Guest Blog: Playwright Sarah Henley On New Musical MUTED

Muted all began with Tim Prottey-Jones coming to Tori Allen-Martin with an album of great songs and some rough ideas about an elective mute boy. Tori then asked me to write the book for it, as she'd seen a few of my plays and thought I'd be a good fit. This was a gift for me: in another part of my life I work as a coach, often with people with mental health problems or learning difficulties, and I'm particularly interested in how personal trauma affects the mind - especially in young people.

Once we had a draft of the initial book, which at that time was called After the Turn, we managed to get an amazing cast together and put it on at The Courtyard as a workshop piece with a three-week run, on two weeks' rehearsal! We were building the set and driving the vans and everything in between, but it went better than we could ever have imagined; we had some amazing reviews and comments, including Mark Shenton of The Stage describing it as "the British Rent", and Stephen Fry saying it was "a stunning production". It was nominated by Whatsonstage for Best New Musical and also by BroadwayWorld for Best Fringe or Regional Musical - the only piece of new writing in the category.

Since then, the show has changed and developed a lot as I've grown and developed as a writer; it was my first musical and since then I've written two more - Streets and Another Way. I also worked as writer's assistant to Jeffrey Lane on the London production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, where I learned a great deal.

Tim, Tori and I have taken a lot of feedback on board as we worked on the writing collaboratively and without ego, cutting and adding text and changing lyrics and songs to make it the best it could be. On the advice of Gary Lloyd we changed the name to Muted to make it more catchy and intriguing. We crowdfunded nearly £6,000 to fund a cast album and put on a two-performance showcase of the new version at The Actor's Church earlier this year, which got an excellent audience reaction.

Muted is quite different from the majority of musicals that you can see in London. It has a small cast - just six people, and each of them are vitally important to the story. I think the story, the style of music and the ticket price make the show appealing and accessible to a younger, different demographic from the big West End productions. It's very exciting to be the first musical in a brand new theatre, The Bunker in Southwark - a space designed with no bad seats, which will make the audience feel very involved in this very intimate production.

My approach to writing has always been to write quickly and get the show into the hands of actors as early as possible, because that's when everything comes alive - I like to write around and respond to the talent in the room. I tend to be in the rehearsal room as much as possible, and am happy to change and rewrite as the rehearsal goes on, as we discover, as a company, things that need to change. This part of the Muted journey will be interesting for me, because it's the first time I'll have revisited a show and had the chance to really polish it and make it better.

It's a real struggle to get new British musicals on in London, mainly because it's so hard to get funding. This is partly due to the dramatic cuts in arts funding generally, but also that, for some reason, new British writing is seen as risky and producers/investors are more willing to support material coming in from the USA, which is seen as safer and somehow more exciting.

For this month-long run of Muted we have, once again, got together a brilliant cast, including Helen Hobson and Jos Slovick. Jamie Jackson is directing the show and has been working with me on the script prior to rehearsals to make it as good as possible. With this much talent, and the buzz around this exciting new venue, I believe Muted should definitely be on audience's list of things to see this Christmas season.

Muted is playing at The Bunker 7 December 2016-7 January, 2017

Photo credit: Patch Dolan Photography

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