Rianna Simons, is a playwright and graduate of Central’s BA Writing for Performance, and a current student on our MA/MFA Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media. Her work White Girls Gang was recently shortlisted for the Yale Drama Series Prize, resulting in her attending the Substratum writer’s residency in Italy.
She talks with us about her inspiration for the play, her experience studying at Central, and her advice for aspiring playwrights.
Can you tell us more about your play, White Girls Gang, and what inspired you to write it?
Sure! White Girls Gang is a play about a group of white women trying and failing to talk about Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. They’re in a book club and over the course of their discussion, they unearth all these hidden and unsavoury transgressions from their pasts. So, for instance one of the women has all this white guilt that she’s been projecting onto her Black colleagues at work, whilst another has *spoilers* done Blackface. It gets pretty dark. It all then kind of blows up and they end up using this information that they’ve learned to destroy each other and ultimately themselves.
I started writing the play initially just as a scene for a module on my undergrad, and then it spilled out into an entire play in the months following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. I was in a pretty bad way and was being bombarded by a lot of white people (friends, colleagues, peers) who were obviously seeming to realise that race was a thing for the first time in their lives. I found it kind of comical to see them navigating it all when, as a Black person, race was something I’ve had to think about my entire life.
Congrats on having been shortlisted for the Yale Drama Series Prize for the play. What does being shortlisted mean to you?
It means the world! I wasn’t expecting it at all. I submitted the play just thinking it’d be something I’d never hear back from. Yeah, it’s been insane – I feel really honoured.
As a result of being shortlisted you’ve been invited to the Substratum writer’s residency in Italy. Can you tell us a little more about this, and what it involves? What do you hope it will bring to your writing process?
So, ‘Substratum’ is a writer’s residency that’s been birthed by the American playwright Jeremy O. Harris, (known for his plays ‘Slave Play’ and ‘Daddy’, which was on at The Almeida). The whole thing has been sponsored by Gucci (which is kind of insane!) but he’s been trying to make this residency a reality for a while now.
Jeremy was the judge of this year’s Yale Drama Series Prize and said he wanted to create a space for writers to meet with other writers/artists, and to work and relax. It’s been great and I feel incredibly lucky and honoured to be here. I’m here with four other incredible writers at this beautiful hotel in the Tuscan countryside. We’re all working on individual projects and have been meeting with, and learning from, other playwrights along with film producers, directors, novelists and other writers. For me, it’s given me a lot of space away from my day-to-day life to just focus on my writing. It’s been a whirlwind and I feel like I’ve made friends for life with people who are so kind and brilliant.
How has your experience studying at Central influenced your writing and creative process?
Being at Central allowed me to meet some really great and wonderful people. I have a really tight knit group of friends and peers who I can share my work with who just get it and that’s been invaluable. I met my friends Harris Albar and Grace Dougan who run Scratching Collective on my undergrad – without them White Girls Gang as it stands wouldn’t exist! – along with friends Sarah Woodmansey, Yasmine Dankwah and Aaron Cheang who have all been so instrumental to the process of writing this play and giving excellent notes, (they’re also all incredibly talented in their own right!).
Central definitely opened me up to all these amazing people, I wouldn’t have written and stuck with this play without Dr. Farokh Soltani and Dr. Amanda Stuart Fischer who are great, as is everyone who teaches on Contemporary Performance Practice. I think studying playwriting and now screenwriting has forced me to see it as a discipline and that it’s something I have to work at over and over again. I’ve really loved analysing my own work for my BA and now MA because it forces you to really think through what it is you’re writing.
What advice would you give to aspiring playwrights who are just starting out, or who are hoping to gain recognition for their work?
I’ve only just started getting recognition for my work, so I’m probably not the best person to give advice (especially as this is my first full length play!), but I’d say to writers just starting out to read absolutely everything you can. Reading widely and kind of hungrily really helped me to develop my taste and figure out form and story for the stage, (it’s also cheaper than going out to the theatre multiple times a month). It also helps to share your work, but do it with people you trust! The advice I’d give to myself would be that sometimes a draft will just be bad for a while, and you have to let it be bad. You can always take a break and come back to a piece of work fresh, that’s fine. I also keep reminding myself that writing is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s all a process.
What impact do you hope your work will have on audiences, and what themes do you hope to explore in your writing in the future?
I really want this play to make people laugh. I think the subject matter being what it is will hopefully make white and other non-marginalised audience members consider what it is I’m proposing, but generally I want to make people cackle and scream because this play is just kind of wild. In my work outside White Girls Gang, I’m exploring themes of capitalism, revenge, possible Armageddon, and survival – it’s a lot but it’s really fun and told in a kind of funny/satirical lens which I enjoy writing through.
Can you tell us about any other projects or plays you are currently working on, and what you hope to achieve with them?
On my MA, my big project is a TV show about an over the top fictional version of QVC and I’m working on a pitch/bible for that before getting some episodes written next term. On the residency, I’ve been trying to write a play that kind of messes around with form and tone and style so that’s fun, but I’m just splashing around with initial ideas right now. In an ideal world I’d finish both projects and look into getting them made but I don’t want to stress about that right now, not yet anyway.
And finally, where can people go to find out more about you and your work? (i.e. include website, social media, dates/details of upcoming shows)
I haven’t got any work on now (yet!) but when I do, I’ll probably post about it on my Instagram @rianna_simons and my Twitter @riannasimons. If people want to know more about me, they can also visit my website.
