My experience: Nimer Rashed

“Brevity”, says Polonius, “is the soul of wit”. When I heard about the 100 Words playwriting initiative, my reaction, typically, was neither witty nor soulful. It was, however, brief.

“Christ on a bike!”, I said, spitting milk, bran, and teeth across the room. “These guys are loonies!”.

Once I’d thoroughly wiped up the sticky remnants of that morning’s  breakfast (pocketing a well-preserved fleck of bacon for later that  afternoon), I re-read the brief. It seemed I had not erred. My visual  cortex had not malfunctioned; my cognitive faculties retained the  tensile strength of a well-woven loincloth. These guys, it seemed, were serious.

It’s easy, of course, to pooh-pooh the challenge of creating
something dynamic and interesting in the space of a hundred words, but then it’s easy to pooh-pooh anything (except, perhaps, the art of using the verb “to pooh-pooh” in casual conversation). When, however, you find yourself sweating over a pile of white A4 sheets with nothing but a broken pencil and the gentle throb of Columbian Kenko  quickening your pulse, pooh-poohing is not quite so easy. Pooh-poohing’s for the peanut gallery – when you’re in the chair, your thoughts are more like:

“Okay, don’t panic. Concision’s the key. Pinteresque ellipses? …
perhaps. But that way pretention lies, n’est-ce pas? Maybe I’ll be
surreal. Surreal and edgy – edgy, yes. With a dash of Brecht. Twin
octopuses duelling. UN inspectors molesting each other’s wives.
Christ, ten minutes left. Wait! The theme’s youth! Throw some nudity in there! Some references to the war! Keep it vague, keep it – Right, there’s these two juvenile delinquent salesmen naked down the rec. Mike Leigh meets David Mamet. One of them’s gay, the other’s a paedophile. They look at each other, and – “.

In the end, I was amazed at the variety of plays that were put on.
There was postmodern deconstruction. There was heartfelt emotion laid bare. There was a vicious rat and a very, very funny chorus line. None of them resorted to the pedestrian and each, in their own way, was a glorious surprise.

“Brevity is the soul of wit”, says Polonius, “and tediousness the
limbs and outward flourishes”. Of course, Polonius was a nitwit, but he had a point. There’s nothing wrong with outward flourishes of limb – indeed, theatre thrives on ‘em (especially if you frequent the dingier corners of Soho). But brevity, ah – brevity there’s not
enough of. It always leaves you wanting more.