Guest Blog: Playwright Hannah Khalil On Pivoting To Digital During Lockdown

2020 was supposed to be a great year for my theatre work. I had two plays due to be on simultaneously in London in April and May (I mean seriously, who ever has two plays on at the same time in London other than Tom Stoppard or David Hare or Simon Stephens?). The premiere of Sleepwalking was set to open at Hampstead Downstairs, and the London transfer of my play A Museum in Baghdad was to arrive at the Kiln from the Swan at the RSC. But you know how the story ends. Unhappily.

I spent April and May watching the ghost milestones of opening and closing nights whizz by and mourning the fate of my industry, wondering what would happen with plays in the pipeline and those cancelled or postponed. I also tried to shake my scepticism about online theatre because it might present a lifeline to some artists. Little did I know how much online opportunities would brighten my days and give me the chance to write for new audiences, as well as working on adaptations of classics - something I'd not done before.

Early in the first UK national lockdown, I got a message from the Artistic Director of Jermyn Street Theatre, Tom Littler, asking me if I'd be interested in adapting one of Ovid's Heroines. A series of 15 monologues, they explore the perspectives of different women from Ancient Greece, and the brief was incredibly open: to adapt as loosely or closely to the original as the writer desired.

I picked one of my favourites, Penelope, who is known as the loyal, patient wife waiting for her husband Odysseus to come back from war, and let my imagination run wild. The result is something modern and, I hope, funny - to divert us from the difficult present we are in. All 15 plays are available to watch online next week only.

Around the same time, Elizabeth Newman of Pitlochry Theatre in Scotland contacted me with her generous idea of creating a digital series #PFTLightHopeJoy. She was commissioning 25 new dramatic pieces celebrating their beautiful countryside, which were to be recorded and released weekly. I wrote a piece called The Message about a djinn in Scotland. I was at a particularly low ebb when I penned it so I'm really pleased with the responses I've had since it was launched on 31 October, lots of them saying it's been a moment of peace.

Another wonderful opportunity I never expected to emerge from this strange year was the chance to write for children. I have an eight-year-old daughter who always wants to watch my work, but it's rarely appropriate.

So when I was approached by the team behind Little Angel Puppet Theatre's I Want My Hat Back (our favourite lockdown theatre show), Ian Nicholson and Sam Wilde, to adapt four Greek myths for children in an online puppet show for Waterman's in Brentford, I was delighted. Watching designer Sam Wilde making the puppets is a daily highlight at the moment. I dip into the shared Google folder whenever I need a lift. I can't wait for audiences to get to see Myths and Adventures from Ancient Greece, which are online in January.

Meanwhile, brilliantly innovative Fly High Stories, a theatre company for young people set up by Jemma Gross and Rachel Barnett-Jones, had the genius idea of getting writers to create Tiny Plays for children, designed to be performed at home (for free). They asked if I'd like to do one and I jumped at the chance.

The plays and additional resources were so successful - 10 plays with a design resource pack, 'how to write your own play pack' and a load of music downloaded 2,000 times across 10 countries - that Fly High are doing another Christmas iteration of the project, which launches next week with a play about Diwali by Sumerah Srivastav on Monday, 9 November.

I found 15 Heroines, #PFTLightHopeJoy and the Tiny Plays projects really heartening because of the number of writers and actors and creatives who were able to contribute, and I'm so grateful to have been invited to be part of them. I've learned that theatre can absolutely work online, especially with new pieces that have been imagined specifically for that format.

And that's thanks to some resourceful and creative thinking. I'm really struck by the leadership being shown by brilliant individuals from smaller theatre companies in this time of adversity. It will help us get through.

Photo credit: Richard Saker

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