Do You Know the Story of Each of Your Characters? See the Benefits in Nordost

"On Wednesday October 23, at 9:05PM, 42 Chechens attacked a theatre in Moscow. They interrupted a performance of the musical Nord-Ost and took the entire audience hostage."

A piece of paper handed me by one of the young actors set the stage for this hugely gripping Company of Angels and Salisbury Playhouse theatre play, but despite its blockbuster feature film sound, it’s told on a static set through three monologues. It shows how inventive theatre can be, but more interesting, from a scriptwriting perspective, shows how knowing the journey of each of your main characters, and considering fresh perspectives, can help you write a better story.

Nordost follows the attempt of a Chechen leader to use young women who lost their husbands in the struggle, known as black widows, to hold hostage a theatre until Russian troops pull out of Chechnya. The three monologues are from the point of view of Olga, a lady who treats her husband and nine year-old daughter to the family musical, Tamara, a doctor whose daughter is in the theatre with a friend, and Zura, one of the black widows.

It gets off to a choppy start as each character introduces life before the event, but when it becomes clear that each is heading towards the theatre, the monologues rapidly cross-cut to a spectacular midpoint where the terrorists take over, and things go from bad to worse.

Although it’s dramatic to see victims endure their ordeal, it’s Zura who really brings Nordost together. It’s her story and follows her change from loving death to loving life. She’s less driven by revenge for her husband than she is her desire for the terrorist leader, who takes a liking to her when he asks her to remove her Burka so he can take a look at her skin. She’s thrown into a dilemma when her nerves take over before the event, and gradually starts to question the raid when she befriends Olga and admires her courage with which she protects her family and others, and gradually, after a betrayal from the leader during the final siege, she manages to escape. It’s tragic as we know she’ll be on the run forever, but she wants to repent for her sins and embrace life, and there's hope she’ll find peace in the future.

The end was once again choppy as we followed the resolution for each character, but there was something interesting in the depth of knowing the ins and outs of each journey. I felt empathetic and didn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them, creating real moral grey areas, making the play more about inherent evil in the world, and the impact of war on individuals and how it can drive them to extremes.

Even more impressive was the choice to tell the story of one of the black widows. It could easily have been told from the point of view of Russian forces and their attempt to save the hostages, making the terrorists cardboard cut-out evil. Instead, it made Zura the protagonist and showed us how she was lured into this by another, misguided and misled, grappling with loss, anger, her place in her community, and its moral and psychological implications.

When writing a story, don’t just know your characters, like favourite hair products and breakfast cereals, know their stories. Tell us how they change. Even Olga changes from bubbly to vengeful and bitter, a great mirror to how Zura starts the story. Think also about whose point of view it would be more interesting to follow. What would happen if we focused on the criminals rather than the heroes? The victimiser than the victim?

Check out Nordost until Saturday 27th at Salisbury Playhouse, 7-8 May at the Egg in Bath, and 14-15 may at North Wall, Oxford. Nordost is written by Torsten Buchsteiner.