THE MAIDEN AND THE SPEAR

I heard a few minutes of a discussion of this play on Radio 4, and they made some useful points about writing.

The playwright grew up within sight of the Mersey. When she moved back there as an adult, it was a real nostalgia trip to watch the boats go up and down that great river.

Then she heard about a push to get more women involved in the working at sea.

The idea struck her as worth writing about, so she did a little research.

Now, at this point she is working on the story - but she doesn't yet know what the story is!

So, often the story will unveil itself to the writer only after the writer has started writing.

There is magic in beginnings (as someone else once said).

During her research, she came across the story of a woman who claimed the ship's Chief Engineer raped her while they were at sea.

She reported him to the Captain, who decided she was lying. The case went no further. The woman disappeared, and there is a debate as to whether she left the ship voluntarily or was pushed overboard.

This would become the basis of Corrina Corrina.

I have sailed on these ships. Captains and Chief Engineers are like demi-gods. The Captain is the overall boss (and different rules apply to him) but even if the Captain and the Chief Engineer hate each other they will back each other up, because without both of them the ship goes nowhere.

What would the voice of one woman count for in such a male-dominated world?

The Radio Four presenter said it was surprising more plays weren't set on ships because they are confined spaces, people are there for a multitude of reasons, with a multitude of experiences, so conflict can always arise and no one is going anywhere (except over the side) until it gets resolved.

This same situation was shown very powerfully in the recent drama Vigil, where a female police officer investigates a death in a submarine while at sea, in an almost all-male environment. Would that have been as powerful id the police officer had been a man?

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As a little extra note - Since a 1930s song used the name Corrina Corrina, it seems to get repeated regularly. Whoopi Goldberg made a film with the same name.

I don't know why the playwright used it that way, but I looked it up.

Corrina means two things - maiden and spear. So, the main character seems like a maiden, or a little woman in the poster, in the face of this looming cargo ship, but perhaps she is also the spear that is going to drive into it, puncturing those ideas of masculine authority.