Luke
Barnes 
Writer, Dramaturg and, occasional, Director
Theatre, Film and Television
 

When I teach, especially people around the university age, there is a romance about the lifestyle of being a writer. A lot of these students glamourise the idea of being depressed in some warehouse in East London eating nothing but cheese, cigarettes, alchol and drugs having sex with shit people. I don't smoke but I'll tell you this the rest is a hinderance to creativity. We cannot ever confuse any form of depression with creativity. Sure you may be able to write about that d

Yesterday there was an article in the Stage about being radical and not pandering to an establishment. A director, and friend, I really admired shared it on twitter and said "yes". I responded with haste and, admittadly, no consideration and gave one side of my argument. Wasn't overly thought through and slightly driven by the fact the author gives me shit on twitter all the time. But I wanted to here. I think these blogs are a more useful place for reflection. So here we go.

A few days ago I called Lozza Fox a cunt on twitter. I have no regrets. A passing comment on a friends comment I thought very little about having explained why I thought that on my own feed. Lozza Fox retweeted my comment and the absolute gates of Tory hell opened up on me. I'm not really arsed - I suspect a lot of them were bots. Others sharing his frustration at having their privilege challenged by people demanding that we treat each other better; over all it was a lot of p

A few days ago the BAFTA list came out and there has been, quite rightly, a response to them about the "best film" nominations being from all white male directors (except one). Yesterday the self-celebrating egotist LBC Global broadcaster James O'Brian who's recent book "How To Be Right" also asked a question on his phone in show about the awards for "best podcast" of which he was won and was also an all white middle class male list. The question was "But what if they actuall

A few days ago a tweet emerged from a writer about the Netflix show The Witcher. It went like this "To be fair, in context, I was saying women couldn't sword-fight with men trained for battle. My larger point was that by depicting women doing things they wouldn't do in real life, writers kowtow to feminists by turning women into fake men and don't depict women as they are." If people have had, by an establishment interested in maintaining it's power, a pattern of behaviour im

I've just seen Greta Gerwigs Little Women. I hadn't, previously, read the book; in fact I knew so little about it I assumed it was in the cannon of the Bronte Sister and Jane Austen at the like... That's how little I knew about it. But hey - it's a fucking masterpiece I just wanted to reflect on a few things that I think might be useful to think about when it comes to telling our own stories. The first question to ask is: why revive this now? And I think there are a million a

I've just read an Article by a woman called Helen Lewis who I don't know. I didn't like it really but that's besides the point; I'm using this blog space to try and work out, for myself, and for anyone else if they're interested how we can be progressive about conversations that get thrown up from time to time. This is a moment to think about how we present our ideas, our projects, and ourselves in the face of conversations about excellence and relevance. I'm not going to wri

I wanted to take a moment to write a little bit about the 10s. My first 8 years as a professional writer. There's been a movement on twitter where people have shared their CVs over the decade which, I think, is very empowering to mark how far people have come and overcome personal and social challenges... But I wanted to reflect on the 10s from a slightly different perspective. A lot of people have marked out illustratious moments in their career to mark how far they've come