Soon (well soon-ish) I will post some proper play writing things up. But before that I want to talk about risk.

I want to talk about it particularly from the position of being a mere 5 hours away from leaving a job, a great job, a job I have loved, after 12 and a half years in order to become a freelance director and dramaturg.

And I really don’t know what is going to happen next. I know a bit about it. I will be directing a new play Conscientious and I am hoping that those nice people at West Yorkshire Playhouse will be bringing me back to do some dramaturgy on a new play.

I know what I can do. I know what I want to do. And I know a bit about how I think I can get there. But there is huge amounts I don’t know about this future and as I take a big leap out of security it is a leap in to the dark.

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

And that is how it should be. Every time you write, every time you start to make something, begin a new project, start a new life it is a risk – some bigger, some smaller. But we can’t and shouldn’t know what it will be. Because that means we aren’t trying something new, something we or maybe anyone else in the world has ever tried before.

And there are hundreds of books on risk and how taking risk is the only way to success. Yeah – and it’s the way to failure too. That play might not work, that production fail in what it tried to achieve. This move to see what my own work is, my own career, may indeed end in failure – I won’t do what I want to do. But I will have tried.

And I know that the risk is greater because this isn’t just about me, it is about my family too. And that is why taking risk also means having a safety net somewhere. So that a theatre won’t go bust because a production doesn’t work. A playwright won’t be written off because that play was bad. And as a society nobody will hit rock bottom. We don’t achieve this of course – theatres fear a box office failure, writers bad reviews and our welfare state is tattered and torn. But those things should be there for ALL of us. Because without those safety nets there will be no risks taken – and art, life, business, society needs risk taking.

So here we go. Write the first line. Make the first move. Start the new life. Trust what we know and what we’ve done will get us where we want. Or maybe somewhere more interesting instead.

Take a deep breath.

And go.

Leap Before You Look
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few samrt wisecracke every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savior-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear. 

— W. H. Auden