Challenge spurs writer

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 18

Challenge spurs writer

A chance comment by poet Sam Hunt about the lack of women poets in New Zealand started Rachel McAlpine writing furiously. “He said there were no women poets having work published, and that was like a red rag to a bull for me,” she said. She began with poetry about 12 years ago —

“because that was what Sam wrote and it did not look hard.” McAlpine laughed and her face showed what she had learned since about poetry’s seeming ease. Looking back, she says poetry was probably her best starting point. Writing had to be sandwiched between being a mother, running a house and

working as a part-time teacher.

“You can do something with a poem in half an hour,” she said. Novels and plays require time, some solitude and no little fingers making paper darts of manuscript pages.

Novels and plays came later, with a greater involvement in drama.

McAlpine is this week at the New Zealand Playwrights Workshop at Lincoln College, as the dramaturge for a play, "Loser Packs Up,” by Raewyn Gwilliam. The play has been workshopped since Monday and will be performed tomorrow night at 8 p.m.

Being a dramaturge ap-‘ pears to be likfe offering an inexperienced driver lessons. The playwright does the initial work, the dramaturge offers suggestions on finer points.

For McAlpine it is "rather nice to be in the back seat for a change."

With plays, she says reading lines aloud is the best thing a playwright can do, as is improvising parts with actors. Surprising plot twists and character changes can happen naturally.

"Loser Packs Up" is strong and disturbing play, for and about young people. The parents of four children (three are nearly grown-up) leave them at home for five weeks while travelling, and the plot develops from this quite plausible situation.

“The parents thought it would be okay but it wasn’t,” said. McAlpine.

This will be the second play McAlpine has helped workshop. The first was "The Stationary Sixth Form .Poetry Trip,” in 1978, the first play she had written.