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Find Another Reason Why

Lauren Noble

A workshop review by Lauren Noble


I'm up early on a Saturday morning. Ruminating on writing. My preferred environment to write in is one which perfectly exemplifies my own process as a creative and is thus a bizarre blend of controlled chaos and structured spiralling. Cafés that bustle with the choreography of ebbs and flows all around me as I sit at a table on my own, armed with one too many cups of coffee and my little black book of ideas which has the ability to hold my attention to the point that hours can pass without my exiting the imaginarium it becomes when my pencil hits its paper. My studio bedroom has been curated to embody much of that same dynamic. I sit here at my vintage bureau with the window open, savouring the crisp air of that fleeting Dubai winter as it washes over me. Having worked for the past two years on consciously generating gateways that access the echoes of recollection for specific writing styles or particular projects, today requires the use of scent over sound, and so the smell of eucalyptus, camphor and sage fill the air as my humidifier gurgles softly in the background. The sunlight pours in through the windowpane, caught by a chandelier of gemstones which splits it into many whimsical spectrums of colour that catch my eye for a smidge too long as I daydream about something... or nothing... or nothing which turns into something... Scrutinizing my pace (or lack thereof) are the reference books I have stockpiled from Durban and Dubai over the last few years and are predominantly focused on the novel I have been writing since I was just 16 years old. Collective Nouns for Africa, The Illustrated Guide to Wildflowers and The Crystal Directory are abutted by the two short stories I published in South Africa as a teenager. There are papers everywhere: some mindmaps for strategizing my new company dynamic, notes about literally everything from #collabinconvo articles currently in process to a set list of songs for the musical theatre iteration of Checkmate we will be working on this year. Coffee stains and evidence of total coffee spillage and the consequential pandemonium involved in "save all the things" exists no matter where you look. This is home for me. A place where I can breathe more deeply, knowing as I have come to know more recently that I am actually the one who must give myself permission to delve inside my imagination and ideas without fear. It is a fear I have carried with me since I was a child. A child, then a teenager, then an adult who was very often lauded as an academic achiever or - on the opposite end of the spectrum - picked apart for my apparent audacity in contemplating a world or a worldview that was so inconsistent with that of my lived reality. Saturday mornings like this one are a therefore gift; a gift that only started giving again because of the Saturday mornings I spent in the company of a gifted and giving group of dreamers and doers. And it all started with a WhatsApp message...


The chapter entitled 2024 was not an easy one for me. The universe had paid an acute attention to the patternation of my life and chose this moment to upend it all in ways that even my little black book of phantasmagorical ideas could never have imagined. The year in its entirety is delineated in storyboard form by a series of my highest of highs interspersed with some of my lowest lows. Those paying attention to the Instagrammable patchwork of highs on my social media will acknowledge that 2024 was the year that the slog was starting to show dividends with exciting projects like Advancing the Arts, The Woza Habibi Tour and The Elf in the Gulf proving a multitude of truths to myself and others around the efficacy of our methodology of experiential education and cyclical collaborations. This is, of course, one of the conundrums of our 21st century world. A world which encourages the sharing of our successes for not only our friends, family and frenemies, but often also our known enemies and a whole host of complete strangers who all have access to our public personas. This realisation forced me to reach out to just a few of my closest friends who were the only ones granted access to the storyboard of lows which I consciously chose to conceal behind the storyboard of highs. This decision was due to my awareness that I was going to need to hyperfocus on singular storyboards with the effort and energy each required to dismantle and deconstruct them in therapy, then hopefully reconstruct them in a way that encouraged healthier patterns for me in my onward journey. I knew that I needed to be held unconditionally in the same way I know that I have held others in my own life. This decision was also to protect me from something I am now aware has caused much of the patternation of my life to need upending. I am speaking, of course, about the fear I expressed earlier. The fear that those who were shown too much of the real me would judge, or mock, or laugh, or ignore me in response to the discomfort they felt in being presented with the infinite depths of my feeling and my idealised imaginings, which I now also understand is my subconscious speaking through its suppression. The WhatsApp message that came through as I stood on our stunning beach-view balcony in Ballito was the catalyst for my reconstruction phase whilst I was still in the midst of the deconstruction phase. I just did not know it back then...


Lucy Magee of West End Worldwide has consistently shown up for me since I first sat down to interview her in 2021. The WhatsApp in question was from Lucy who had added me to a group with another individual named Rebecca Crookshank, and told us both that she thought we would get along really well. We did the pleasantries thing after which I let Lucy know how grateful I was to be included, but that our conversation would have to be paused until after our debut in Durban. Tech week madness had truly descended that day! Rebecca's response caught me by surprise as she mentioned how she had been following our international tour content and could not wait to see more. Was that why her name was so familiar? Was it a random double-tap on Instagram? Where had I seen it before? My curiosity got the better of me for just a few minutes as I found her profile on LinkedIn and realised we had connected a while ago and that this was, in fact, THE Rebecca Crookshank. The award-winning screenwriter and published playwright. An artist in multiple residences and an absolute powerhouse of an arts practitioner. I nearly dropped my phone. Rebecca Crookshank knew about my work in South Africa? Hayibo! I shelved my shock, downed my lukewarm coffee, and headed downstairs to build a Mod-roc tree and pack up our props.


