It’s been a pretty difficult summer and as a result I have been very behind in my research and writing for my Playwright73 residency with Exeter Northcott and the Globe. I am writing another history play, focussed on a medieval Cornish heroine, and it takes part both in the South West and London over a fifty year timeframe. I’ve been doing some brilliant research, aided by some great historians including Prof Matthew Davies at Birkbeck, University of London, Mark Stoyle at Southampton and Prof Jane Whittle at Exeter University. I’m also working with a Cornish Language expert, Elizabeth Ellis, who I met when I was part of the Endelienta Cornish Language residency in July. My plan had been a summer of research and writing, but a big family crisis had other ideas and had pulled me away from everything for several months. Everyone has been super supportive and kind, but I wanted to find a way to still honour the day with actors that the Globe and Exeter had offered me – so over the last three weeks, punctuated by other duties, I’ve managed to get the bones of a first draft out of my brain.

I’ve always had a brain that has fizzed as a dramaturg and playwright – story just leaks often – but since this summer’s difficulties, my imagination has felt really limited: like there’s a hard stone wall between me and my ability to dream. Getting through a quick first draft felt like an enormous slog – trying and failing to take a sledgehammer to that wall and actually realising I had to just work camped outside it, hanging off it – but I persevered, because I knew that talking about the idea wasn’t what I needed – I need to have something there, something tangible, no matter how delicate, that offered a possibility and life, that enabled collaboration (which is where I always come alive).

It was the right call. A brilliant day with Cornish and Devon actors Chloe Endean, Edward Rowe, Jack Brownridge-Kelly, Elaine Claxton, Katherine Morrant and Ben Callon, alongside the wonderful Martin Berry from the Northcott, Guy Jones from the Globe and Cornish Language expert Elizabeth Ellis, was galvanising even if it felt vulnerable. The energy, enthusiasm and possibility has really helped me feel like I can get back into my rhythm. I am so grateful for The Peggy Ramsay residency for enabling me, especially this year, when things could so easily have drifted and I’ve felt quite scared and small.

I’ve much more to write on the process and piece. But today, it’s this gratitude I am sitting in.