My experience: Helen Russell

Bleary eyed and bemused as I am in the morning, rocking up at the Soho theatre and having a brain drain first thing was a bit of a challenge and all felt a bit ‘jazz hands’ compared to my normal routine of coffee, email, write something random on ‘What’s hot’ this week for women’s mags.

Writing a scene in 10 words was a challenge. Two scenes in 20 wasn’t any easier but then I started to think about what I could write that was specific to teenagers. And from my own experience of adolescence I know that eloquence isn’t a strong point. I reckoned that most teenagers could discuss really life changing matters in very few words. Instead of seeing 100 words
as a limitation, it could actually be the key to understanding the world as viewed from an under-20’s perspective. Working in magazines I’ve been struck by the normalisation of sex over recent years, even when marketing to 10 and 11 year olds, so I wanted to explore the effects that it might have on teenagers today. ‘Get Closer’ attempted to do that. The actors did a fantastic job, but I’d like to do a lot more work on the script and may look at developing it further.