The workshop series I had originally thought to be a SPAA student activity was actually intended to become an incubator for writers from all walks of life to hear their work performed in a stage reading.
The workshop series I had originally thought to be a SPAA student activity was actually intended to become an incubator for writers from all walks of life to hear their work performed in a stage reading.

A whirlwind two-week run of The Woza Habibi Tour and I was somehow back in Dubai wondering what was next when Sharjah Performing Arts Academy announced a symposium not unlike our Advancing the Arts conference for creatives by creatives. A space for educational institutions like SPAA and governmental entities like ADMAF to work together to support artists, performers and producers within the United Arab Emirates to understand the wider angle of working within our industry right here, right now. The final address by Peter Barlow touched on upcoming projects at SPAA and suddenly Rebecca Crookshank's effortless 80s chic coolness was staring back at me from the screen ahead. I lamented what I thought was a closed workshop series for the students and felt a twinge of jealousy for all those who would get to work under her tutelage. You see, one of the aspects of my unpacking process had caused me to realise the level of me which my own deconstruction had permeated. This involved the fact that, for much of 2024, I was unable to do any new creative writing at all. With the awareness I was gaining in my therapy sessions, I believe that this was symptomatic of my revisiting the neural pathways of all those aspects which had once brought me comfort or safety or complacency. I was in the midst of reframing their efficacy as a coping mechanism. Writing had sometimes become the fantasy that allowed me to engage with emotions that I was unable or unwilling to give rise to dealing with in reality. The patternation that existed in this space was that my art had allowed me to dilute my thoughts, realisations and feelings into narratives outside of my body instead of acknowledging that my art was also effectively pointing me towards aspects that were impacting the inside of my body. My psyche had therefore placed an unnecessarily ostentatious "do not enter" sign in that space, and the result was that I had stopped writing creatively altogether. To be honest, it was the one thing on this healing journey which made me believe that I might be properly broken. Somewhere upstairs my mind starts playing a distorted version of Leonard Cohen's Anthem as if through an old phonograph...

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in.

That lyrical idea did nothing to soothe my fear that I would never write again or - worse still - never find life through my writing again. Right on cue SPAA announced they were taking non-student applications for Rebecca Crookshank's workshop. I applied... and that's how the light got in.


Rebecca. Shaman. Icon. Catalyst. I am (ironically) unable to find the words to express how brightly her light shone. It was enough to illuminate a darkened path ahead of me, and I am so grateful.
Rebecca. Shaman. Icon. Catalyst. I am (ironically) unable to find the words to express how brightly her light shone. It was enough to illuminate a darkened path ahead of me, and I am so grateful.

I arrived that first Saturday morning with a some trepidation. Years of the usual prejudices faced by the bizarre triple threat which is also known as the female business owner, the former teacher and the struggling artist meant that I was quite used to armouring up in my approach to unfamiliar people and places, never knowing which way the introductions will go. The vibe waiting for all of us inside our SPAA studio which was to become home for the next six weeks rendered my usual armour entirely unnecessary as Rebecca threw her arms wide open and embraced me like she had known me for years. "Lauren! So good to finally meet you!" If I were to choose just one moment that perfectly epitomizes the Rebecca Crookshank I have come to know, it is this one. She is a shaman of the highest order, capable of softening the energy of a room using her alchemical brand of magic in one moment and in the very next generating a thrum of energy I can only liken to an unyielding electric current being passed from person to person in a space she has meticulously curated. Experiencing her up close, one cannot help notice how fully she invests in getting to know each individual to the level they wish to be known. It is bliss to be in her presence as an artist. She makes you feel held, but not captive to her way of doing things. She makes you feel seen, but sees so much more within you. And do not even get me started on her ability to craft a bespoke aesthetic which embraces multiple decades often at the same time. I mean, seriously, what other fashionista do you know who can absolutely slay an 80s waterfall pony with 50s rockabilly make-up and a 90s obsession with sandals? Iconic. Icon. Iconoclast.


