Guest Blog: Stephanie Jacob On AGAIN At Trafalgar Studios

I'm an actor who's been writing plays for about 15 years. It's been a very slow burn for me, but suddenly I have two plays on in London at the same time: Again at the Trafalgar Studios and The Strongbox at VAULT Festival 2018.

What they say about buses is true (I can vouch for that - I live in south-east London, so I'm always on the bus), but I didn't expect it to be true of plays. "Honestly!" we exclaim at the bus stop when three turn up. But in fact I'm in the midst of the most exciting phase of my writing life to date.

Starting to write a play, I usually think to myself "Oh I like that!" about a little scrap of story - like bending down and picking up a stone on the beach. And it's only by the end of the first draft (sometimes the second, sometimes the last) that I understand why the scrap really caught my eye. And it's never for the reason I first told myself.

I wrote Again in about six months, but I guess I've been thinking about it for years. I wanted to try and capture what happens when we step back into the family home - for example, that we often immediately regress, to our amazement or irritation, and find ourselves back in our childhoods.

In our families, we have all kinds of knowledge of each other. And it's one of the places we're most aware of carrying the layers of the past inside us. I wanted to explore how we keep experiencing those layers of the past in the present moment - sometimes simply and quietly and beautifully, sometimes raucously and destructively - and how we keep wriggling free of them to try and determine our own futures.

Last year I suddenly had an idea for the structure of the piece, which might evoke that restless movement between past and present and future, and also be fun for people to watch. Without giving the idea away (in case you haven't seen the play yet) it was a long, infuriating muddle of a struggle to try and get it right!

I hope I have got it right, at least in part, and that people will recognise something of their own experience in it. I'm encouraged by the fact that so far, after people have read the play, they make some friendly comment and then start talking vividly about their own family.

We've begun rehearsals for Again with a fantastic creative team and we're looking forward to being in the smaller space at Trafalgar Studios, which will suit the intimate exchanges of our terrific family of four.

Meanwhile, I'm not only co-producing but am acting in The Strongbox, so I have my work cut out, as well as needing to buy a thermal vest for The Vaults. No need for thermals at Traf 2!

Again runs at Trafalgar Studios 6 February-3 March

Photo credit: Zute Lightfoot

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