Writer-In-Residence 2022/23

Our inaugural Writer-in-Residence Michelle Tan joins us from mid-August 2022 to mid-March 2023. This 6-month residency aims to spotlight and platform the Writer in Residence through presentations of her work(s), and engagements with younger writers and the public.

As part of the residency, Michelle will also be participating in the New Scripts Residency, offering dramaturgical support and feedback to scripts from the open call. 

My favourite thing to do these days is less. Not even because less is more, but precisely because less is less. Maybe it is a function of the plague, or just an ongoing struggle with a smouldering stone of latent anxiety; not a crippling threat but a small scared sadness that loss is always imminent, that I have run out of anything of value to say, that pointlessness will be the overriding order of the day. So these six months will be an extension of this resistance to fixed notions of productivity and prolificness; a small gift of writing for writing’s sake, or being okay with not having words some days.

In the process of crafting this suite of new writing development programmes, one of the questions I remember the C42 team asking was “What do you feel you need as a writer?”, which is not something I had ever been asked before, nor thought to ask. Often the instinct is to ask what I need to do as a writer, which - while necessary - can end up becoming a laundry list that unhelpfully creates the impression that all it takes for writing to grow is for the writer to have their shit together. “What do you feel you need?” is a question that also asks something of the landscape and the community in which writing happens. What are the support structures that can help new writing flourish? What are the dispositions with which we approach the process of writing? How would writing shift if we took all the time and space it took to develop work?

So these next six months will also be a place to sit with these questions, and to hopefully give someone else something that they feel they need. A metaphorical cabin in the woods, or the ending of a play, or commiseration in the impossibility and insufficiency of words, or the hope of a second draft… anything within my capacity to offer.

The Writer-in-Residence 2022/23 runs for 6 months from mid-August 2022 to mid-March 2023, with a short break in December 2023.

• Aug to Sep 2022:
  Involvement in New Scripts Residency September 2022 cycle for reading and selection of scripts, and to offer individual script consultations for shortlisted scripts
   
• Oct to Nov 2022:
  Involvement in New Scripts Residency November 2022 cycle or reading and selection of scripts, and to offer individual script consultations for shortlisted scripts
   
• 5 Nov 2022:
  Writing from a (safe) distance Workshop 
   
• Mid-Nov to end Dec 2022: BREAK
   
• Jan to Feb 2023:
  Play Development & Preparation of Reading Event/Showcase
   
• Mar 2023:
  Reading Event/Showcase