That first session with Rebecca was devoted entirely to play. It is the anchoring element of her inspirational methodology as both curator and creator. She encourages all of us to find aspects that have the potential to bind us, or stop us, or inhibit us... and forcefully overturn them through play. The abandonment of anything other than just being in the moment was certainly something my brain and body was craving. The therapeutic journey I was on involved unpacking multiple storyboards and a way that is purposefully destructive, and then comprehensively investigative, and then often arbitrarily integrative. Add this to what it took to live my already busy life in Dubai, Riyadh and Durban and it became an exhaustion that I had never experienced before. By the time I landed back in Dubai to see out the end of the year it was a therapeutic journey that had also subconsciously robbed me of the belief that I could ever just be again. Did I even remember what it was to just exist without the cycle of destruction, investigation, and integration starting up again unbidden?

And it was in that frame of mind that Rebecca Crookshank's methodology entered the scene.

Writer, researcher, lecturer and interdisciplinary practitioner, Noush Anand, attended the workshop series with me and describes this methodology perfectly when she says: "Rebecca gave us the tools of experimentation - sensory oriented, generative exercises, rooted in multimedia making - bringing play into the 'how' of it all. Play becomes the embankment of how we move forward. And such a process makes you feel alive!" Four weeks of playing with props, newspaper clippings, methodical miscellany, building blocks, and colourful Sharpies alongside reading, writing and sharing tasks, and I had written the start of a play unlike anything I had ever written before.


The synopsis of Find Another Reason Why. I have since realised that there is another play I started working on three years ago called Communion which will likely become the play which accompanies this one should I choose to produce or publish. My first double-feature!
The synopsis of Find Another Reason Why. I have since realised that there is another play I started working on three years ago called Communion which will likely become the play which accompanies this one should I choose to produce or publish. My first double-feature!

Find Another Reason Why is currently an incomplete play which is something that already shows progress for me. My own mind has always battled to allow anything to sit on the backburner for too long and definitely would not want anything sitting there without a plan for exactly when, and why, and how it would be brought back to the forefront to be finished. It sits on the backburner now, percolating like a great coffee and waiting until I have the space to revisit it. The story itself revels in the echoes of stories and characters I have written before, but delves much more deeply into all that I have learned about psychology and the psyche over the course of this past year. I realise now that one of the most significant reasons for the existence of this surrealist play involves me reclaiming my writing as my means of making sense of my world. I wrote what I knew... and a lot of what I didn't... but I am now armed with an awareness that those infinite depths of my idealised imaginings means that my artistry consciously uses destruction, investigation and integration as the building blocks of creation. My characters may not always be manifestations of me, but moments and minutiae within their narrative arcs are, and that means they belong to me more tangibly than I had ever realised before. The process of writing Find Another Reason Why has shown me how to move into the next chapter of my life by acknowledging that the fear of how others perceived me was influencing my own perceptions of my abilities and therefore of myself. It is a fear I will not allow to have an unhealthy hold over me or my achievements any longer, and a writing workshop by Rebecca Crookshank, SPAA and ADMAF was the catalyst for that reconstructive awareness of the self to begin...


Listening in on a conversation between Rabee Alshrouf and Hana Afifi on the day of our staged readings, both recent graduates of Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, I realised that all of us appreciated the expansive toolkit for unsticking a stuck writer which Rebecca introduced into our shared space. Partnering with Rabee very early on in the writing process meant that we both heard the initial ideas and narrative arcs that the other was working with, making the products in process presented on the day of the staged readings even more significant. It is always a privilege to encounter creative works as they develop and is certainly one of the aspects of Collab Company which I most enjoy as a devising specialist. I remember Rabee expressing his moment of his feeling stuck very early on during his writing process and how Rebecca supported him in freeing himself of that stuck feeling that so often thwarts the writer:

"My biggest takeaway from this process would be the starting point. I knew that I had great ideas that I wanted to write about, right? But I just never knew how to start. And then Rebecca came along with all of these tools."

Another writer in the workshop series was Elhassan Elnasir, who took a long while to consider his answer to my question about his biggest takeaway. I have come to know him over the course of our Saturdays spent together as a deep thinker, someone who will viscerally slow down within a hustle and bustle, reground himself before answering diligently. His final comment on his experience was everything I expected, and more: "Rebecca - by asking us seemingly simple questions - was attempting to unearth what was already within us. Stories, as it’s clearer to me now, are deeply embedded in each of us. Formats, forms, and shapes are mere technicalities; the key is to be empathetic enough to guide the story out and onto the blank page. The structure, themes, and all that fancy stuff comes later."


I managed to find some space on the day of our staged readings to catch up with some of the dreamers and doers involved in this process. Arwa Hezzah was a writer long before attending Rebecca's course, but her medium of choice has always been articles, novels and short stories which meant her learning journey was centred on shifting from exposition to action. As a fellow lover of verbosity and exposition, it was truly eye-opening to watch Arwa's process as I recognised so many of my own challenges in those she was raising within the sharing circle. Such is the potency of a methodology which demands the coming together of the dreamers and doers at the end of a frenetic day of reading, writing and editing to listen to one another and hear Rebecca's masterful counsel in real time. Given how content Arwa appeared the morning of the staged reading, I ask her to identify the turning point within her process that gave rise to this untroubled writer in front of me. She laughs at that, and lets me in on the secret: "One of the things that Rebecca said about action really struck a chord with me because when I'm writing a story the action is obviously important, but it's not the first thing that comes to mind. Rebecca asked me to think about how to make what is happening active - and that was the aspect which propelled me forward." After a few weeks of hitting into this obstacle and causing Arwa to redraft her writing again and again, it was this advice that she found herself repeating as a refrain in her final draft process.

