUDIENCES.
One thing I hadn’t considered when entering the world of writing for theatre was that you will often watch your own work. Shoulder to shoulder with the audience, you will hear exactly what they think of your show: the jokes they don’t laugh at, the awkward beat before applause, the moment they choose to rustle crisp packets. All of it, first hand. This, for me, is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when the words and sentences you’ve spent months writing were carefully constructed to make your audience sit uncomfortably in their seats; feel angered, provoked, accused of something. What will they do: walk out? Stop listening? Decide that they never want to come to the theatre ever again? Or worse, not get it. Maybe see what it was trying to do but find failure in its execution. That would be worst of all. Either way, whatever the reaction, you are about to witness it live… unfiltered.
I got to do that twice this year with two new musicals, both written with my collaborator and composer Bethany Tennick. Once with ‘Welcome to Serene,’ which we did with British Youth Music Theatre at the end of August, and again in September in the sharing of our early-stage show ‘Hysterica’, (part of the New Musicals Commissioning Hub with Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Capital Theatres).
Bethany and I have been working together for a few years now. I never set out to write musicals, which seems funny considering they were the majority of what I listened to growing up. Somehow, they always felt more distant, less attainable, as if all the people writing musicals lived in some musical-writing palace on Broadway, and the rest of us were forced to write plays and listen to soundtracks in our bedrooms. Little did I know there was very much a new-musical writing scene here in Scotland, and that I would get to be part of it one day.
While Serene isn’t the first show Bethany and I wrote together, it was the first show that felt like we were really playing with the form. This presented itself in lots of ways, but the one that caused controversy was our choice of ending. Without too many spoilers, the end of Serene involves a little boy, in puppet form, climbing a human ladder onto a roof in an attempt to save himself from a rising sand dune. As he reaches the top, a helicopter flies overhead. The cast scream, wave, and as the toddler reaches the top, he says his first word: “Help!” At this moment, the helicopter flies past, leaving them behind. In our feedback from the amazing team at BYMT, it was the one big question raised: should the helicopter come back? Should it be more ambiguous? Should the baby boy we’ve grown so attached to be saved? This we were firm on: no. It will be shocking, yes. It might cause a reaction. Good. We hope that it does. For a piece about climate change, we were very aware that the audience were mostly parents, guardians, local theatregoers and general grown-ups. Our cast of young people saw this as a chance to make them see their own hypocrisy, to make them understand the injustice, to make them aware of the urgency of the situation. Sounds like a fun musical, right? Ironically, it was. (It had a tap number!) But the prospect of making something so confronting, so accusatory, was nerve-wracking for Bethany and me. It was the first time we’d made something that felt like a massive risk.
We felt this again, even more so, with our other new show ‘Hysterica.’ What started as an urge to write something about women and power quickly became a crossroads for us professionally. We could see a version of this show that would be widely appealing: a coven of witches, an empowering pop-punk score, hints of feminism-lite woven neatly into the narrative. This would’ve been easier to write. The problem is it wasn’t the show we wanted to write. We had something to say about the conflicting feelings we have with the ugly, exclusionary, and often complex aspects of modern feminism. It was a challenging topic, but for us, it felt the most urgent. What are we doing as a movement? In what ways does our quest for power within the patriarchy stop us from being intersectional? Where does true power come from? This wasn’t a show to empower; it was a show to confront. We knew this was less appealing. When we heard we were selected to be one of the three pieces showcased at the New Musicals Commissioning Hub, it was something we discussed. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by presenting something so unlike our other work, something so direct? In the end, we decided to stay true to our Hysterica. Nevertheless, this anxiety prevailed, even until the moment we shared it with an audience.
In both cases, heart pounding, I watched it conclude. The boy screams for help. The five women in a frenzy. The actors stop. The tension suddenly beside me holds me in place. What will they do? And then, the stunned silence, the stamping feet, the applause. It worked! Bethany and I looked at each other, one on stage, one off, knowing we just made a little bit of magic – knowing we wouldn’t have if we’d made what we thought the audience wanted to see. Afterward, the discussions, the debates, the questions… There was something there, fizzing and new, pushing us forward.
So much of the art we love was reinventing the wheel in some way. So let this be a reminder to be brave, take risks, and if it feels like there is no path for the kind of work you want to make, you better start forging one.
– Iona Ramsay
Many thanks to Keira Smith for their contribution to this piece. Make sure you check out Iona’s Instagram as well as Tennick & Ramsay for upcoming work.
Iona Ramsay (she/her) is a writer and librettist based in Glasgow. She graduated with an MA in English from the University of St Andrews in 2019. Since then, she has contributed to several new works, including Thread: A New Musical (One Ren, 2022), Crisis: A Rallying Cry (Traverse Theatre, 2022), Land (Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, 2022), Not So Wee at All (PACE Theatre Company, 2023), and Beau and the Snow Fairy (One Ren, PACE, 2023). Her latest musical, Welcome to Serene, co-written with Bethany Tennick, won the British Youth Music Theatre’s New Music Theatre Award for 2024. Iona and Bethany’s new musical Hysterica was recently developed through Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Capital Theatre’s New Musicals Commissioning Hub. Iona is also a drama facilitator and part of the Senior Artistic Team at PACE Youth Theatre.