Mike Bartlett wrote Contractions on a bit of a dare. He and fellow playwright Duncan Macmillan formed the writers’ collective The Apathists in 2006 with the express purpose of pushing themselves to write pieces they might not be able to in other environments. At one meeting Duncan suggested Mike write a longer piece: a full one-act play. Contractions—receiving its US premiere at Studio under Duncan’s direction—is the result.
Here’s how Mike tells the story of their collaborations:
I’ve known Duncan since 2004 when we were participants of the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers Programme. We subsequently both became members of Kevin Spacey’s inaugural New Voices company at the Old Vic Theatre. Duncan and I formed a writers’ collective, The Apathists, with four other playwrights from the Royal Court and Old Vic. The Guardian called The Apathists ‘one of the most important groups of the period’ and said that we ‘had an immediate impact’.
The creative purpose of the group was to challenge ourselves and each other to write in a way we otherwise wouldn’t. One of those challenges was to write a one-act play, for which I wrote Contractions. The play was subsequently performed on BBC Radio, under the title Love Contract, before being produced at the Royal Court Theatre.
Being a member of The Apathists collective has had a significant impact on my writing and if it wasn’t for the group I wouldn’t have written Contractions. So it feels appropriate that the play will be receiving its US premiere under Duncan’s direction, and at the theatre which staged the world premiere of Duncan’s play Lungs to great acclaim.
This will be the latest in a series of collaborations between Duncan and myself, first at the Old Vic and for The Apathists, and then for Paines Plough’s LATER series at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End where Duncan curated and directed short pieces of mine and for which we collaborated on a full-length stage play, An Object. We’ve also become trusted first-readers for each other’s plays.