What can I give the characters to do that can move my story forward?

Sitting in the audience and hearing the disparate elements of Arwa's story come together in what I can only describe as an entertaining jaunt down writer's block lane was absolutely awesome. Even as I write this article - weeks after the staged readings - the memory of her dark humour and deft use of the suspension of disbelief causes me to smile as I remember the audience reaction to her two-hander as it was brought to life by the chaotic chemistry of Keenan and Ryan. Brilliant!


Meet my final draft partner, Jaafar Mardenli, who has the most remarkable ability to translate not only the wording but the intention, action and atmosphere from English to Arabic and back again. I am in awe watching him work.
Meet my final draft partner, Jaafar Mardenli, who has the most remarkable ability to translate not only the wording but the intention, action and atmosphere from English to Arabic and back again. I am in awe watching him work.

Something that I mentioned on my social media during this workshop series was how much I appreciated being able to listen to Arabic dialects being brought to life through the talents and teachings of the participants in this workshop. As a South African educator, it was always of the utmost importance that my drama classroom was a safe space for students to converse, teach and perform in any language. The history of my homeland is one where where the active oppression of the collective was very often achieved through consciously rendering the individual voiceless. It is therefore imperative that 21st century education and artistry encourages the conscious creation of space for voices to become, be and remain free. Making the arts accessible is therefore something we aim to achieve in as many ways as we are able within the work we do at Collab Company. We have experienced and observed this notion of inclusion in many ways over the years. Inclusion as an afterthought. Accessibility as an idea without providing tangible access. Inclusion as company or character armour. Accessibility for the public product but nowhere to be seen within the process itself. It was therefore quite something to experience the way SPAA, ADMAF and Rebecca Crookshank approached inclusion throughout this workshop. You see, Rebecca speaks and writes in English. I also speak and write in English. But every other participant in this workshop series speaks, writes or is highly attuned to at least one language other than English. From the very first thought-tracking exercise we were all encouraged to write our comments in whatever language we felt most comfortable. Seconds after the Arabic writers annotated Rebecca's mindmapped questions about theatre and storytelling in Arabic, along came Mohammed Al-Dashti and Hana Afifi to translate each annotation into English. Add that to their phenomenal work in translating responses from Rebecca into Arabic or from writers such as the talented Hind Abu Daher who crafted her entire work in her mother tongue from Arabic into English. Al-Dashti and Afifi were instrumental in the inclusion strategy of this space and must be commended for their handling of the creative writing of others alongside their own as well as their consistent attempt to explain the intricacies of Arabic idioms or idiosyncrasies in a way that ensured a strong sense of camaraderie and cross-cultural connection that has far surpassed anything I have ever experienced in the artistic or educational industries of the UAE. As much as this in itself is an indictment on the lack of linguistic provision in a region that is a veritable multicultural melting pot, let it also serve as a reminder that with simple structural shifts at an operational level, inclusion can be achieved by all of us.


This entire experience started with Sharjah Performing Arts Academy's workshop organiser, Heather Davies, working in collaboration with ADMAF to seek out the phenomenally generous Rebecca Crookshank, before finally bringing together this gifted and giving group of dreamers and doers. Four weeks of writing and two weeks of editing culminated in what was my very first staged reading and an opportunity to experience the final product-in-process from all 12 of us writers. Ram Farha performed in multiple staged readings of our pieces on the day of the final workshop and explained why he thought more of these types of opportunities are so significant for the advancement of the performing arts in the UAE. "I believe that experimental work is what actually builds theatre around the world. This space is where the magic comes from."


How right he is...



A snippet from the staged readings. The creative concept of Find Another Reason Why was wrapped up in my own realisations about the intricacies involved in unpacking and understanding the mind. Ryan Durand and Keenan McFadzean brought The Apothecary of poetic pharmaceuticals to life with their narration, stage directions and performance of a poem by The Errant. The rapport between The Grown (Svetlana Mishra), The Goddess (Nardine Reda) and The Girl (Iman Elbesheer) paid homage to the notions of association and disassociation, equilibrium and disequilibrium, and this idea that a single mind always comes with a chorus of thoughts, opinions, memories and beliefs hustling for the spotlight at centre stage inside it.

 

© Lauren Noble for Collab Company | 2025

 

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